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Broadcast anonymous routing (BAR): scalable real-time anonymous communication

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Abstract

We propose BAR, a scalable anonymous Internet communication system that combines broadcasting features of dc-net with layered encryption of mix-nets. The main advantage of BAR over other broadcast systems is bandwidth configurability: by using selective broadcasting it can significantly reduce the required bandwidth for a small increase in latency, without affecting anonymity. Unlike mix-net systems, BAR provides unlinkability protection while minimizing the use of public key operations. BAR provides sender, receiver and session anonymity with forward secrecy. We analyze the efficiency of BAR for several anonymity configurations by using a prototype implementation.

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Notes

  1. The public key and pseudonym should not be linked to the actual identity of the user or used in other services.

  2. Tor uses 3 by default; an entry, a relay and an exit node. As suggested in [2] by increasing the onion length, users may increase sender anonymity protection, with a cost in latency.

  3. There is no guarantee that \(u_x\) is online or willing to participate. If so, the sender will run again the search algorithm.

  4. https://github.com/sophron/BAR/archive/master.zip.

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Acknowledgments

The work of the first author was partially supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020), as part of the OPERANDO project (Grant Agreement no. 653704)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou & George Chatzisofroniou

  2. Department of Computer Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Mike Burmester

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  1. Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou
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  2. George Chatzisofroniou
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  3. Mike Burmester
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Correspondence to Panayiotis Kotzanikolaou.

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Kotzanikolaou, P., Chatzisofroniou, G. & Burmester, M. Broadcast anonymous routing (BAR): scalable real-time anonymous communication. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 16, 313–326 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-016-0318-0

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