Riffle: Researchers from MIT and the Lausanne University of Technology in Switzerland have created a new anonymous network that they claim fixes some of the points of Tor.
It's called Riffle, and it works like Tor, but much more enhanced better safety, προστατεύοντας το δίκτυο από απατεώνες που προσπαθούν να προσθέσουν maliciousservers on the network, a technique known as a Sybil attack, to which Tor is vulnerable.
To ward off this kind of attack, the researchers made some changes to how Tor's basic principles work and created a new anonymous network from scratch.
First and foremost, Riffle uses a unique system for shuffling data on the servers. If packets A, B, C enter a Riffle server, they are shuffled in a random order, and then sent in a completely different way (for example, C, A, B).
A malicious user who is following the progress of the message will not be able to guess when and which of the packets that has entered a Riffle node is set to leave.
Riffle doesn't completely change the way Tor works because it still uses the cutting edge protocol Onion to encrypt the data with different levels of encryption, which are added or removed with each change of server through which the message travels.
Thus, an attacker besides having to break the security that Riffle adds, should also break the security of the Onion protocol.
For Sybil attacks now, Riffle uses a technique called "verifiable shuffle," (or verified shuffle) that works over the Onion protocol.
"Encryption can be done in such a way that the server can generate a mathematical proof that the messages it sends are managed only by those who receive them," it said. MIT.
This is done by sending the first message from a communication channel to all Riffle network servers. This message is used to create secure connections for all servers along the path of a message.
After the first message, the other communication channels use a less demanding CPU, authentication and encryption system, which is fairly safe and provides better data transfer speeds than Tor.
Researchers report that data transfers require one tenth of the year, compared to other anonymous networks.
More details on Riffle will be presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July in Darmstadt, Germany.
