Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Borisov, Nikita
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Borisov, Nikita
Committee Member(s)
Caesar, Matthew C.
Danezis, George
Kumar, P.R.
Vaidya, Nitin H.
Department of Study
Electrical & Computer Eng
Discipline
Electrical & Computer Engr
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
privacy
anonymity
social networks
Sybil attacks
Abstract
The architectures of deployed anonymity systems such as that of the Tor network suffer from the problems of (a) limited scalability, (b) reliance on a few
central points of trust, and (c) trust issues due to Sybil attack. In this thesis, we investigate the design of novel approaches to anonymous communication that are scalable, decentralized, and Sybil-resilient.
First, we begin by investigating security vulnerabilites in existing P2P anonymity systems, and find fundamental limitations in their designs. Second, we propose novel protocols for P2P anonymous communication that can successfully overcome these limitations. Third, we describe a protocol for detecting malicious Sybil identities using information about social network trust relationships. Fourth, we present protection mechanisms for DHTs that also leverage social network trust relationships to defend against the Sybil attack while preserving the privacy of social contacts and providing a basis for pseudonymous communication. Finally, we describe a protocol for trustworthy and scalable anonymous communication that can directly leverage users’ trusted social contacts. We evaluate the effectiveness of our protocols using theoretical analysis, simulations, implementations and a Facebook
application.
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