3rd International ICST Workshop on the Value of Security through Collaboration

Research Article

Practical Anonymous Communication on the Mobile Internet using Tor

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/SECCOM.2007.4550305,
        author={Christer Andersson and Andriy Panchenko},
        title={Practical Anonymous Communication on the Mobile Internet using Tor},
        proceedings={3rd International ICST Workshop on the Value of Security through Collaboration},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={SECOVAL},
        year={2008},
        month={6},
        keywords={Availability  Computer science  Cryptography  IP networks  Internet  Mobile communication  Mobile computing  Telecommunication traffic  Usability  Web server},
        doi={10.1109/SECCOM.2007.4550305}
    }
    
  • Christer Andersson
    Andriy Panchenko
    Year: 2008
    Practical Anonymous Communication on the Mobile Internet using Tor
    SECOVAL
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/SECCOM.2007.4550305
Christer Andersson1,*, Andriy Panchenko2,*
  • 1: Department of Computer Science Karlstad University 665 86 Karlstad, Sweden
  • 2: Department of Computer Science RWTH Aachen University, Informatik IV Ahornstr. 55, D-52074 Aachen, Germany
*Contact email: christer.andersson@kau.se, panchenko@i4.informatik.rwth-aachen.de

Abstract

This paper proposes and evaluates several architectural designs for enabling anonymous browsing on the mobile Internet. These architectural designs make use of the Tor network in a mobile setting for the provisioning of anonymity to mobile devices. We compare several architectural designs with respect to their anonymity and performance properties. In particular, we are interested in finding a trade-off between anonymity and performance. We also evaluate the architectural designs against other criteria such as practicality, usability, availability, and trust. We show that the most preferable option – given a powerful mobile device and some optimizations in the Tor protocol– is the option where the Tor client is run directly on the mobile device.