Practical Anonymous Communication on the Mobile Internet using Tor

Christer Andersson; Andriy Panchenko

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

Research Article

Practical Anonymous Communication on the Mobile Internet using Tor

Cite: BibTeX Plain Text

@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.

Keywords: Availability Computer science Cryptography IP networks Internet Mobile communication Mobile computing Telecommunication traffic Usability Web server

Published: 2008-06-24
Publisher: IEEE
Modified: 2011-08-03

: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SECCOM.2007.4550305