gap – Practical Anonymous Networking [chapter]

Krista Bennett, Christian Grothoff
2003 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
This paper describes how anonymity is achieved in gnunet, a framework for anonymous distributed and secure networking. The main focus of this work is gap, a simple protocol for anonymous transfer of data which can achieve better anonymity guarantees than many traditional indirection schemes and is additionally more efficient. gap is based on a new perspective on how to achieve anonymity. Based on this new perspective it is possible to relax the requirements stated in traditional indirection
more » ... mes, allowing individual nodes to balance anonymity with efficiency according to their specific needs. Portions of this work were supported by sponsors of CERIAS gap strives to achieve initiator and responder anonymity in relation to all other entities, including gnunet routers, active and passive adversaries, and the responder or initiator respectively. The actions involved in publishing content are indistinguishable from those involved in responding to requests; thus, responder anonymity covers publisher anonymity in gap. It is not possible for peers to retrieve content from publishers that do not use gap. Also, content migrates over the network. Because of this, even if responder anonymity is broken, there will be no certainty that the original publisher has been identified. While anonymity for intermediaries would be desirable, participation in a protocol on the Internet is generally visible to any powerful adversary. Thus, gap does not strive to hide participation in the protocol. For gap, it is only important that no adversary can correlate an action with the initiating participant.
doi:10.1007/978-3-540-40956-4_10 fatcat:afewpls24beixffwpk7uzxucsu