Raptor: Routing attacks on privacy in tor

Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Laurent Vanbever, Oscar Li, Jennifer Rexford, Mung Chiang, Prateek Mittal

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The Tor network is a widely used system for anonymous communication. However, Tor is known to be vulnerable to attackers who can observe traffic at both ends of the communication path. In this paper, we show that prior attacks are just the tip of the iceberg. We present a suite of new attacks, called Raptor, that can be launched by Autonomous Systems (ASes) to compromise user anonymity. First, AS-level adversaries can exploit the asymmetric nature of Internet routing to increase the chance of observing at least one direction of user traffic at both ends of the communication. Second, AS-level adversaries can exploit natural churn in Internet routing to lie on the BGP paths for more users over time. Third, strategic adversaries can manipulate Internet routing via BGP hijacks (to discover the users using specific Tor guard nodes) and interceptions (to perform traffic analysis). We demonstrate the feasibility of Raptor attacks by analyzing historical BGP data and Traceroute data as well as performing real-world attacks on the live Tor network, while ensuring that we do not harm real users. In addition, we outline the design of two monitoring frameworks to counter these attacks: BGP monitoring to detect control-plane attacks, and Traceroute monitoring to detect data-plane anomalies. Overall, our work motivates the design of anonymity systems that are aware of the dynamics of Internet routing.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages271-286
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781931971232
StatePublished - Jan 1 2015
Event24th USENIX Security Symposium - Washington, United States
Duration: Aug 12 2015Aug 14 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium

Conference

Conference24th USENIX Security Symposium
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWashington
Period8/12/158/14/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Information Systems
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Raptor: Routing attacks on privacy in tor'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this