A Quantitative Analysis of Anonymous Communications
Yong Guan, Xinwen Fu, Riccardo Bettati, Wei Zhao · IEEE Transactions on Reliability · 2004
This paper quantitatively analyzes anonymous communication systems (ACS) with regard to anonymity properties. Various ACS have been designed & implemented. However, there are few formal & quantitative analyzes on how these systems perform. System developers argue the security goals which their systems can achieve. Such results are vague & not persuasive. This paper uses a probabilistic method to investigate the anonymity behavior of ACS. In particular, this paper studies the probability that the true identity of a sender can be discovered in an ACS, given that some nodes have been compromised. It is through this analysis that design guidelines can be identified for systems aimed at providing communication anonymity. For example, contrary to what one would intuitively expect, these analytic results show that the probability that the true identity of a sender can be discovered might not always decrease as the length of communication path increases.