ExperimenTor: A Testbed for Safe and Realistic Tor Experimentation
Kevin S. Bauer, Damon McCoy, Micah Sherr, Dirk C. Grunwald · 2012
Tor is one of the most widely-used privacy enhancing technologies for achieving online anonymity and resisting censorship. Simultaneously, Tor is also an evolving research network in which investigators perform experiments to improve the network’s resilience to attacks and enhance its performance. Existing methods for studying Tor have included analytical modeling, simulations, small-scale network emulations, small-scale PlanetLab deployments, and measurement and analysis of the live Tor network. Despite the growing body of work concerning Tor, there is no widely accepted methodology for conducting Tor research in a manner that preserves realism while protecting live users ’ privacy. In an effort to propose a standard, rigorous experimental framework for conducting Tor research in a way that ensures safety and realism, we present the design of ExperimenTor, a largescale Tor network emulation toolkit and testbed. We report our early experiences with prototype ExperimenTor testbeds deployed at three research institutions. 1