Evaluation of Anonymous Streaming Possibility in Tor Network
Aleksey M. Klyuchnikov, Igor A. Voronov · 2021
Tor is a volunteer-operated network of application-layer relays designed to enable low-latency anonymous communication. One of the used scenarios in modern internet is streaming of audio or video. We suggest that traffic flows of streaming services have their distinguishable signatures. This potentially can ease traffic correlation attacks.In this paper, it is shown that streaming traffic has its own unique signature. A hidden service and dedicated guard node was deployed to confirm the idea. Through experiments conducted on the live Tor network, we verify our hypothesis about traffic flows in different streaming scenarios and show that streaming traffic can be distinguished in real-world tor networks. Later we discuss possible points of passive adversary attacks and evaluate potential impact of using discovered signatures.