Abstract

With the growth in decentralised systems, unstructured networks including social networks are natural candidates for mix network topologies that are resilient against a well funded adversary who blocks access to a centralised mix-network. We consider mix topologies where mixes are placed on the nodes of a social network. We analyse the anonymity such networks provide under high latency conditions, and compare it with other sparsely connected mix networks. We prove that real network topologies such as scale-free networks mix efficiently. We also analyse mix topologies from the Klienberg small world and scale-free random graphs, using simulations and compare their performance with expander graphs. We also show that mix networks over unstructured topologies are resilient to vertex-order attacks of Barabasi-Albert, however batch sizes required for preventing intersection attacks could be a challenging requirement to meet.

Shishir Nagaraja’s webpage can be found here