Tor: The Onion Routers

Unsafe communication

  • data: content (“what”) can be intercepted
    • this can be solved by encryption.
  • metadata: source (“who”) is known by any router on the link
    • metadata leak in some cases has severe outcome
    • this is harder to protect.

Tor

  • goal: mask identity of source
  • assumptions
    • trusted: directory server that has the information of the routers
    • untrusted: a router can be hostile, but as long as one router is “good”, the communication is safe
  • Protocol
    • the user contacts the directory server and selects a set of routers.
    • the user establishes a communication link (“circuit”) hop by hop. each router is only aware of the prior router on the circuit.
    • when the user sends a message over the circuit, the message should be encrypted in layers. Each hop only knows the key to decrypt its own layer.
    • Each circuit is multiplexed by multiple TCP streams. (why? because establishing a circuit costs time.)
  • main idea, layered encryption over a circuit of onion routers (OR)
    • the client chooses a circuit: a set of routers as a link (why cannot a router choose?)
    • for each OR on the circuit, the client shares a key with the OR. e.g., if the circuit has two routers r1 and r2.
      • r1 has K1, r2 has K2
      • client has both K1 and K2
      • client encrypts the message like {{msg, dst}_K2}, r2}_K1, and send it to r1
  • how can the network be transparent to applications?
    • e.g., web browsers and web servers
    • both the server and client uses a proxy

Creating circuits dynamically

  • background: shared secret
    • each party generates a pub/pri key pair
    • share the pub key with each other
    • use the other’s public key and its own private key to generates the same result
    • use the result as a shared key.
  • incrementally create a circuit
    • first add r1
    • then ask r1 to add r2
    • repeat the above process until get all routers in the circuit
    • between each pair of routers, circ-id changes to avoid leak of info
  • Tor uses this to establish the key for symmetric encryption. (Why not use public/private key scheme? Because it may leak the user’s identity.)

Possible attacks

  • if we can hack into all the routers on a circuit in the order from the destination to the source, we’re able to find the source.
  • the attack can also be done by hijacking the network traffic of all routers on the circuit.