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Related papers: Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays

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We introduce and investigate *targeting adversaries* who selectively attack users of Tor or other secure-communication networks. We argue that attacks by such adversaries are more realistic and more significant threats to those most relying…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2017-07-03 Aaron D. Jaggard , Paul Syverson

The Tor network uses a measurement system to estimate its relays' forwarding capacity and to balance traffic among them. This system has been shown to be vulnerable to adversarial manipulation. Moreover, its accuracy and effectiveness in…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-04-22 Matthew Traudt , Rob Jansen , Aaron Johnson

Tor is the most popular anonymous communication network. It has millions of daily users seeking privacy while browsing the internet. It has thousands of relays to route and anonymize the source and destinations of the users packets. To…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2022-12-01 Hussein Darir , Nikita Borisov , Geir Dullerud

There are not many known ways to break Tor anonymity, and they require an enormous amount of computational power. Controlling both entrance and exit nodes allows an attacker to compromise client IP with enough pattern analysis. If an .onion…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2017-12-13 Stephanie Abraham , Tyler Silva , Robert Decourcy , Jim Cardon

Current anonymizing networks have become an important tool for guaranteeing users' privacy. However, these platforms can be used to perform illegitimate actions, which sometimes makes service providers see traffic coming from these networks…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2014-12-16 Jesus Diaz , David Arroyo , Francisco B. Rodriguez

Tor, a widely utilized privacy network, enables anonymous communication but is vulnerable to flow correlation attacks that deanonymize users by correlating traffic patterns from Tor's ingress and egress segments. Various defenses have been…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Minjae Seo , Myoungsung You , Jaehan Kim , Taejune Park , Seungwon Shin , Jinwoo Kim

Website fingerprinting (WF) attacks on Tor can infer user destinations from encrypted traffic metadata. However, their real-world effectiveness remains debated due to laboratory settings that fail to capture network fluctuations, evaluate…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Mohammadhamed Shadbeh , Khashayar Khajavi , Tao Wang

For journalists reporting from a totalitarian regime, whistleblowers and resistance fighters, the anonymous use of cloud services on the Internet can be vital for survival. The Tor network provides a free and widely used anonymization…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-05-16 Pitpimon Choorod , Tobias J. Bauer , Andreas Aßmuth

The Tor network is the most prominent system for providing anonymous communication to web users, with a daily user base of 2 million users. However, since its inception, it has been constantly targeted by various traffic fingerprinting and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-07-18 Christoph Sendner , Jasper Stang , Alexandra Dmitrienko , Raveen Wijewickrama , Murtuza Jadliwala

Phishing websites are a common phenomenon among Tor onion services, and phishers exploit that it is tremendously difficult to distinguish phishing from authentic onion domain names. Operators of onion services devised several strategies to…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-08-16 Benjamin Güldenring , Volker Roth

Tor, one of the most popular censorship circumvention systems, faces regular blocking attempts by censors. Thus, to facilitate access, it relies on "pluggable transports" (PTs) that disguise Tor's traffic and make it hard for the adversary…

Performance · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Zeya Umayya , Dhruv Malik , Devashish Gosain , Piyush Kumar Sharma

Tor is currently one of the more popular systems for anonymizing near real-time communications on the Internet. Recently, Borisov et al. proposed a denial of service based attack on Tor (and related systems) that significantly increases the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2013-10-04 Norman Danner , Sam DeFabbia-Kane , Danny Krizanc , Marc Liberatore

Tor is the most popular anonymous communication overlay network which hides clients' identities from servers by passing packets through multiple relays. To provide anonymity to both clients and servers, Tor onion services were introduced by…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Md Washik Al Azad , Hasniuj Zahan , Sifat Ut Taki , Spyridon Mastorakis

Tor is a well-known anonymous communication tool, used by people with various privacy and security needs. Prior works have exploited routing attacks to observe Tor traffic and deanonymize Tor users. Subsequently, location-aware relay…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-01-13 Zhifan Lu , Siyang Sun , Yixin Sun

Anonymous VoIP calls over the Internet holds great significance for privacy-conscious users, whistle-blowers and political activists alike. Prior research deems popular anonymization systems like Tor unsuitable for providing requisite…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-07-10 Piyush Kumar Sharma , Shashwat Chaudhary , Nikhil Hassija , Mukulika Maity , Sambuddho Chakravarty

In late 2017, a sudden proliferation of malicious JavaScript was reported on the Web: browser-based mining exploited the CPU time of website visitors to mine the cryptocurrency Monero. Several studies measured the deployment of such code…

Online anonymity and privacy has been based on confusing the adversary by creating indistinguishable network elements. Tor is the largest and most widely deployed anonymity system, designed against realistic modern adversaries. Recently,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-01-13 George Kadianakis , Theodoros Polyzos , Mike Perry , Kostas Chatzikokolakis

Tor is a communications infrastructure widely used for unfettered and anonymous access to Internet websites. Tor is also used to access sites on the .onion virtual domain. The focus of .onion use and discussion has traditionally been on the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2015-06-15 Paul Syverson , Griffin Boyce

Anonymity networks are becoming increasingly popular in today's online world as more users attempt to safeguard their online privacy. Tor is currently the most popular anonymity network in use and provides anonymity to both users and…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-01-27 Ishan Karunanayake , Nadeem Ahmed , Robert Malaney , Rafiqul Islam , Sanjay Jha

The Tor network provides users with strong anonymity by routing their internet traffic through multiple relays. While Tor encrypts traffic and hides IP addresses, it remains vulnerable to traffic analysis attacks such as the website…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Yuwen Cui , Guangjing Wang , Khanh Vu , Kai Wei , Kehan Shen , Zhengyuan Jiang , Xiao Han , Ning Wang , Zhuo Lu , Yao Liu