Jul 27, 2015, 09:48 am
Quote:HORNET works like Tor, only at higher Internet speeds
Five scientists from universities in Zurich and London have created a new method of anonymously surfing the Web, using a system similar to Tor, only more secure and supporting faster speeds and lower latencies.
This new system is named HORNET (High-speed Onion Routing at the NETwork layer) and relies on the same onion routing technique used with Tor.
This means that transmitted data is encoded multiple times on multiple levels (like the layers of an onion), preventing snoopers from getting at its core and the user without knowing the entire network and the route the data traveled through.
The bigger the network, the more secure the data sent through it. Unfortunately, at the same time, the bigger the network, the more time data takes to pass through the nodes, and the encryption/decryption processes of each of these.
HORNET was developed to fix this speed issue with Tor, with researchers reporting that they achieved data transfers of 93Gbps between the two universities involved in the research (in Zurich and London).
HORNET is not better than Tor, but faster
The HORNET system has not undergone real traffic tests with more users, but in theory, this should work faster than Tor because of the way it was designed.
While within Tor intermediary nodes store information about encryption and network routing, this task is left only to start-end nodes in HORNET.
This means that intermediary nodes could prioritize network routing operations and drop encryption-related processes, speeding up the passage of data through their hardware.
The problem with this approach is that, while the information travels faster, if by any chance the start and end points of a HORNET communication channel are exposed, attackers can decrypt traffic and de-anonymize the user. This is highly unlikely though, but possible in theory.
"Our experiments show that small trade-offs in packet header size greatly benefit security, while retaining high performance," point out the researchers.
They also go on to reveal that HORNET is also susceptible to the same abuses Tor is, but it is much better at keeping user anonymity intact.
"When an adversary controls more than one node on a path, it can launch confirmation attacks by leveraging flow-dynamics analysis, timing, and packet tagging, all of which can be further assisted by replay attacks. HORNET, like other low-latency onion routing schemes, cannot prevent such confirmation attacks targeting individual users," says the research paper.
"However, HORNET raises the bar of deploying such attacks for secretive mass surveillance: the adversary must be capable of controlling a significant percentage of ISPs of ten residing in multiple geopolitical boundaries, not to mention keeping such massive activity confidential."
Source.
The speed advantage sounds nice, but I wonder how resistant it would be to NSA snooping? An adversary like that could be capable.