Hi everyone,
we are a team of 4 PHD students in the field of IT security, working at the Ruhr-University Bochum at the chair for systems security and the information security group.
Currently we work on a research project with the goal to leverage the security of Tor against timing attacks by integrating mixes in Tor nodes. The general idea is to differentiate high-latency and low-latency traffic among the network for applying additional delays to the former type of packets. Based on this the success of traffic analysis attacks should be decreased without restricting the low latency assurance of Tor.
We plan to integrate the mix into Tor version 0.2.5.10 and analyze its performance along with the Shadow simulator.
As there are a lot of details to consider, both regarding the technical aspects of the integration as well as practical assumptions, e.g., "how do we get DiffServ-like nodes?", we would be pleased to receive some feedback on the idea and support for the implementation of the mix. Further details on the mix and stuff will sure be provided if needed!
Cheers, Katharina