The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear
By: Ben Knapic
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What we’ll be discussing
 What is onion routing?
 How does it work?
 What can we do to improve it?
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What is Onion Routing?
 Onion routing is the process of
navigating networks anonymously
through the use of layered encryption.
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Conception
 The framework for onion routing was first described
by David Chaum in his 1981 paper titled “Untraceable
electronic mail, return addresses, and digital
pseudonyms”
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Why is onion routing important?
 Political Dissenters
 Avoidance of Internet censorship
 Private online human-to-human communication
 Secret/Sensitive data
 User Privacy
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How does it work?
Layered Encryption
 Layered Encryption is like an onion. The encryption
has layers. Onions have layers. You get it? They both
have layers.
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Multi-node Transversal
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What about traffic sniffers? Pt. 1
Destination traffic sniffing
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What about traffic sniffers? Pt. 2
Mid-transversal
traffic sniffing
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What about traffic sniffers? Pt. 3
Source traffic sniffing
 Website fingerprinting
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How to prevent website fingerprinting Pt. 1
 Padding
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How to prevent website fingerprinting Pt. 2
 Camouflage
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Other tips for staying anonymous
 Onion Routing by itself does not guarantee anonymity
 Use an anonymous currency, like Bitcoin, for financial
transactions
 Use the HTTPS version of websites
 Don’t send out ANY information that can be traced to
you while using an onion routing network
 Don’t open downloaded documents while online
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Silk Road
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Summary
 Utilizing layered encryption to navigate a network
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anonymously is called onion routing
Padding and camouflage can help prevent finger printing
Bitcoin, HTTPS, and avoiding opening downloaded
document while online can reduce your internet footprint
The Most widely used onion routing network is Tor
The encryption methods of anonymizing networks like
onions because they have layers
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References
 David L. Chaum. 1981. Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses,
and digital pseudonyms.Commun. ACM 24, 2 (February 1981), 84-90.
DOI=10.1145/358549.358563 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/358549.358563
 Panchenko, A., L. Niessen, et al. (2011). Website fingerprinting in onion
routing based anonymization networks. Proceedings of the 10th annual
ACM workshop on Privacy in the electronic society. Chicago, Illinois,
USA, ACM: 103-114.
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Questions?
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