Mixnets: Implementation and Performance Evaluation of Decryption and Re-encryption Types

Abstract

The anonymous channels have been the essence of numerous protocols that include anonymous message passing between peers. The mixnet structure is one way to accomplish the anonymity . Since the publication of the Chaumian mixnet, there have been many practical implementations. There are two main approaches to implement mixnets: the decryption (Chaumian) and the re-encryption mixnets. In this paper we analyze four types of mixnets, of which one decryption and three re-encryption types. They were implemented in the Java programing language and evaluated on several criterias as: the number of messages, the total number of nodes, the number of threshold nodes, and the key length of underlying crypto system. In the results section we compare the results from the practical tests to answer the research question, which type of mixnets has better features.

A taxonomy and comparison of remote voting schemes

“…By using anonymous channels we can hide the information of sender so that even the receiver cannot relate back to the sender. In mixnets, such an anonymous communication is implemented by a set of nodes which take messages as inputs and bounce them back in a shuffled order [45].…”

“…The re-encryption mixnets can be deployed using different cryptosystems. One example is the ElGamal cryptosystem [3], [45].…”

“…A public key infrastructure is used to distribute the keys [3], [45]. Let pub i be the public key and priv i the private key for the i-th node, and r i be a random padding.…”

Secure Mobile Commerce in Ad hoc Network Using CAEC2M

“…PauceRibarski et al [11] has discussed about the Chaumain Mix-Net and different approaches to implement Mix-Nets and analyzes four different types of Mix-Nets which includes one decryption and the other three encryption methods implemented in Java Programming languages. Anonymity of channels and message passing between peers has also been discussed.…”