Onions in the Crosshairs

Abstract

We introduce and investigate targeting adversaries who selectively a ack users of Tor or other secure-communication networks. We argue that a acks by such adversaries are more realistic and more signi cant threats to those most relying on Tor's protection than are a acks in prior analyses of Tor security. Previous research and Tor design decisions have focused on protecting against adversaries who are equally interested in any user of the network. Our adversaries selectively target users-e.g., those who visit a particular website or chat on a particular private channel-and essentially disregard Tor users other than these. We present a model of such adversaries and investigate three example cases where particular users might be targeted: a cabal conducting meetings using MTor, a published Tor multicast protocol; a cabal meeting on a private IRC channel; and users visiting a particular .onion website. In general for our adversaries, compromise is much faster and provides more feedback and possibilities for adaptation than do a acks examined in prior work. We also discuss selection of websites for targeting of their users based on the distribution across users of site activity. We describe adversaries both a empting to learn the size of a cabal meeting online or of a set of su ciently active visitors to a targeted site and a empting to identify guards of each targeted user. We compare the threat of targeting adversaries versus previously considered adversaries, and we brie y sketch possible countermeasures for resisting targeting adversaries.