Anonymity on Web Transaction

1
Anonymity on Web Transaction Department of
Computer ScienceBall State UniversityResearch
Methods - CS 689Uday Adhikari7th Dec. 2000
2
Contents

•         Introduction
•         Problem Description
•           Research Objectives
•         Literature Review
•          Research design
•           Data Analysis
•           Schedule
•           Facilities and Resources
•           Deliverables
•           References

3
Introduction

• My system consists of a dynamic collection of
  users, called a group, for users anonymity on
  the web transactions.
• Group is a collection of large number of users
  from different geographical regions that
  collectively issues requests on behalf of its
  members.

4
Web transaction is a set of request, asking the
web server for some service, and acknowledgment,
which is the response to the request. With
anonymity guaranteed, individuals would be able
to participate in the Internet
5
contd. revolution without being in fear that
their every move was being recorded and
information about them accumulated which might be
used at a later date.
6
Problem Description In certain situation the
need for anonymity in the Internet is considered
to be entirely necessary, for example when a
person who are trying to withdraw from social
stigma like, victim of a sexual offense or
alcoholic person or drug abuser wishing to share
7
contd experiences with others, where an
individual contemplating suicide wishing to
consult specialist on-line help, or where person
wishing to report a crime without any fear of
being identified.
8
Research Objective

• Users anonymity from the world-wide-web.
• Freedom of speech and expression.

9
Literature Review
The basic approach previously proposed for
achieving anonymous web transactions was to
interpose an additional party (a proxy) between
the sender and the receiver to hide the senders
identity from the receiver.
10
contdExamples of such proxies include the
Anonymizer (http//www.anonymizer.com) and the
Lucent Personalized Web Assistant
http//lpwa.com).
11
Research DesignAs mention above group is a
collection of users. A user is represented in a
group by a process in their own computer. When
the process is started, it contacts the server to
request admittance to the group. If admitted, the
server
12
contdreports to the process the current
membership of the group and information that
enables the process to participate in the
group.The user selects this process as his/her
web proxy by specifying its
13
contdhost name and port number in his/her web
browser as the proxy for all services. Thus, any
request coming from the browser is sent directly
to the process on the users computer.
14
contd
15
contdIn the figure previous slide the possible
paths are 1?5 ?server 2?6?2?server
3?1?6?server 4?4?server 5?4?6?server and
6?3?server. Subsequent requests initiated at the
same process follow the same path (except going
to a different end server), and server replies
traverse the same path as the requests, only in
reverse.
16
contdGroup Membership The membership
maintenance procedures of a group are those
procedures that determine who can join the group
and when they can join, and that inform members
of the group membership.
17
contdMechanism To make use of the server and
the group the user must establish an account with
the server, i.e., an account name and password
that the server stores.
18
contdWhen the user starts a process, the
process and the server use this shared password
to authenticate each others communication. As a
result of that communication (and if the server
accepts the process into the group) the server
adds the new process (i.e., its IP address, port
number, and account name) to its list of members,
and reports this list back to the process.
19
Data Analysis Table next page shows the
results of performance tests on implementation.
It shows the mean latency in milliseconds of
retrieving web pages of various sizes for various
path lengths.
20
contd
Path Length Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5 Page Size (Kbytes) 0 1 2 3 4 5
1 288 247 264 294 393 386
2 573 700 900 1157 1369 1384
3 692 945 1113 1316 1612 1748
4 814 1004 1191 1421 1623 1774
5 992 1205 1446 1620 1870 2007
21
Schedule

• Literature review for group, network privacy -
  about three months
• Design of code to Implementation users in the
  group - another two months
• Testing the performance for different paths
  and for different browsers - another two months

22
Facilities and Special
Resources
Web server that can maintain large number of
members of the group. A good compiler language
such as C to implement the code which is used to
accept or reject the users into the group.
23
Deliverable
A novel approach to protecting users privacy
while retrieving information on the
world-wide-web is presented. Includes a project,
which gives design of the group, collection of
web users from diverse geographical region which
retrieves information on its users behalf.
24
ReferencesBRIER, S. 1997. How to keep your
privacy Battle lines get clearer. New York Times
(Jan. 13). CHAUM, D. 1981. Untraceable
electronic mail, return addresses, and digital
pseudonyms. 
25
contd CRISTIAN, F. 1991. Reaching agreement on
processor group membership in synchronous
distributed systems. GABBER, E GIBBONS, P.,
MAITIAS, Y., AND MAYER, A. 1997. How to make
personalized web browsing simple, secure, and
anonymous.
26

Questions?