A distributed metadata-private messaging system

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tyagi, Nirvan
Other Authors: Matei Zaharia.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106446
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author Tyagi, Nirvan
author2 Matei Zaharia.
author_facet Matei Zaharia.
Tyagi, Nirvan
author_sort Tyagi, Nirvan
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description Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1064462019-04-12T17:07:03Z A distributed metadata-private messaging system Tyagi, Nirvan Matei Zaharia. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 61-63). Private communication over the Internet continues to be a difficult problem. Even if messages are encrypted, it is hard to deliver them without revealing metadata about which pairs of users are communicating. Scalable systems such as Tor are susceptible to traffic analysis. In contrast, the largest-scale systems with metadata privacy require passing all messages through a single server, which places a hard cap on their scalability. This paper presents Stadium, the first system to protect both messages and metadata while being able to scale its work efficiently across multiple servers. Stadium uses the same differential privacy definition for metadata privacy as Vuvuzela, the currently highest-scale system. However, providing privacy in Stadium is significantly more challenging because distributing users' traffic across servers creates more opportunities for adversaries to observe it. To solve this challenge, Stadium uses a novel verifiable mixnet design. We use a verifiable shuffle scheme that we extend to allow for efficient group verification, and present a verifiable distribution primitive to check message transfers across servers. We show that Stadium can scale to use hundreds of servers, support an order of magnitude more users than Vuvuzela, and cut the costs of operating each server. by Nirvan Tyagi. M. Eng. 2017-01-12T18:33:50Z 2017-01-12T18:33:50Z 2016 2016 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106446 967661129 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 63 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Tyagi, Nirvan
A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title_full A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title_fullStr A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title_full_unstemmed A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title_short A distributed metadata-private messaging system
title_sort distributed metadata private messaging system
topic Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106446
work_keys_str_mv AT tyaginirvan adistributedmetadataprivatemessagingsystem
AT tyaginirvan distributedmetadataprivatemessagingsystem