Computer Science | Grinnell College

This week in CS Table, we will consider a widely used technique for using Internet services anonymously: onion routing. The leading free implementation of onion routing is Tor. The Tor Project provides a variety of software packages incorporating or building on this technique, of which the best known is the Tor browser, a Firefox derivative that uses onion routing for interactions with Web servers.

The readings are:

• Tor Project. 2015. Tor: overview. https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en
• Reed, M. G., and Syverson, P. F. 1999. Onion routing [abstract only]. Prepared for the 1999 Symposium on Advanced Information Processing and Analysis. http://www.onion-router.net/Publications/AIPA-1999.pdf
• Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N., and Syverson, P. 2004. Tor: the second-generation onion router. Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium. http://www.onion-router.net/Publications/tor-design.pdf

Packets containing copies of these readings are available on the bench near Noyce 3821.

There is also one optional reading (on-line only):

• Anderson, M. 2014. 81% of Tor users can be de-anonymized by analyzing router information, research indicates. http://thestack.com/chakravarty-tor-traffic-analysis-141114

Computer Science Table is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Fridays from 12:10 to 12:50 in the Day PDR (JRC 224A). Contact Sam Rebelsky, rebelsky@grinnell.edu, for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department.

This Friday at CS Table/CSC 295, Max and Martin will be leading a discussion on onion routing and its applications to anonymity. Several readings are suggested:

• Clark Boyd, WikiLeaks tech challenges 'top secret' security,  Discovery News, July 27, 2010.
• Paul Marks, How Wikileaks became a whistleblower's haven, New Scientist, July 2010.
• David Goldschlag, Michael Reed, and Paul Syverson. Onion Routing for Anonymous and Private Internet Connections, Communications of the ACM, vol. 42, num. 2, February 1999.
• Tor: overview, Who uses Tor? (torproject.com)

As usual, we'll be meeting at noon on Friday in JRC 224A. Hope to see you there!