CAREER: Private Communication in Strongly Adversarial Networks

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The ability to communicate and readily access information helps make possible positive social and political change. The Internet's effects on developing nations' educational, economic, and governmental institutions have been well explored by social scientists and technical experts. However, in unfortunately many instances, undemocratic governments monitor and censor Internet communication to attempt to control their populations. Although there are a number of existing technologies that support private communication in the presence of a restricted adversary who controls only a fraction of the network and has limited resources, we currently lack solutions that enable anonymous communication when the network is fully controlled by a nation-state adversary.This research develops methods of providing unfiltered, anonymous, and high performance Internet access, even in the presence of strong nation-state adversaries. The project (i) investigates methods of improving connectivity in heavily regulated networks using novel hidden channels, (ii) improves the resilience of anonymity networks to denial-of-service attacks, (iii) introduces techniques for detecting suspicious behavior in anonymity networks, and (iv) enables high performance anonymous messaging through the development of novel anonymity protocols and algorithms.The project's themes of privacy and security have been integrated into security courses developed for Georgetown's newly established Ph.D. program. More broadly, the project benefits society by improving the ability to privately access information, even in networks controlled by oppressive governments. The project will increase the participation of groups whose ability to communicate is currently muted, and will provide unfettered Internet access to regions in which free communication would otherwise be unavailable.