Riffle is an

anonymity network In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a request ...

developed by researchers at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

and EPFL as a response to the problems of the

Tor network Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network, consisting of more than seven thousand relays, to conc ...

. Riffle employs a verifiable shuffle and a

symmetric-key algorithm Symmetric-key algorithms are algorithms for cryptography that use the same cryptographic keys for both the encryption of plaintext and the decryption of ciphertext. The keys may be identical, or there may be a simple transformation to go between th ...

. Like Tor, it utilizes

onion routing Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of net ...

. According to MIT's Larry Hardesty, researchers at MIT and the

Qatar Computing Research Institute The Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) in Doha, Qatar, is a nonprofit multidisciplinary computing research institute founded by the Qatar Foundation (QF) for Education, Science and Community Development in 2010. It is primarily funded by t ...

demonstrated a vulnerability in Tor's design. Messages sent over Riffle are not forwarded if they have been altered by a compromised server. The server has to attach proof in order to forward the message. The main intended use-case is anonymous

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

. According to the lead project researcher, Riffle is intended to be complementary to Tor, not a replacement.

References

External links

Riffle code at GitHub
Secure communication Anonymity networks Massachusetts Institute of Technology {{Internet-stub

See also

References

External links