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Essay / TOR: Onion Routing - 1221
TOROnion routing (Syverson) is an anonymous communication technique used to anonymize network traffic. Messages are recursively encrypted and sent to multiple network nodes or onion routers; each router decrypts a layer of the message and forwards it to the next router. This prevents the means of transport from knowing who you are; the network knows that onion communication is taking place.Figure 1: An "Onion" example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Onion_diagram.svgAn onion is a data structure formed by wrapping a message in text raw with successive layers of encryption, such that each layer can be unwrapped or deciphered like the layers of an onion. The plain text message is only visible to the sender, the exit node, and the recipient. This can be extended to end-to-end encryption so that the last intermediary cannot also see the message. TOR (Roger Dingledine) is a circuit-based, low-latency anonymous communications service. TOR is now in its second generation and was developed from the Onion routing program. The routing system can run on multiple operating systems and protect user anonymity. The latest version of TOR supports perfect confidentiality, congestion control, directory servers, integrity checking and configurable egress policies. Tor is essentially a distributed overlay network that operates on the application layer of the TCP protocol. It basically anonymizes all TCP based applications such as web browsing, SSH and instant messaging. Using TOR can protect against a common form of Internet surveillance known as "traffic analysis" (Electronic Frontier Foundation). Knowing the source and destination of your Internet traffic allows others to track your behavior and interests. An IP packet has a header and a date...... middle of paper ......n also uses TOR to communicate more securely with whistleblowers and dissidents. TOR is also used by people in countries like China to access content blocked by the government. Works Cited by Electronic Frontier Foundation. Overview of terms of reference. May 9, 2014. Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, Paul Syverson. Tor: the second generation onion router. Washington DC: Naval Research Laboratory, 2004. Syverson, Paul. Onion routing. 2005. May 9, 2014. Loesing, Karsten, Steven J. Murdoch, and Roger Dingledine. A case study of statistical data measurement in the tor anonymity network." Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2010. 203-215. Murdoch, Steven J. and George Danezis. Low-cost traffic analysis of Tor Security and Privacy, 2005 IEEE Symposium on.., 2005.