acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

ACM TechNews

The Darknet Protects Itself By Being More Robust Against Attacks


View as: Print Mobile App Share:
A user of the darknet.

Researchers at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain have found the darknet is especially good at protecting users' anonymity because it can counter large cyberattacks by spontaneously adding more network capacity.

Credit: Rolling Stone

Researchers at Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in Spain have found the darknet, a hidden part of the Internet that is used for sensitive and often illegal purposes, is especially good at protecting users' privacy and anonymity because it can counter large cyberattacks on its own by spontaneously adding more network capacity.

The researchers say the darknet is practically impenetrable because of its unique topology, which is significantly different from the rest of the Internet.

They demonstrated their discovery by using public data and network analysis to quantify the resilience of the darknet, and develop a model that shows how information is transmitted using the "onion router" (TOR), a technique that encrypts messages in multiple layers.

The URV team found an attack on the darknet's nodes needs to be four times stronger than an attack against the Internet's nodes to succeed.

From URV Activ@
View Full Article

 

Abstracts Copyright © 2017 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

No entries found

Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account