Towards improving the strength and user experience of the Tor anonymity network
In this talk I will introduce Tor and the Tor Browser, and give an overview of two of my previous projects relating to improving the UX of these tools, and towards protecting from attacks against the network. Specifically, I will introduce the first attempt at a Tor Browser Friendliness Scanner, or a program that scans the World Wide Web and attempts to identify what Web content does not work on the Tor Browser and why, and discuss my findings when running this scanner on 10,000 top Web sites. I will then discuss another related work, ForK, which attempts to defend high-risk Tor clients from traffic confirmation attacks by applying traffic shaping and killswitch techniques to achieve k-anonymity at a Tor bridge. Both of these are still active projects, which I will be submitting for publication soon.
22/03/2023 14:00
Computer Systems
Kevin Gallagher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at FCT, NOVA University of Lisbon. He holds a Bachelors in Computer Science from CUNY Hunter College, and a Masters and PhD in Computer Science from New York University. His research focuses on anonymity, privacy, and human elements of security and privacy, with a focus on Tor and the Tor Browser.
