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Breaking and Provably Fixing Minx

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Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5134))

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Abstract

In 2004, Danezis and Laurie proposed Minx, an encryption protocol and packet format for relay-based anonymity schemes, such as mix networks and onion routing, with simplicity as a primary design goal. Danezis and Laurie argued informally about the security properties of Minx but left open the problem of proving its security. In this paper, we show that there cannot be such a proof by showing that an active global adversary can decrypt Minx messages in polynomial time. To mitigate this attack, we also prove secure a very simple modification of the Minx protocol.

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Nikita Borisov Ian Goldberg

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Shimshock, E., Staats, M., Hopper, N. (2008). Breaking and Provably Fixing Minx. In: Borisov, N., Goldberg, I. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PETS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5134. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70630-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70630-4_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-70629-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70630-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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