Waterfilling: Balancing the Tor network with maximum diversity

Abstract

Abstract We present the Waterfilling circuit selection method, which we designed in order to mitigate the risks of a successful end-to-end traffic correlation attack. Waterfilling proceeds by balancing the Tor network load as evenly as possible on endpoints of user paths. We simulate the use of Waterfilling thanks to the TorPS and Shadow tools. Applying several security metrics, we show that the adoption of Waterfilling considerably increases the number of nodes that an adversary needs to control in order to be able to mount a successful attack, while somewhat decreasing the minimum amount of bandwidth required to do so. Moreover, we evaluate Waterfilling in Shadow and show that it does not impact significantly the performance of the network. Furthermore, Waterfilling reduces the benefits that an attacker could obtain by hacking into a top bandwidth Tor relay, hence limiting the risks raised by such relays. Waterfilling does not require any major change in Tor, and can co-exist with the current circuit selection algorithm.