Anonymous Stochastic Routing

Abstract

We propose and analyze a recipient-anonymous stochastic routing model to study a fundamental trade-off between anonymity and routing delay. An agent wants to quickly reach a goal vertex in a network through a sequence of routing actions, whereas an overseeing adversary observes the agent’s entire trajectory and tries to identify the agent’s goal among those vertices traversed. We are interested in understanding the probability that the adversary can correctly identify the agent’s goal (anonymity) as a function of the time it takes the agent to reach it (delay). A key feature of our model is the presence of intrinsic uncertainty in the environment, so that each of the agent’s intended steps is subject to random perturbation and thus may not materialize as planned. Using large-network asymptotics, our main results provide near-optimal characterization of the anonymity–delay trade-off under a number of network topologies. Our main technical contributions are centered on a new class of “noise-harnessing” routing strategies that adaptively combine intrinsic uncertainty from the environment with additional artificial randomization to achieve provably efficient obfuscation.