Open AccessEvaluating Dynamic Tor Onion Services for Privacy Preserving Distributed Digital Identity Systems
Author(s) -
Tobias Höller,
Michael Roland,
René Mayrhofer
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of cyber security and mobility
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.198
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 2245-4578
pISSN - 2245-1439
DOI - 10.13052/jcsm2245-1439.1122
Subject(s) - identity (music) , software deployment , computer science , digital identity , computer security , key (lock) , usability , scheme (mathematics) , set (abstract data type) , internet privacy , identity management , personally identifiable information , authentication (law) , human–computer interaction , access control , mathematical analysis , physics , mathematics , acoustics , programming language , operating system
Digital identity documents provide several key benefits over physical ones. They can be created more easily, incur less costs, improve usability and can be updated if necessary. However, the deployment of digital identity systems does come with several challenges regarding both security and privacy of personal information. In this paper, we highlight one challenge that digital identity systems face if they are set up in a distributed fashion: Network Unlinkability. We discuss why network unlinkability is so critical for a distributed digital identity system that wants to protect the privacy of its users and present a specific definition of unlinkability for our use-case. Based on this definition, we propose a scheme that utilizes the Tor network to achieve the required level of unlinkability by dynamically creating onion services and evaluate the feasibility of our approach by measuring the deployment times of onion services.