Anonymity networks are very important because they protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. As one of the most popular free anonymity networks, Tor, was recently discovered to have a security vulnerability, researchers and computer scientists tried to come up with more secure anonymity networks. And they have succeeded: a new, more secure and efficient anonymity network has just been created.
The new anonymity network provides strong security guarantees and uses bandwidth more efficiently than its predecessors. In fact, in experiments, this network required only one-tenth as much time as existing systems to transfer a large file between anonymous users.
The network uses several existing cryptographic techniques but combines them in a completely new manner. The “heart” of the new system is a series of servers – mixnet. Each of these servers permutes the order in which it receives keys or messages before passing them on to the next. This means that an adversary that had tracked the messages’ points of origin would have no clue which was which by the time they exited the last server. This reshuffling of the messages is what gives the new system its name: Riffle.
Chanwoo's Weekly Tech 