MRI/Acq.: An Information Assurance Infrastructure for Research and Education at DSU Project Proposed: This project, acquiring computing devices for storing and analyzing collected data to be used for information assurance (mainly, traffic analysis for anonymity research), addresses issues requiring extensive simulation, precise timing control and measurement of network traffic, and large amounts of data and data analysis. The equipment supports projects that address issues critical to the nation's security, including: . Degradation of Anonymous Protocols and Countermeasures, . Improving Quality of Service (QoS) of TCP-based Anonymous Communication, and . Anonymity Constrained QoS Routing in the Tor Anonymous Communication Network. The project, based on previous work that systematically studies traffic analysis attacks in flow-based anonymous communication systems, involves unifying different metrics for measuring anonymity. The QoS research utilizes previous work in investigating Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) performance theoretically and experimentally in flow based anonymous communication systems. Since systems can ignore characteristics of TCP traffic, deployed anonymous systems such as Tor suffer from severe throughput degradation. (Tor's server loading strategies tend to produce bottlenecks.)
Broader Impacts: Enhancing information assurance research and education, the infrastructure contributes to integrate security and privacy research into the curriculum. New courses on privacy, anonymous communications, and traffic analysis are under development. The work also promotes close ties with regional industry, mainly in banking and health care. Other universities in the states, including those serving Native Americans, will benefit.
