At One’s Own Pace
Long time no see! I’ve been cooking something in the kitchen lately and it is finally ready.
Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about writing my first scientific paper (do check it out). The paper had some issues, but its aim was not to be perfect, but rather to teach me how to write such a work. It managed to do another thing as well: it got me more interested in Tor and how its shortcomings can be overcome. One of the potential solutions is Walking Onions, a new set of protocols for constructing circuits. This stack has the potential to greatly increase the amount of available bandwidth in the Tor network and thus bring more and more users on board.
I read the paper and was really impressed by the level of attention that went into designing the protocols. I felt, however, that one aspect was not handled as well as it should have been: resources. Mainly, the study did not consider the fact that the Tor relay and client landscape includes lots of technically inadequate devices. These devices can range from the low-end smartphone of the everyday user to a single-board computer that is being used as a relay. Naturally, the question arose: how would Walking Onions perform on such devices?
This question is also the main topic of my bachelor thesis: “At One’s Own Pace: “Walking Onions” and resource-constrained devices in the Tor network”. I am really proud of the result, as it is research that could be used in real-life in contrast. You will find the document and artifacts linked below.
All images are courtesy of the Tor Project.