Towards Video Fingerprinting Attacks over Tor

Abstract

As web users resort to adopting encrypted networks like Tor to protect their anonymity online, adversaries find new ways to collect their private information. Since videos over the internet are a major source of recruitment, training, incitement to commit acts of terrorism, and more, this project envisions developing a machine learning algorithm that can help the Department of Defense find terrorists who take advantage of the dark web to help promote extremist ideology. This thesis describes the steps for training a machine learning classifier in a closed-world scenario to predict YouTube video patterns over an encrypted network like Tor. Our results suggest an adversary may predict the video that a user downloads over Tor with up to 92% accuracy, or may predict the length of a video with error as low as 5.3s. Similar to known website fingerprinting attacks, we show that Tor is susceptible to video fingerprinting, suggesting that Tor does not provide the level of anonymity as previously thought.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1164219

Entities

People

  • Carlos D. Campuzano

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence Software
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Networks
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Convolutional Neural Networks
  • Dark Web
  • Data Sets
  • Deep Learning
  • Information Operations
  • Information Science
  • Kernel Functions
  • Machine Learning
  • Network Protocols
  • Neural Networks
  • Supervised Machine Learning
  • Transport Protocols

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Neural Networks