IRMA and network anonymity with Tot

Abstract

IRMA is a privacy-friendly authentication platform since it provides privacy guar-antees on the application layer. However, it has no such guarantees on the network layer. We can add privacy guarantees on the network layer by routing the IRMA con-text’s network traffic over the Tor network. This routing adds network latency, and we want to measure how much the added latency is. A similar study measured whole ses-sions while the IRMA mobile app’s network traffic was routed over the Tor network, using an external app, in two unrealistic scenarios. By measuring individual network messages of sessions, in more and realistic scenarios gives realistic network latencies and shows which network messages can be problematic. We implemented Tor in the IRMA mobile app and performed measurements in multiple situations, such as mea-surements over a WiFi network and a cellular network. The implementation itself gave insights usable for similar implementations, such as that the used libraries have limi-tations that are not entirely solvable with workarounds. The measurement results gave insight into the added network latency of using Tor in various situations. In realistic scenarios routing the app’s network traffic over the Tor network can add an extra av-erage network latency of 2,63 seconds. We recommend future research to find out if such added latency is acceptable. Further, this study compared implementing Tor in the IRMA mobile app and using Tor with an external Tor app.

Date of Award	30 Apr 2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Fabian van den Broek (Examiner) & G Alpár (Co-assessor)