P 5 : A protocol for scalable anonymous communication

Abstract

We present a protocol for anonymous communication over the Internet. Our protocol, called ${\mathcal{P}}^5$ (Peer-to-Peer Personal Privacy Protocol) provides sender–, receiver–, and sender–receiver anonymity. ${\mathcal{P}}^5$ is designed to be implemented over the current Internet protocols, and does not require any special infrastructure support. A novel feature of ${\mathcal{P}}^5$ is that it allows individual participants to trade-off degree of anonymity for communication efficiency, and hence can be used to scalably implement large anonymous groups. We present a description of ${\mathcal{P}}^5$ , an analysis of its anonymity and communication efficiency, and evaluate its performance using detailed packet-level simulations.