A Secure Architecture for Anonymizer Networks

Anonymity has received increasing attention in the literature due to the users’ awareness of their privacy nowadays. Anonymity provides protection for users to enjoy network services without being traced. While anonymityrelated issues have been extensively studied in paymentbased systems such as e-cash and peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, little effort has been devoted to wireless mesh networks (WMNs). On the other hand, the network authority requires conditional anonymity such that misbehaving entities in the network remain traceable. Here, we propose security architecture to ensure unconditional anonymity for honest users and traceability of misbehaving users for network authorities in WMNs. The proposed architecture strives to resolve the conflicts between the anonymity and traceability objectives, in addition to guaranteeing fundamental security requirements including authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and non repudiation.