Anonymous Web Browsing against Traffic Analysis Attacks by Reusing the Cache Memory

Anonymous web browsing is a hot topic with many potential applications for privacy reasons. However, there are few such systems which can provide high level anonymity for web browsing. The reason is the current dominant dummy packet padding method for anonymization against traffic analysis attacks. This method inherits huge delay and bandwidth waste, which inhibits its use for web browsing. In this paper, we propose a predicted packet padding strategy for the case of infinite cache size to replace the dummy packet padding method for anonymous web browsing systems. The proposed strategy reduces the delay and bandwidth waste. We therefore present the same predicted packet padding algorithm for the case of finite cache size. We formulated the traffic analysis attack and defense problem, and defined a metric, cost coefficient of anonymization (CCA), to measure the performance of anonymization. We thoroughly analyzed the problem with the characteristics of web browsing and concluded that the proposed strategy is better than the current dummy packet padding strategy in theory. Keyword:Anonymous Web Browsing, Predicted Packet Padding and Finite Cache Memo