Mitigating traffic analysis attack in smartphones with edge network assistance

Yaodan Hu, Xuanheng Li, Jianqing Liu, Haichuan Ding, Yanmin Gong, Yuguang Fang

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

With the growth of smartphone sales and app usage, fingerprinting and identification of smartphone apps have become a considerable threat to user security and privacy. Traffic analysis is one of the most common methods for identifying apps. Traditional countermeasures towards traffic analysis includes traffic morphing and multipath routing. The basic idea of multipath routing is to increase the difficulty for adversary to eavesdrop all traffic by splitting traffic into several subflows and transmitting them through different routes. Previous works in multipath routing mainly focus on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) or Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). In this paper, we propose a multipath routing scheme for smartphones with edge network assistance to mitigate traffic analysis attack. We consider an adversary with limited capability, that is, he can only intercept the traffic of one node following certain attack probability, and try to minimize the traffic an adversary can intercept. We formulate our design as a flow routing optimization problem. Then a heuristic algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. Finally, we present the simulation results for our scheme and justify that our scheme can effectively protect smartphones from traffic analysis attack.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2018 - Proceedings
PublisherIEEE
Volume2018-May
ISBN (Print)9781538631805
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27 Jul 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2018 - Kansas City, United States
Duration: 20 May 201824 May 2018

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Communications
Volume2018-May
ISSN (Print)1550-3607

Conference

Conference2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2018
PlaceUnited States
CityKansas City
Period20/05/1824/05/18

Bibliographical note

Publication details (e.g. title, author(s), publication statuses and dates) are captured on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis at the time of record harvesting from the data source. Suggestions for further amendments or supplementary information can be sent to [email protected].

Research Keywords

  • Multipath routing
  • Network security
  • Traffic analysis

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