Node lookup mechanisms constitute an integral part of any overlay network, and hence also of anonymous communication networks. Today, most anonymizers use centralized directories, which leads to scalability problems in the long run. Additionally they require the user to trust the directory provider.#R##N##R##N#In this paper we revisit the concept of distributed hash tables to address these issues. We propose a scalable node lookup system based on Kademlia and show how it notably hardens the eclipse attack and node fingerprinting. Additionally we provide comparative scalability analyses for our approach and Tor's directory protocol.
['Benedikt Westermann', 'Andriy Panchenko', 'Lexi Pimenidis']
A Kademlia-Based Node Lookup System for Anonymization Networks