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Concept
Onion routing
Summary
Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to the layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of network nodes called "onion routers," each of which "peels" away a single layer, revealing the data's next destination. When the final layer is decrypted, the message arrives at its destination. The sender remains anonymous because each intermediary knows only the location of the immediately preceding and following nodes. While onion routing provides a high level of security and anonymity, there are methods to break the anonymity of this technique, such as timing analysis.
Onion routing was developed in the mid-1990s at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory by employees Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag to protect U.S. intelligence communications online. It was then refined by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and patented by the Navy in 1998.
This method was publicly released by the same employees through publishing an article in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications the same year. It depicted the use of the method to protect the user from the network and outside observers who eavesdrop and conduct traffic analysis attacks. The most important part of this research is the configurations and applications of onion routing on the existing e-services, such as Virtual private network, Web-browsing, Email, Remote login, and Electronic cash.
Based on the existing onion routing technology, computer scientists Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson joined Paul Syverson in 2002 to develop what has become the largest and best-known implementation of onion routing, then called The Onion Routing project (Tor project).
After the Naval Research Laboratory released the code for Tor under a free license, Dingledine, Mathewson and five others founded The Tor Project as a non-profit organization in 2006, with the financial support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several other organizations.
Official source
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