MirageFlow: A New Bandwidth Inflation Attack on Tor
Christoph Sendner
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2024 · Day 1 · Tor and Mixed Networks
In a critical presentation at the NDSS Symposium, Christoph Sendner unveiled "MirageFlow," a novel and potent **bandwidth inflation attack** that poses a significant threat to the **Tor** network's anonymity guarantees. Tor, the world's most prominent system for anonymous communication, relies on a distributed network of volunteer-run relays to obscure user identities. However, its effectiveness is continually challenged by sophisticated **traffic fingerprinting** and **correlation attacks**, which aim to **deanonymize** users by attracting their traffic to adversarial relays. MirageFlow introduces a powerful new vector for achieving this prerequisite, leveraging an overlooked vulnerability in Tor's bandwidth measurement mechanisms.