dedis@yale

Dissent accountable anonymous group communication

Background

The Dissent project is a research collaboration between Yale University and UT Austin to create a powerful, practical anonymous group communication system offering strong, provable security guarantees with reasonable efficiency. Dissent offers an anonymous communication substrate intended primarily for applications built on a broadcast communication model: for example, bulletin boards, wikis, auctions, or voting.

With Dissent, users participating in an online group will obtain cryptographic guarantees of: sender and receiver anonymity, message integrity, disruption resistance, proportionality, and location hiding.

Our CCS '10 site describes a preliminary version of the Dissent protocol, including a source release for an early proof-of-concept prototype. The ongoing Dissent project builds on the techniques introduced in this paper to increase security, scalability, and general practicality. Further papers and software releases will be posted here as they become available.

Demonstration of the "shuffled send" anonymous broadcast primitive implemented by Dissent
 

Publications

  • Scalable Anonymous Group Communication in the Anytrust Model, David Isaac Wolinsky, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Bryan Ford, Aaron Johnson. EUROSEC 2012. Abstract, PDF.
  • Towards a Formal Model of Accountability, Joan Feigenbaum, Aaron D. Jaggard, and Rebecca N. Wright. NSPW 2011. Paper: PDF.
  • Accountability and Deterrence in Online Life (Extended Abstract), Joan Feigenbaum, James A. Hendler, Aaron D. Jaggard, Daniel J. Weitzner, Rebecca N. Wright. WebSci11. Paper: PDF. Slides: PowerPoint, PDF.
  • Dissent: Accountable Group Anonymity, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs and Bryan Ford. CCS 2010. Paper: Abstract, PDF. Slides: PowerPoint, PDF.

Drafts and Technical Reports

  • Systematizing "Accountability" in Computer Science, Joan Feigenbaum, Aaron D. Jaggard, Rebecca N. Wright, Hongda Xiao. Technical Report YALEU/DCS/TR-1452, February 2012. Paper: PDF.
  • Defining "Anonymity" in Networked Communication, version 1, Joan Feigenbaum. Technical Report YALEU/DCS/TR-1448, December 2011. Paper: PDF.

Lectures

  • Dissent: Accountable Anonymous Group Communication, presented by Bryan Ford at:
    • Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, January 2012.
    • University of Connecticut CSE Colloquium, December 2011.
    Slides: OpenOffice PDF
  • Dissent: Accountable, Anonymous Communication, presented by Joan Feigenbaum at:
    • University of Illinois at Chicago, April 2011.
    • Penn State University, Dec 2010.
    Slides: PowerPoint PDF
 

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0916413, and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract N66001-11-C-4018.