[messaging] Provable Anonymity: Dining cryptographers, DC-nets, and Dissent

[Trevor Perrin]

On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 3:26 AM, Tony Arcieri <bascule at gmail.com> wrote:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_cryptographers_problem
>
> It seems like it's possible for modern anonymous messaging protocols to have
> formally provable anonymity guarantees by virtue of secure multiparty
> computation:
>
> http://dedis.cs.yale.edu/dissent/papers/analysis.pdf

Better overview:

http://bford.info/pub/net/panopticon-cacm.pdf

"DC-nets" are smallish groups where everyone broadcasts constantly to
the other group members.  Messages are XOR'd somehow so group members
can read the sent messages, but can't tell who sent them.

Maybe that's more analyzable and has some nicer properties than
onion-routing or mix-nets.  But it's also making strong and very
limiting assumptions (group members only communicate with each other;
small anonymity sets; entire group is online and constantly
broadcasting).

Trevor