An Anonymous Communication Mechanism without Key Infrastructure Based on Multi-Paths Network Coding

In the anonymous communication mechanisms based on key infrastructure, public key or pre-shared key are widely used to set up relay paths and negotiate shared keys in session. Therefore, these systems always have complicated architecture and high key management cost. However, key infrastructure is hard to deployed in distributed environment. Based on multi-paths network coding, this paper firstly proposes a new information slicing and transmitting method ITNC. Then a novel anonymous communication mechanism AC-ITNC without key infrastructure, which is based on ITNC, is presented. In the new mechanism, the anonymous path setup information is sliced into pieces and each piece is coded by the random coding coefficient. The coding coefficients and coded information pieces are delivered along multiple paths, which makes the anonymous relay paths be set up in the case of non-cryptographic scheme. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that AC-ITNC can significantly improve the security against conspiracy attack in anonymous communication system without key infrastructure.