Title: Enemy At the Gateways: A Game Theoretic Approach to Proxy Distribution,
Abstract: A core technique used by popular proxy-based circumvention systems like Tor,
Psiphon, and Lantern is to secretly share the IP addresses of circumvention
proxies with the censored clients for them to be able to use such systems. For
instance, such secretly shared proxies are known as bridges in Tor. However, a
key challenge to this mechanism is the insider attack problem: censoring agents
can impersonate as benign censored clients in order to obtain (and then block)
such secretly shared circumvention proxies.
In this paper, we perform a fundamental study on the problem of insider
attack on proxy-based circumvention systems. We model the proxy distribution
problem using game theory, based on which we derive the optimal strategies of
the parties involved, i.e., the censors and circumvention system operators.
That is, we derive the optimal proxy distribution mechanism of a
circumvention system like Tor, against the censorship adversary who also takes
his optimal censorship strategies.
This is unlike previous works that design ad hoc mechanisms for proxy
distribution, against non-optimal censors.
We perform extensive simulations to evaluate our optimal proxy assignment
algorithm under various adversarial and network settings. Comparing with the
state-of-the-art prior work, we show that our optimal proxy assignment
algorithm has superior performance, i.e., better resistance to censorship even
against the strongest censorship adversary who takes her optimal actions. We
conclude with lessons and recommendation for the design of proxy-based
circumvention systems.