Onion Routing: Techniques & Cybercrime

This assignment delves into the concept of onion routing, a network technique for secure communication by encrypting data in layers. It explains the working mechanism of onion routing and its applications, particularly in relation to cybercrime. The assignment discusses how criminals utilize onion routing to conceal their activities and access hidden websites on the dark web, highlighting its potential risks and implications.

Onion routing

Contents
What is onion routing? Explain with Its working?..........................................................................2
How cyber-crime uses onion routing for its benefit?......................................................................4
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................5

What is onion routing? Explain with Its working?
The onion routing is considered as one of the best technique to handle the communication in the
network. This network handles the transfer of messages which are encapsulated in encrypted
layers. With this, the encrypted data is then handled through the different series of the nodal
networks which are considered to be the onion routers. Each layer peels away a layer that leads
to the uncovering of the next destination of the data. The sender, is till then anonymous mainly
because the intermediary only works on the locations which tends to precede and follow the
nodes1. To understand the concept of the same, there is a use of proxy servers which tend to relay
the connection through the server. This tend to add the step in the path of data packets as well.
With this, the proxy servers are not anonymous rather they are for handling the traffic that
mainly passes through so that they can actually point back, as and when need. The activities are
defined with the latency in the connection where the proxy service tends to hit the IP information
as well.
1 Chen, C., Asoni, D.E., Barrera, D., Danezis, G. and Perrig, A., 2015, October. HORNET: High-speed
onion routing at the network layer. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer
and Communications Security (pp. 1441-1454). ACM.

For the advanced forms of the proxy routing, the onion routing is used where the use of the
network nodes tends to encrypt the data packets at the different steps2. Along with this, there is a
chain of the nodes that tends to be decrypted and are then sent to the final destination. Only the
node at the exit has the complete power to easily handle the decryption of the message so that no
other node can see what is being sent3. The onion data structure is set by forming the wrapping of
the message in the different layers for the encryption which is peeled by the computers before it
arrives to the destination. Here, the original message always remains hidden till the time
transferring from one node to the other takes place. There is no intermediary which is set
between the origin and the final destination of the data, thereby, allowing the sender to be
anonymous as well. In order to create and then transmit an onion, the originator tends to select
the nodes from the different nodes which are in the directory. The choice is mainly of the
message which is then transmitted. For preserving the anonymity of the sender, no node is able
to handle the nodes before the originator. The use of the asymmetric key cryptography helps in
handling the public key from the directory node4. This is to send a particular message for the first
2 Elgzil, A., Chow, C.E., Aljaedi, A. and Alamri, N., 2017, August. Cyber anonymity based on software-
defined networking and Onion Routing (SOR). In Dependable and Secure Computing, 2017 IEEE
Conference on (pp. 358-365). IEEE.
3 Catalano, D., Fiore, D. and Gennaro, R., 2017. A certificateless approach to onion routing. International
Journal of Information Security, 16(3), pp.327-343.
4 Asoni, D.E., Chen, C., Barrera, D. and Perrig, A., 2015, October. On Building Onion Routing into Future
Internet Architectures. In International Workshop on Open Problems in Network Security (pp. 71-81).
Springer International Publishing.

node and then establishing connection with shared secret which is also called as the session key.
There is a major look on how the client makes the connection through the Tor Network (one of
the best onion router) to handle the encryption in the original data that only the exit relay is able
to handle the decryption of the same5.
Processing of Onion Router
How cyber-crime uses onion routing for its benefit?
The cyber crime make use of the same to handle the website in the network and mainly to keep
the secrets from the eyes of the people who look forward to stealing the data. One can do this
using the Tor network, where the users can view and easily access the website. There are
possibilities of people hiding the site on an encrypted network. Tor is mainly for maintaining the
5 Catalano, D., Fiore, D. and Gennaro, R., 2017. A certificateless approach to onion routing. International
Journal of Information Security, 16(3), pp.327-343.

anonymity on the regular network6. Through onion routing, the encryption is possible. The
websites are not able to employ the different protocols, SSL (Secured Socket Layers) which are
considered to be secured to protect any data of the user or any content. The indicator for the
connection through SSL could be the URL which is http:// The encryption completely hides the
content and then helps the cybercrime departments to take hold of the data. It handles the access
of all the websites, thereby, making it completely impossible to find out the surfing on the
website. The hidden services are blocked for those who try to make use of the system without
Tor. The relay makes use of the own layer of encryption. With Tor, there is a possibility to track
down the illegal content, like the bypassing censorship, track the dark web activities to gather
information for the threats on organisation. The anonymizing technologies have the legitimate
purposes with the states that increase the employed internet censorship and surveillance
techniques.
6 Stokkink, Q., Treep, H. and Pouwelse, J., 2015. Performance analysis of a Tor-like onion routing
implementation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.00245.

Bibliography
Asoni, D.E., Chen, C., Barrera, D. and Perrig, A., 2015, October. On Building Onion Routing into Future
Internet Architectures. In International Workshop on Open Problems in Network Security (pp. 71-81).
Springer International Publishing.
Catalano, D., Fiore, D. and Gennaro, R., 2017. A certificateless approach to onion routing. International
Journal of Information Security, 16(3), pp.327-343.
Chen, C., Asoni, D.E., Barrera, D., Danezis, G. and Perrig, A., 2015, October. HORNET: High-speed
onion routing at the network layer. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer
and Communications Security (pp. 1441-1454). ACM.
Elgzil, A., Chow, C.E., Aljaedi, A. and Alamri, N., 2017, August. Cyber anonymity based on software-
defined networking and Onion Routing (SOR). In Dependable and Secure Computing, 2017 IEEE
Conference on (pp. 358-365). IEEE.
Stokkink, Q., Treep, H. and Pouwelse, J., 2015. Performance analysis of a Tor-like onion routing
implementation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.00245.