Network Anonymity and Blockchain

Network Anonymity

The ability to use a network without revealing one's identity.

Perfect Forward Secrecy

A property of a secure communication protocol that ensures session keys will not be compromised even if the private key is compromised.

Public Key Cryptography

A cryptographic system that uses pairs of keys - a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption.

Ephemeral Keys

Temporary keys that are generated for each session and discarded afterward.

Session

A set of interactions between a client and a server that occur during a single connection.

Socket

An endpoint for sending or receiving data across a computer network.

Circuit Length

The number of hops or relays in a TOR network path.

Predecessor Attack

An attack where an adversary controls both the entry and exit points of the communication.

TOR Directory

A service that lists all the public TOR relays that users can connect to.

Onion Services

Services that allow users to host websites without revealing their IP addresses, providing anonymity.

DPI (Deep Packet Inspection)

A method of monitoring network traffic that analyzes the data packets being transported over the network.

Pluggable Transport

A technique used to obfuscate TOR traffic to bypass censorship or inspection.

Blockchain

A decentralized digital ledger that records transactions across many computers in a way that the registered transactions cannot be altered retroactively.

Full Nodes

Nodes that store the entire blockchain and validate transactions.

Lightweight Nodes

Nodes that do not keep the entire blockchain but rely on full nodes to process transactions.

Publishing Nodes

Nodes responsible for creating and publishing new blocks to the blockchain network.

Genesis Block

The first block in a blockchain that serves as the foundation for subsequent blocks.