A Traceback Attack OnFreenet

Freenet is a popular anonymous peer-to-peer content exchange network, with the goal of providing the anonymity of content editors and retrievers. Despite over a decade of active development and implementation and the adoption of cryptographic algorithms consolidated on Freenet, the degree of anonymity of Freenet initial project remains unanswered. The tracking attack exploited some fine-grained development and design decisions made on Freenet, including the unique identifier-based mechanism (UID) to circumvent the routing loops of the content request message. Develop a traceback attack on Freenet and show that it is possible to identify the source machine of a content request message on Freenet; that is, the anonymity of a content retriever can be broken, even if the retriever has issued a single request message. In this paper present the design of the tracking attack and conducted experimental and simulation studies to confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the attack.