Distinguished Guest Lecturer

Effectiveness of Traffic Camouflaging over Internet

Dr. Wei Zhao
Texas A&M

Tues., May 4th
3:30pm, 480 Dreese Labs
All interested parties are invited.
Refreshments will be served immediately preceding the talk.

Abstract
For many Internet applications, the ability to protect the identity of participants and the characteristics of their communication in distributed applications is critical. For such applications, a number of traffic camouflaging systems have been developed over the past several years. The effectiveness of these systems relies greatly on (1) the protocol by which messages are (re-)routed among the participants and (2) the scheme by which links are padded. In this talk, we will discuss our recent discoveries on the effectiveness of these camouflaging methods. Our results contradict some of the methods that have been commonly used. For example, we find that using more agents in re-routing may not necessarily increase the probability that a sender can be identified. Furthermore, padding links with a constant-bit rate pattern may result in the worst probability; that an adversary can identify the underlying payload status. We will discuss how to develop optimal strategies for these traffic camouflaging systems.

Bio.
Wei Zhao is currently an Associate Vice President for Research at Texas A&M University. He completed his undergraduate program in physics at Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, China, in 1977. He received his M.Sc. degree and Ph.D in Computer and Information Science from the University of Massachusetts , Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. In 1990, he joined Texas A&M University . Between 1997 and 2001, he served as a department head.
Dr. Wei Zhao is an IEEE Fellow. His current research interests include secured real-time computing and communication, distributed operating systems, databases, and fault tolerant systems. He has played critical leadership roles in the projects NetEx and NetCamo. His research group has been recognized by various awards and prizes, including the outstanding paper award from the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems in 1992, the best paper award from the IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference in 1997, an award on technology transfer from the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) and the 2nd prize in the international ACM student research contest. Dr. Zhao is an inventor for two U.S. patents and has published over 200 papers in journals, conferences, and book chapters.


Host: Dong Xuan [xuan@cse.ohio-state.edu]