PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) • Use Signal, Use Tor?: Making Messengers Mask Metadata

Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.

Justin Tracey, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Supervisor: Professor Ian Goldberg

While end-to-end encrypted messengers have become a mainstay of modern communication, with billions of users worldwide, none of the most popular applications claim to have robust protection of their users’ metadata. When concerns about the information leaked to these messaging services from network connections are brought up, the response is often simple: Use Signal, use Tor. This then raises the obvious question, how much does using Tor with these apps actually help? In this talk, we look at the privacy and performance implications of composing the most popular encrypted messaging applications with the most popular network anonymity tool.

To attend this PhD seminar on Big Blue Button, please go to https://bbb.crysp.org/rooms/jus-jwg-tcf/join.