Tor, the go to network for people who wish to browse the internet without anyone knowing what they’re actually up to, may soon be getting some competition, and said competition will be coming from the Massachusetts Intsitute of Technology.
In an article published at MIT’s website, the university’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have been working together with the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to develop an anonymity network that is called Riffle. Unique to Riffle is series of servers called a mixnet. Each server permutes the order in which it receives messages before passing them on to the next. Apart from mixnet, Riffle also utilises “Onion encryption,” which is the same technology that powers Tor.
A combination of both mixnet, Onion encryption and techniques such as verifiable shuffle and authenticated encryption means that Riffle could possibly be more secure than Tor, while being more efficient as well. While this sounds go for those who would like to browse the internet “in the dark,” Riffle is currently still in its infancy stages, and as such, won’t be available for public use for quite some time.
Source: MIT
