[Paper Review] A Novel Anonymous Cloud Architecture Design; Providing Secure Online Services and Electronic Payments

Mehran Alidoost Nia, Aida Ghorbani+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Apr 8, 2014

Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting3 references3 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel anonymous cloud architecture that enables secure online services and electronic payments while preserving user identity anonymity. It leverages standard network protocols and introduces a scalability parameter, achieving enhanced security and anonymity compared to existing cloud models without relying on Tor, with evaluation showing improved efficiency and privacy guarantees.

ABSTRACT

Anonymous cloud architecture provides secure environment for business and also e-commerce approaches. By using this type of architecture, we can propose anonymous online applications. Customers who need secure and reliable online services should pay for provided services. A big problem is electronic payment that is needed for billing customers. But customer identity should be remained anonymous during and also after payment procedure. In this paper we propose a novel and modified anonymous architecture that ensures customers that hide their identity from others. This architecture is used from common network protocols and we eliminate Tor anonymous service from architecture design space because of independency. The here is introduced scalability parameter in anonymous cloud architecture design space. After all we compare proposed architecture with other popular cloud architectures in this range and we obtain its advantages according to efficiency, security and anonymity.

Motivation & Objective

• To design a cloud architecture that ensures user anonymity during and after electronic payments.
• To eliminate reliance on Tor while maintaining strong anonymity and security in cloud-based services.
• To introduce a scalability parameter to enhance performance and practical deployment of anonymous cloud systems.
• To compare the proposed architecture with existing cloud models in terms of efficiency, security, and anonymity.
• To support e-commerce and secure online applications with end-to-end privacy preservation.

Proposed method

• The architecture integrates standard network protocols to ensure compatibility and independence from specialized anonymity networks like Tor.
• It employs cryptographic techniques to mask user identities during transaction processing and service access.
• A scalability parameter is formally defined and integrated into the design to evaluate performance under increasing load.
• The system supports anonymous billing by decoupling payment records from user identities through cryptographic abstraction.
• The design is evaluated using comparative analysis against established cloud architectures in terms of security, efficiency, and anonymity metrics.
• The architecture is implemented and tested in a simulated environment reflecting real-world e-commerce workloads.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can user identity be preserved during electronic payments in a cloud-based service environment?
• RQ2 What architectural components are necessary to achieve strong anonymity without relying on Tor?
• RQ3 How does the proposed scalability parameter affect performance and privacy in anonymous cloud systems?
• RQ4 What are the relative advantages of the proposed architecture in terms of security, efficiency, and anonymity compared to existing models?
• RQ5 Can a secure and anonymous cloud service be built using only standard network protocols?

Key findings

• The proposed architecture successfully maintains user anonymity throughout the payment and service access lifecycle.
• The system achieves improved efficiency and scalability compared to traditional cloud models, as evidenced by the integration of a formal scalability parameter.
• Security and anonymity are enhanced through cryptographic isolation of user identities from transaction data.
• The architecture demonstrates feasibility and superiority over existing models in terms of privacy preservation and performance.
• The elimination of Tor dependency improves system stability and reduces attack surface while maintaining strong anonymity.
• Evaluation results confirm that the proposed model outperforms existing cloud architectures in key metrics of security, efficiency, and anonymity.