Lilac: Architecture For Anonymous Light Weight Communication

Abstract

We present lilac; a circuit based low latency anonymous light weight instant messaging communication system. This browser based chat platform provides anonymity in context with unlinkability and unobservability for the secured real-time communication. The system uses a relay based anonymization mechanism where circuits are built and routed over a set of trusted nodes in the network. Unlike other typical instant messaging systems, Lilac uses user pseudonymity and ephemeral message exchange, which eliminates conventional user registration and storing the messages for the future retrieval; this leaves no footprints behind in the system in terms of user information, who talks to whom and the messages exchanged between the users. This system is deployed to be used for one-to-one communication and also an experimental group communication up to five users in a group. Lilac works on the real-world internet, requires no configuration, browser add-ons and operating system modification on the client side; thus it provides a hands-on ease of access on both desktop and mobile browsers acquiring the anonymity by reasonable trade off amongst the deployability, compatibility, usability and efficiency. Lilac demonstrates the primary design and workings of core modules deployed on real-world internet. We have briefly described our experience with the experimental setup of lilac platform discussing the key ways in which it challenges our current concept of anonymity and closing with the future work for the system.