Panoramix

Communicating in a network such as the Internet has the -seemingly- inherent characteristic that anyone observing the network (e.g., a service provider) will get to know the metadata for each connection (including the source and destination, length and size of conversation or data transfer etc.). This information is a resource that can be exploited and its misuse may have serious implications for the privacy of European citizens especially given the global nature of the Internet. PANORAMIX will develop a European infrastructure for secure communications based on mix-nets which are cryptographic overlays for network communication with the capability to eliminate meta-data information. Furthermore, even though they are a privacy-enhancing technology, mix-nets can also have suitable accountability features by design. PANORAMIX comes as a response to the need for privacy in a highly connected world where personal information becomes increasingly an item of high valuation and exchange between companies and governments and aims at empowering European citizens in terms of managing their privacy.

Mix-nets are networks of servers that receive messages from multiple senders, shuffle them, and then send them to their final destination. The main idea given by the model of a mix-net is as follows: Mix-nets take in a set of messages, shuffle them, and output them such that it is not possible to find the correspondence between inputs and outputs, thus allowing truly anonymous communications. To achieve this, mix-nets modify both the appearance of messages (using cryptographic primitives), and their order (using some form of batching or reordering strategy).

They can be used in any application where communication privacy and anonymity are required. The Internet was not designed with anonymity in mind, and therefore all information flows can be traced to their origins, unless specific measures are taken. A mix-net provides a powerful and versatile such measure. The primary application of PANORAMIX concerns the development of a comprehensive mix-net infrastructure for exploitation in many possible use-cases, both for-profit and non-profit (such as public administration). A mix-network is an absolutely critical technological infrastructure for guaranteeing strong privacy for European users and organizations.