Shubac: a searchable P2P network utilizing dynamic paths for client/server anonymity

A general approach to achieve anonymity on P2P networks is to construct an indirect path between client and server for each data transfer. The indirection, together with randomness in the selection of intermediate nodes, provides a guarantee of anonymity to some extent. It, however, comes at the cost of a large communication overhead. In this paper, we present Shubac, a searchable, anonymous peer to peer (P2P) overlay network. It implements a flexible dynamic path approach that shrinks paths in size to reduce overhead and delays and meanwhile reconfigures paths dynamically throughout a communication to maintain a high level of privacy. This dynamic path approach enables Shubac to make a good tradeoff between anonymity and efficiency