Abstract:

[Objective] As the unique identifier of network layer, IP address has become the basic information of network tracking and privacy correlation analysis. Different from other personal identifiers, the IP address coupled with identity and location privacy is the necessary information for routing addressing, and has to be exposed in the IP header, so it is difficult to eliminate the risk of IP privacy leakage by using terminal side obfuscation technology. [Methods] In order to protect IP privacy, we propose a technology based on the cooperation between terminal devices and network devices. In this scheme, IP address and other private information can be obfuscated by network devices in real-time. [Results] The proposed method can achieve packet-by-packet IP privacy protection and prevent privacy curious attackers from eavesdropping or collecting IP messages to implement privacy analysis. This technology not only eliminates the barrier of dual semantics of the current IP address coupling identity and location, but also encrypts the identity and location identifiers separately while meeting the requirements of privacy protection, efficient routing addressing, and auditing and tracing. [Conclusions] The technology in this paper can give IP privacy a good protection, so we think it may have high potential practical value.

Key words: IP address, privacy protection, location privacy, identity privacy, encryption