FlowerPot : an anonymous BitTorrent client

Abstract

This thesis presents and analyzes FlowerPot, an anonymous client for the BitTorrent file-sharing system. FlowerPot is peer-to-peer, providing scalability and making it difficult to attack with techniques like denial-of-service. It provides anonymity to users by routing traffic through several peers before actually downloading a desired file. Each user can thus plausibly claim to have been an intermediate hop on a routing path, not the actual downloader. FlowerPot is easy to use, secure against a number of attacks, and has fast enough performance to make it practical.