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RumaisaHabib/vaultor

Authors: Humza Ikram, Rumaisa Habib, Muaz Ali, and Zartash Afzal Uzmi

Abstract

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Humza Ikram, Rumaisa Habib, Muaz Ali, Zartash Afzal Uzmi. RumaisaHabib/vaultor (Software, Prototype). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@misc{dagstuhl-artifact-25656,
   title = {{RumaisaHabib/vaultor}}, 
   author = {Ikram, Humza and Habib, Rumaisa and Ali, Muaz and Uzmi, Zartash Afzal},
   note = {Software (visited on 2026-03-19)},
   url = {https://github.com/RumaisaHabib/vaultor},
   doi = {10.4230/artifacts.25656},
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.17

Don’t Get Caught, Keep Your Onions in a Vault

Authors: Humza Ikram, Rumaisa Habib, Muaz Ali, and Zartash Afzal Uzmi

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 139, 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)

Abstract

When web applications wish to operate anonymously, they routinely host themselves as "Hidden Services" in the Tor network. However, these services are frequently threatened by deanonymization attacks, whereby their IP address and location may be inferred by the authorities. We present VaulTor, a novel architecture for the Tor network that ensures an extra layer of security for the Hidden Services against deanonymization attacks. In this new architecture, a volunteer (vault) is incentivized to host the web application content on behalf of the Hidden Service. The vault runs the hosted application in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and becomes the point of contact for interested clients. This setup can substantially reduce the uptime requirement of the original Hidden Service provider, thereby significantly decreasing the chance of deanonymization attacks against them. Using a vault node in place of the hidden service node does not cause any noticeable performance degradation when accessing the hosted content.

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Humza Ikram, Rumaisa Habib, Muaz Ali, and Zartash Afzal Uzmi. Don’t Get Caught, Keep Your Onions in a Vault. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 17:1-17:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{ikram_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.17,
  author =	{Ikram, Humza and Habib, Rumaisa and Ali, Muaz and Uzmi, Zartash Afzal},
  title =	{{Don’t Get Caught, Keep Your Onions in a Vault}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:24},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-414-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{139},
  editor =	{Argyraki, Katerina and Panda, Aurojit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-256027},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Tor, anonymity, Hidden Services, Trusted Execution Environments}
}

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Documents authored by Uzmi, Zartash Afzal

RumaisaHabib/vaultor

Abstract

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Don’t Get Caught, Keep Your Onions in a Vault

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