CT-ISG: Dartmouth Trace Sanitization Framework

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

National Science Foundation NSF Cyber Trust Program Proposal Number: 0831409 Principal Investigator: David Kotz Institution: Dartmouth College Proposal Title: CT-ISG: Dartmouth Trace Sanitization Framework Project Summary Computer-network research advances more quickly when researchers are able to analyze the activity of live computer networks. Because it is difficult to collect traffic traces from production computer networks, it is critical for the network-research community to share traces. Researchers who capture network traces and wish to share them, of course, must properly "sanitize" the trace to remove sensitive information. Sanitization always involves a challenging trade-off between sanitization effectiveness (providing anonymity for network users and secrecy for network operational information) and research usefulness (since only the information retained can be used by the researcher). This project aims to increase network-trace sharing by making it safer and easier to sanitize network traces. To this end, the project will develop and release NetSANI (Network Trace Sanitization and ANonymization Infrastructure), a flexible and extensible suite of software tools for sanitizing network traces, based on user-specified sanitization goals and user-specified research goals. The tools will be verified on extensive traces collected at Dartmouth College, and evaluated by providing early releases to external collaborators who will test the tools on their traces. The NetSANI project will have broad academic and practical impact: (a) better tools will enable and encourage more network-trace sharing, which helps the research community do better research, (b) better access to network traces will help companies develop better network products, and (c) better anonymization methods will protect network users' privacy. The outreach efforts will help spur the research community into defining norms and best practices for trace sanitization. Finally, the project will involve graduate and undergraduate students in research and incorporate research results in courses.