### On Defeating Graph Analysis of Anonymous Transactions

Christoph Egger, Russell W. F. Lai, Viktoria Ronge, Ivy K. Y. Woo, and Hoover H. F. Yin

##### Abstract

In a ring-signature-based anonymous cryptocurrency, signers of a transaction are hidden among a set of potential signers, called a ring, whose size is much smaller than the number of all users. The ring-membership relations specified by the sets of transactions thus induce bipartite transaction graphs, whose distribution is in turn induced by the ring sampler underlying the cryptocurrency. Since efficient graph analysis could be performed on transaction graphs to potentially deanonymise signers, it is crucial to understand the resistance of (the transaction graphs induced by) a ring sampler against graph analysis. Of particular interest is the class of partitioning ring samplers. Although previous works showed that they provide almost optimal local anonymity, their resistance against global, e.g. graph-based, attacks were unclear. In this work, we analyse transaction graphs induced by partitioning ring samplers. Specifically, we show (partly analytically and partly empirically) that, somewhat surprisingly, by setting the ring size to be at least logarithmic in the number of users, a graph-analysing adversary is no better than the one that performs random guessing in deanonymisation up to constant factor of 2.

Available format(s)
Publication info
Published elsewhere. PoPETs 2022
DOI
10.2478/popets-2022-0059
Keywords
anonymous cryptocurrenciesring signaturesrandom directed graph connectivity
Contact author(s)
egger @ cs fau de
russell lai @ cs fau de
viktoria ronge @ fau de
ivy kyw @ protonmail com
hfyin @ inc cuhk edu hk
History
2022-04-11: last of 2 revisions
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2022/132

CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/132,
author = {Christoph Egger and Russell W.  F.  Lai and Viktoria Ronge and Ivy K.  Y.  Woo and Hoover H.  F.  Yin},
title = {On Defeating Graph Analysis of Anonymous Transactions},
howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2022/132},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.2478/popets-2022-0059},
note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/132}},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/132}
}

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