Mixnets: Implementation and performance evaluation of decryption and re-encryption types

Abstract

The anonymous channels have been the essence of numerous protocols that include anonymous message passing between peers. The mixnet structure is one way to accomplish the anonymity. Since the publication of the Chaumian mixnet, there have been many practical implementations. There are two main approaches to implement mixnets: the decryption (Chaumian) and the re-encryption mixnets. In this paper we analyze four types of mixnets, from which one decryption and three re-encryption types. They were implemented in the Java programing language and evaluated on several criterias as: the number of messages, the total number of nodes, the number of threshold nodes, and the key length of underlying crypto system. In the results section we compare the results from the practical tests to answer the research question, which type of mixnets has better features.