Source: Eugene Vasserman, 785-532-7944, eyv@k-state.edu.
News release prepared by: Greg Tammen, 785-532-2535, gtammen@k-state.edu

Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010

NEWS TIP: K-STATE PROFESSOR CAN SHED LIGHT ON ANONYMITY AND CENSORSHIP-RESISTANCE ASPECTS OF SITES LIKE WIKILEAKS

MANHATTAN -- A major U.S. bank could be the next to have its secret documents exposed by the website WikiLeaks.

First appearing in 2006, WikiLeaks has made it a point that once an anonymous source posts information on its website, that information never comes down and the source remains confidential. WikiLeaks even provides technological facilities for sources to stay anonymous from its own staff.

This is an attempt to create a censorship-resistant system, according to Eugene Vasserman, an assistant professor of computing and information sciences at Kansas State University. Vasserman's research interests are in censorship resistance, privacy and anonymity, and secure distributed systems.

One of Vasserman's recent projects is a membership-concealing overlay network, a computer network built on top of another network that hides the identities of its participants -- even from each other. He said that this property is key to censorship resistance, and the design of next-generation, censorship-resistant systems. It can be used to disseminate information in hostile regimes, as well as to power systems similar to WikiLeaks.

Vasserman can be reached at 785-532-7944 or at eyv@k-state.edu.