All About Metadata
Learn what metadata is and how 0Knowledge Networks metadata private anonymous broadcast network protects it
Metadata is information about information, and it plays a vital role in the world of communication, especially in the realm of the internet. In the context of the internet, metadata is data that describes other data. It is used to provide additional information about a particular communication, such as the time, date, and location of a message, the sender and recipient of a message, and the type of communication used. While metadata may seem innocuous, it can be a powerful tool for traffic analysis, which is the process of examining patterns in communication to gain intelligence and insight.
Metadata is generated every time a person uses the internet, and it is often collected and stored by internet service providers (ISPs) and other organizations. This metadata can be used to track a person’s internet activity and build a profile of their behavior online. By analyzing metadata, it is possible to infer a great deal about a person’s interests, habits, and relationships. This information can be used for a variety of purposes, from advertising and marketing to intelligence gathering and law enforcement.
With the advent of AI driven surveillance — it is no longer the content of your message that matters, but its metadata. In fact, the metadata can often reveal things about your life far more accurately than the content. Your message content might contain your thoughts and opinions, but the metadata reveals your actions.
What is ‘metadata’?
Firstly, what is metadata really? It is the data about your message, including its:
- Origin
- Type
- Time
- Destination
- Length
- Size
…and pretty much any other identifiable patterns of your messages.
What can it be used for?
Metadata can be analyzed to reveal internet traffic patterns. These patterns are like a fingerprint, in fact there is a type of attack called “website fingerprinting”! In these types of attacks, someone would download all the pages on a website, analyze the metadata of these pages and then match these to the patterns of traffic. They can thereby learn which specific page a person might be looking at. Now, imagine the website for example provides health advice!
In short, metadata can reveal:
- Which specific web page you visit, even over HTTPS
- Which web domain you request over encrypted DNS
- What you are typing, even in an encrypted web application (search, taxes, health)
- What you say in a voice conversation over encrypted voice channel
…and more.
Why is metadata valuable?
So metadata reveals a lot, but there are other reasons for why it is valuable for anyone wanting to spy on people.
- It is machine readable, making it the preferred target in AI driven surveillance and makes it easy to analyse large volumes of data.
- It doesn’t take up much storage, compared to say a video file, which means it is easy to collect and store lots of it.
- It is openly available!
- It is currently unprotected by the law.
Who has access to metadata?
Unfortunately, metadata is largely unprotected, meaning there are a lot of actors who have direct access to it. These include:
- Internet Service Providers
- Internet Exchanges
- Autonomous systems
- BGP routers
- Even your wifi router, LAN
…and eavesdroppers, including state sponsored agencies.
How 0Knowledge Network (0KN) hides metadata and provides anonymity guarantees that are not available in other privacy systems?
In a nutshell the most effective protection against metadata surveillance today are mixnets, however all existing anonymous communication systems with a mixnet architecture in existence today lack the necessary components to deliver strong anonymity guarantees and metadata privacy in the face of an adversary monitoring the entire network.
- Mix-nets do not inherently guarantee metadata privacy: a
network adversary observing all traffic can link messages
to users through metadata, such as timing information. - Mix-nets are vulnerable to active attacks (e.g., dropped
envelopes), which can be exploited by malicious servers to
link users to their messages
This is where 0KNs Trellis implementation shines:
Robustness and availability. No subset of malicious servers
or colluding users can disrupt availability for honest users.
Message delivery. All messages submitted by honest users
are guaranteed to be delivered and result in a “receipt” that
can be efficiently verified by each user.
Metadata privacy. The unlinkability guarantee holds even
when all network communication is visible to the adversary
who is controlling the malicious users and servers.
It becomes impossible to trace and analyze who is speaking to who. The 0KN metadata-private anonymous broadcast network makes it impossible for a snooper to know:
- What you are saying
- Who you are communicating with (sending or receiving messages)
- When you are communicating
- How long you are communicating
- From where you are communicating
- The amount of data you are sending or receiving
- Any patterns in you communications
- Whether you are communicating at all
