Section: New Software and Platforms

GNUnet

Scientific Description

The GNUnet project seeks to answer the question what a modern Internet architecture should look like for a society that care about security and privacy. We are considering all layers of the existing well-known Internet, but are also providing new and higher-level abstractions (such as voting protocols, Byzantine consensus, etc.) that are today solved in application-specific ways. Research questions include the desired functionality of the overall stack, protocol design for the various layers as well as implementation considerations, i.e. how to implement the design securely.

Functional Description

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. Our high-level goal is to provide a strong free software foundation for a global network that provides security and in particular respects privacy.

GNUnet started with an idea for anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing, but has grown to incorporate other applications as well as many generic building blocks for secure networking applications. In particular, GNUnet now includes the GNU Name System, a privacy-preserving, decentralized public key infrastructure.

• Participants: Christian Grothoff, Florian Dold, Jeffrey Paul Burdges, Gabor Toth, Sree Hrsha Totakura and Alvaro Garcia Recuero

• Partner: The GNU Project

• Contact: Christian Grothoff

• URL: https://gnunet.org/