DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17840655
title: Website fingerprinting on Nym: Attacks and Defenses

description: Website Fingerprinting on Nym: Attacks and Defenses



This directory contains the datasets for the paper "Website Fingerprinting on Nym: Attacks and Defenses" accepted at Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETs) 2026. The datasets include Website Fingerprinting (WF) experiments with Tor and Nym mixnet configurations.

Directory Structure

full_list/

Complete dataset of monitored and unmonitored websites captured across different network configurations for websites in the Full List. Format: <website_url> <num_packets> <timestamp1>:<size1> <timestamp2>:<size2> ... where positive sizes are incoming packets and negative sizes are outgoing packets.

reduced_list/

Processed traffic data with various Nym mixnet configurations and defense mechanisms for websites in the Reduced List. Each subdirectory contains aggregated traffic traces in time-series format: <website_url> <num_packets> <timestamp1>:<size1> <timestamp2>:<size2> ... where positive sizes are incoming packets and negative sizes are outgoing packets.

traffic_captures/

Same traces as in `reduced_list/` but stored as individual trace files. Format: <timestamp>\t<signed_volume> (one packet per line), where timestamp is in <website_index>-<page_number>.

train_test_WF/

Pre-processed pickle files ready for Website Fingerprinting attack training using the ExplainWF framework. Generated from `traffic_captures/` using the transform_to_ml.ipynb notebook. Each pickle file contains a tuple (X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test) with 60/40 train/test split and stratification.

overheads/

Processed data for overhead analysis including:



Latency measurements

Bandwidth overhead calculations

Traffic volume comparisons

Serialized analysis results (`infos.pkl`)


Configuration Details

This section describes all network configurations available across the different dataset directories.

Baseline Configurations

No Anonymization:



no_proxy - Direct connection without any anonymization network


Nym Network Variants:



nym_labnet_open - Nym lab network (open world)

nym_mainet_open - Nym mainnet (open world)

nym_labnet_full_closed - Nym lab network (full dataset, closed world)

nym_labnet_full_open - Nym lab network (full dataset, open world)

nym_labnet_reduced_closed - Nym lab network (reduced dataset, closed world)

nym_labnet_reduced_open - Nym lab network (reduced dataset, open world)

nym_mainnet_full_closed - Nym mainnet (full dataset, closed world)

nym_mainnet_full_open - Nym mainnet (full dataset, open world)

nym_mainnet_reduced_closed - Nym mainnet (reduced dataset, closed world)

nym_mainnet_reduced_open - Nym mainnet (reduced dataset, open world)


Tor Network Variants:



tor_open - Tor network (open world)

tor_full_closed - Tor network (full dataset, closed world)

tor_full_open - Tor network (full dataset, open world)

tor_reduced_closed - Tor network (reduced dataset, closed world)

tor_reduced_open - Tor network (reduced dataset, open world)


Fair Evaluation:



data_nym_fair_open - Nym network (fair evaluation setup)

data_tor_fair_open - Tor network (fair evaluation setup)


Nym Mixnet Parameter Configurations


These configurations test different Nym mixnet parameter settings:



configuration00_default - Default Nym configuration (baseline)

configuration01_lqp10 - Proxy-side Poisson rate = 10 packets/s (LQP=10)

configuration02_lqp40 - Proxy-side Poisson rate = 40 packets/s (LQP=40)

configuration03_ll0 - No loop cover traffic (LL=0)

configuration04_lqp0_ll0 - No proxy-side cover traffic, no loops (LQP=0, LL=0)

configuration05_lqp0_lm100_ll0 - No proxy cover, no loops, mix delay = 100ms (LQP=0, LM=100, LL=0)

configuration06_lqp0_lm0_ll0 - No proxy cover, no loops, no mix delay (LQP=0, LM=0, LL=0)

configuration07_lm0 - No mix delay (LM=0)

configuration08_lm20 - Mix delay = 20ms (LM=20)

configuration09_lm100 - Mix delay = 100ms (LM=100)

configuration10_lqr10 - Network requester Poisson rate = 10 packets/s (LQR=10)

configuration11_lqr20 - Network requester Poisson rate = 20 packets/s (LQR=20)

configuration12_lqp0_ll0_lqr10 - No proxy cover, no loops, requester rate = 10 packets/s (LQP=0, LL=0, LQR=10)


Defense Mechanisms


Nym Defenses:

 



nym_defence_front - Nym with FRONT defense

nym_defence_poissoff - Nym with Poisson-based defense

nym_defence_wtf_pad - Nym with WTF-PAD defense

nym_defence_wtf4nym - Nym with WTF4NYM defense (custom WTF-PAD variant for Nym)



Tor Defenses:

 



tor_defence_front - Tor with FRONT defense

tor_defence_tamaraw - Tor with Tamaraw defense

tor_defence_wtf-pad - Tor with WTF-PAD defense


Flow Correlation Analysis




correlation_with_defense - Traffic correlation analysis with defenses enabled

correlation_without_defense - Traffic correlation analysis without defenses