A Review: Performance and Security Based Comparative Analysis of Well-Known Stealth Services

Abstract

In the digital landscape of privacy-concerned era, anonymous or Stealth Services (SSs) offer a promising future for entities who wish for obscurity and solitude in their communication. The elevating paramount of privacy concern consistently increasing the usage of SSs and affected individuals day by day. Some SSs being the hot stakes of cyber world needs to be analyzed more critically. We categorize, analyze and synthesize the comprehensive analysis of six prominent SSs (Tor, I2P, Freenet, Riffle, Lokinet and JAP) to commence their in-depth comparative evaluation metrics in multiple aspects. Analytical and performance based scrutiny elucidates the diverse approaches, their architectures, security features, flaws and associated attacks. The synthesized examination offers a nuanced aspect towards SSs and enlightens the way for future developments in cyber security and secrecy. Performance and security based evaluation reveals that Tor incur performance bottlenecks while decentralized SS I2P enhances security with compromised throughput. Likewise, the Freenet and JAP offer more data resilience but suffer from transparency and scalability issues. Although, Riffle and Lokinet are innovative paradigms of SSs but both have more complexity and other trade-offs. The valuable insights will help the researchers and decision-makers navigate the complexities of the digital life, facilitating a deeper understanding of the challenges involved in selecting a secure communication network and offering improved stealth solutions.