Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper, we propose new website fingerprinting techniques that achieve a higher classification accuracy on Tor than previous works. We describe our novel methodology for gathering data on Tor; this methodology is essential for accurate classifier comparison and analysis. We offer new ways to interpret the data by using the more fundamental Tor cells as a unit of data rather than TCP/IP packets. We demonstrate an experimental method to remove Tor SENDMEs, which are control cells that provide no useful data, in order to improve accuracy. We also propose a new set of metrics to describe the similarity between two traffic instances; they are derived from observations on how a site is loaded. Using our new metrics we achieve a higher success rate than previous authors. We conduct a thorough analysis and comparison between our new algorithms and the previous best algorithm. To identify the potential power of website fingerprinting on Tor, we perform open-world experiments; we achieve a recall rate over 95% and a false positive rate under 0.2% for several potentially monitored sites, which far exceeds previous reported recall rates. In the closed-world experiments, our accuracy is 91%, as compared to 86-87% from the best previous classifier on the same data.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".