Intrusions into Privacy in Video Chat Environments: Attacks and Countermeasures

TL;DR

This paper investigates privacy threats in video chat systems like Chatroulette, identifying key attack types and proposing countermeasures to enhance user privacy and security.

Contribution

It is among the first to analyze privacy threats in open video chat environments and offers specific countermeasures for de-anonymization, phishing, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Findings

Identified three main privacy threats in video chat systems.

Proposed countermeasures for each identified attack.

Enhanced understanding of privacy vulnerabilities in open video communication.

Abstract

Video chat systems such as Chatroulette have become increasingly popular as a way to meet and converse one-on-one via video and audio with other users online in an open and interactive manner. At the same time, security and privacy concerns inherent in such communication have been little explored. This paper presents one of the first investigations of the privacy threats found in such video chat systems, identifying three such threats, namely de-anonymization attacks, phishing attacks, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The paper further describes countermeasures against each of these attacks.