SocialSDN: Design and Implementation of a Secure Internet Protocol Tunnel Between Social Connections

End-to-end encrypted (E2EE) network services can be classified into 1) network services that provide native endto-end encryption and 2) non-encrypted services transported through secure tunnels. While the first solution of native E2EE applications lacks generality and standardization, the second option of secure tunnels shows itself to be a promising solution, yet the current state-of-the-art still possesses several drawbacks. Primarily, the current state-of-the-art for establishing a secure tunnel for arbitrary IP traffic between two or more users requires significant technical expertise. Secondly, due to side-channel effects, the current state-of-the-art for cryptographically protected network tunnels may leak sensitive information through traffic pattern analysis. Lastly, the current state-of-the-art for this type of networking lacks elegance and convenience and therefore users often settle for less secure non-E2EE services. In this paper, we present SocialSDN which utilizes concepts from social networking and software-defined networking to build a tool which addresses many of the issues holding back mass adoption of E2EE network services.