Intrusions into Privacy in Video Chat Environments: Attacks and Countermeasures

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.