A Survey of Peer-to-Peer Security Issues

Authors
Dan S. Wallach
Abstract
Peer-to-peer (p2p) networking technologies have gained popularity as a mechanism for users to share files without the need for centralized servers. A p2p network provides a scalable and fault-tolerant mechanism to locate nodes anywhere on a network without maintaining a large amount of routing state. This allows for a variety of applications beyond simple file sharing. Examples include multicast systems, anonymous communications systems, and web caches. We survey security issues that occur in the underlying p2p routing protocols, as well as fairness and trust issues that occur in file sharing and other p2p applications. We discuss how techniques, ranging from cryptography, to random network probing, to economic incentives, can be used to address these problems.
Published
International Symposium on Software Security (Tokyo, Japan), November 2002.
Text
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Dan Wallach, CS Department, Rice University
Last modified: Mon 10-Feb-2003 15:32