A Survey of P2P Network Security

This paper presents a review of peer-to-peer network security. Popular for sharing of multimedia files, these networks carry risks and vulnerabilities relating to data integrity, spyware, adware, and unwanted files. Further attacks include those of forgery, pollution, repudiation, membership and Eclipse attacks, neighbor selection attacks, Sybil, DoS, and omission attacks. We review some protection mechanisms that have been devised. Introduction Most information transferred on the internet utilizes a server/client communication protocol, where one high performance machine services the requests of multiple lower performance machines. These lower performance machines have identities that the server can recognize, allowing a safe transaction to occur [1]. Unlike server/client networks, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks consist of nodes, or users, who behave like both server and client, able to simultaneously request information and provide information to other nodes. P2P nodes have aptly been dubbed Servents, taking half of the word server and half of the word client [1]. Not only can nodes within a P2P network both send and receive data, they can also share resources such as processing power, storage, peripherals, and network capacity [1]. P2P networks became popular after the emergence of Napster, an early application that allowed users to share music with other users. It utilized a hybrid P2P network where there was a central server that allowed users to search for music and then multiple users would contribute percentages of the file being searched for [2]. The P2P model is convenient because of its classical ability to search for files throughout the network, using a semi-centralized server; however, as it will be shown, any form of centralized node grouping can leave the whole network vulnerable to attacks. Along with hybrid P2P networks there are also “pure” P2P networks, which do not have any centralized nodes, and all file transfers happen between users. Streaming P2P services suffer additional attacks such as data pollution that affects QoS, or data outage by the use of Eclipse, Sybil and neighbor selection attacks. This is done by attacking the routing substrate of the P2P network which is based normally on distributed hash tables [3]. The study of P2P networks is of particular interest because in many ways, in the absence of centralized control, they mimic and even amplify social behavior. The same issues that confront information integrity in knowledge networks [4],[5] show up in P2P networks. The use of random sequences for authentication protocols and discovering intruders [6]-[12] is important for the protection of social interaction. This paper presents an overview of P2P network models and considers security issues as well as applications. History of P2P Networking Peer-to-peer networking essentially started with the ARPANET, which began as a venture, through DARPA, to network together computers that were under contract with them in 1966. Larry Roberts successfully connected computers at UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and UoU, in 1969 utilizing