Security in P2P Networks: Survey and Research Directions

Abstract

Abstract.A fundamental feature of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks is the honest collaboration among an heterogeneous community of participants. After Napster success -the first P2P file sharing application massively used-, advances in this area have been intense, with the proposal of many new architectures and applications for content and computing sharing, and collaborative working environments. However, the inherent differences between the P2P model and the classic client-server paradigm cause that many security solutions developed for the latter are not applicable or, in the best case, have to be carefully adapted. In this paper, we present a survey on security issues in P2P networks, providing a comparative analysis of existing solutions and identifying directions for future research.

Security Engineering of Patient-Centered Health Care Information Systems in Peer-to-Peer Environments: Systematic Review

“…When the attacker owns more nodes than the benign nodes in the segment, the attacker can control messages in the segment, bias reputation score, create DDoS situations, or force servers to exceed their CPU capacity [ 26 , 76 , 84 ], which is also known as a gateway attack [ 92 ]. In blockchain P2P networks, Sybil attacks are, for instance, used by attackers to outvote the honest nodes in the network [ 52 , 63 , 104 ], which enables the attacker to cheat without being detected. After a successful Sybil attack, attackers can transmit or discard blocks, effectively block other users from the network, carry out 51% of attacks to change the order of transactions, prevent transactions from being confirmed, or even reverse transactions that they made, which can lead to double spending [ 103 ].…”

“…Furthermore, transparency mechanisms can be used to make it easier to hold a provider accountable for violating users’ trust [ 26 ], for example, certificate transparency can be managed by a set of services and neutral auditors to keep track of X.509 certificates of providers and quickly observe rogue or hacked certificate authorities. Such security techniques reduce the impact of eclipse attacks, DDoS attacks, pollution attacks, poisoning attacks, and P2P traffic blockade on P2P networks [ 52 , 81 ]. For example, an intercepted message can be rendered useless for eclipse attackers by encrypting it.…”

“…The features distinguishing P2P systems from centralized systems are peer and resource discovery [35]. Since there are no servers, peers (eg, patients, practitioners, or PHS providers) must rely on techniques, such as indexing and routing tables [52], to locate other peers in the network (Figure 1). A P2P network, or system, is a type of computer network that exhibits decentralized control, autonomy, virtualization, and sharing of computing resources [47,50].…”

“…The features distinguishing P2P systems from centralized systems are peer and resource discovery [ 35 ]. Since there are no servers, peers (eg, patients, practitioners, or PHS providers) must rely on techniques, such as indexing and routing tables [ 52 ], to locate other peers in the network ( Figure 1 ).…”

Peer-to-Peer-Based Social Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

“…Security concerns that affect storage also affect the distributed data structures, as they are used to store objects, and the resource lookup mechanisms, which are used to locate the stored objects. Information integrity in the P2P network may be compromised through the introduction of low quality (degraded) or by otherwise misrepresenting the content identity (false labeling) [158]. The main security threats that target the content stored therefore focus at corruption SN Computer Science or erasure of stored data in the system.…”