A New Security Architecture for BitTorrent

With the proliferation of the use of Internet for distributing multimedia and software content, there is an increasing need for efficient and secure data distribution mechanisms that can scale to large numbers of users. The peer-to-peer protocol BitTorrent is scalable and is widely used to share unprotected files. The lack of security in BitTorrent obstructs its deployment for business applications. P2P systems have developed up to a point where their use in a business context is hampered by the lack of security. We propose to add the missing security services, widening the range of use of P2P systems. In this paper we propose a new and scalable security architecture for BitTorrent that provides reliable mechanisms for authentication, authorization, and confidentiality. The security architecture we propose for BitTorrent could be used in both personal and business contexts, and its comparison to existing architectures shows its efficiency.