Improving Messaging Security in Structured P2P Overlay Networks

Peer-to-peer networking technologies are gaining increasing popularity for file sharing and media streaming applications. To support these set of applications, structured peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks may be employed to provide an overlay substrate. In structured P2P overlay networks, peer nodes, content objects and messages are often identified using a set of well defined identifications (Ids.) Objects are stored on peer nodes based on a set of predefined rules. Messages are routed towards the destination node, for example, the root node of the message Id, after an average of h routing hops. In the absence of faults, a high probability of successful message forwarding, i.e., a message is delivered correctly to the destination node, can be achieved even when a large fraction of the peer nodes crash. However, most current overlay networks are not secure. When one or more malicious nodes are presented in the overlay, they can prevent correct message delivery throughout the overlay. This paper studies attacks aimed at preventing correct message delivery in structured peer-to-peer overlays. Several different routing algorithms are analyzed to understand means to improve messaging security without significant additional cost.