Routing in the Dark: Pitch Black

In many networks, such as mobile ad-hoc networks and friend-to-friend overlay networks, direct communication between nodes is limited to specific neighbors. Often these networks have a small-world topology; while short paths exist between any pair of nodes in small-world networks, it is non-trivial to determine such paths with a distributed algorithm. Recently, Clarke and Sandberg proposed the first decentralized routing algorithm that achieves efficient routing in such small-world networks. This paper is the first independent security analysis of Clarke and Sandberg’s routing algorithm. We show that a relatively weak participating adversary can render the overlay ineffective without being detected, resulting in significant data loss due to the resulting load imbalance. We have measured the impact of the attack in a testbed of 800 nodes using minor modifications to Clarke and Sandberg’s implementation of their routing algorithm in Freenet. Our experiments show that the attac...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ACSAC
• Authors: Nathan S. Evans, Chris GauthierDickey, Christian Grothoff
• Keywords: ACSAC 2007, Routing Algorithms, Sandberg’s Routing Algorithm, Security Privacy, Small-world Networks