Gnutella: integrating performance and security in fully decentralized P2P models

Peer-To-Peer (P2P) systems have made an enormous impact on the Internet, directly affecting its performance and security. The litigation against P2P file sharing has led some designers to opt for purely decentralized P2P models. The latter have quickly become attractive to Internet users, who often consider pure P2P as more "secure" than hybrid systems (i.e. with some central entity). In this paper, we concentrate on some relevant security threats and performance inefficiencies in the Gnutella P2P network, which is worldwide the most popular fully decentralized system. We present the results we obtain from the analysis of spurious content circulating in the network. We observe a significant propagation of unwanted and unrelated query replies, systematically taking place. This leads to the transfer of junk or unsafe files, potentially resulting in hosts' security violations and Denial of Service attacks. The analysis of IP addresses shows that peers responsible for sprea...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ACMSE
• Authors: Rossana Motta, Wickus Nienaber, Jon Jenkins
• Keywords: ACMSE 2008, Gnutella, Gnutella P2P Network, P2P File Sharing, Theoretical Computer Science