Abstract
We propose an economic approach to Sybil attack detection. In our Informant protocol, a detective offers a reward for Sybils to reveal themselves. The detective accepts from one identity a security deposit and the name of target peer; the deposit and a reward are given to the target. We prove the optimal strategy for the informant is to play the game if and only if she is Sybil with a low opportunity cost, and the target will cooperate if and only if she is identical to the informant. Informant uses a Dutch auction to find the minimum possible reward that will reveal a Sybil attacker. Because our approach is economic, it is not limited to a specific application and does not rely on a physical device or token.
This paper was supported in part by National Science Foundation award NSF-0133055.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77366-5_37
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Margolin, N.B., Levine, B.N. (2007). Informant: Detecting Sybils Using Incentives. In: Dietrich, S., Dhamija, R. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4886. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77366-5_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77366-5_18
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