Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Survey on Anonymity in Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Systems

  • Survey
  • Published:
Journal of Computer Science and Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Although anonymizing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks often means extra cost in terms of transfer efficiency, many systems try to mask the identities of their users for privacy consideration. By comparison and analysis of existing approaches, we investigate the properties of unstructured P2P anonymity, and summarize current attack models on these designs. Most of these approaches are path-based, which require peers to pre-construct anonymous paths before transmission, thus suffering significant overhead and poor reliability. We also discuss the open problems in this field and propose several future research directions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Anonymity. http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html.

  2. ISO IS 15408. 1999, http://www.commoncriteria.org.

  3. Pfitzmann A, Hansen M. Anonymity, unlinkability, unobservability, pseudonymity, and identity management — A consolidated proposal for terminology. Technical Report, 2005.

  4. ISO/IEC 15408–2. http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/, 2005.

  5. Stoica I, Morris R, Karger D, Kaashoek F, Balakrishnan H. Chord: A scalable peer-to-peer lookup service for Internet applications. In Proc. ACM SIGCOMM, San Diego, California, USA, 2001, pp.149–160.

  6. Rowstron A, Druschel P. Pastry: Scalable, distributed object location and routing for large-scale peer-to-peer systems. In Proc. Middleware, Heidelberg, Germany, Nov. 2001, pp.329–350.

  7. Zhao B Y, Huang L, Stribling J, Rhea S C, Joseph A D, Kubiatowicz J D. Tapestry: A resilient global-scale overlay for service deployment. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), 2004, 22(1): 41–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ratnasamy S, Francis P, Handley M, Karp R, Shenker S. A scalable content-addressable network. In Proc. ACM SIG-COMM, San Diego, California, USA, 2001, pp.161–172.

  9. Napster. http://www.napster.com.

  10. KaZaA. http://www.kazaa.com.

  11. BitTorrent. http://www.bittorrent.com/.

  12. Gnutella. http://gnutella.wego.com/.

  13. Liu Y, Xiao L, Liu X, Ni L M, Zhang X. Location awareness in unstructured peer-to-peer systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2005, 16(2): 163–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Liu X, Liu Y, Xiao L. Improving query response delivery quality in peer-to-peer systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2006, 17(11): 1335–1347.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Xiao L, Liu Y, Ni L M. Improving unstructured peer-to-peer systems by adaptive connection establishment. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2005, 54(9): 1091–1103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Liao X, Jin H, Liu Y, Ni L M. Scalable live streaming service based on inter-overlay optimization. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2007, 18: 1663–1674.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Liu Y, Zhuang Z, Xiao L, Ni L M. A distributed approach to solving overlay mismatch problem. In Proc. the 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan, 2004, pp.132–139.

  18. Liu Y, Xiao L, Ni L M. Building a scalable bipartite P2P overlay network. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2007, 18(9): 1296–1306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Wang C, Xiao L, Liu Y, Zheng P. DiCAS: An efficient distributed caching mechanism for P2P systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2006, 17(10): 1097–1109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Xiao L, Zhuang Z, Liu Y. Dynamic layer management in super-peer architectures. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2005, 16(11): 1078–1091.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Chothia T, Chatzikokolakis K. A survey of anonymous peer-to-peer file-sharing. In Proc. IFIP International Symposium on Network-Centric Ubiquitous Systems (NCUS), Nagasaki, Japan, 2005, pp.744–755.

  22. Rogers M, Bhatti S. How to disappear completely: A survey of private peer-to-peer networks. In Proc. International Workshop on Sustaining Privacy in Autonomous Collaborative Environments (SPACE), Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, 2007.

  23. Nambiar A, Wright M. Salsa: A structured approach to large-scale anonymity. In Proc. ACM CCS, Alexandria, VA, USA, 2006, pp.17–26.

  24. Scarlata V, Levine B N, Shields C. Responder anonymity and anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing. In Proc. the 9th International Conference of Network Protocol (ICNP), Riverside, CA, USA, 2001, pp.272–280.

  25. Dingledine R, Mathewson N, Syverson P. Tor: The second-generation onion router. In Proc. the 13th USENIX Security Symposium, San Diego, CA, USA, 2004, pp.303–320.

  26. Rennhard, Plattner B. Introducing MorphMix: Peer-to-peer based anonymous Internet usage with collusion detection. In Proc. ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, Washington DC, USA, 2002, pp.91–102.

  27. Bennett K, Grothoff C. GAP — Practical anonymous networking. In Proc. Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop, Germany, 2003, pp.141–160.

  28. Reiter M K, Rubin A D. Crowds: Anonymity for web transactions. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 1998, 1(1): 66–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Xiao L, Xu Z, Zhang X. Low-cost and reliable mutual anonymity protocols in peer-to-peer networks. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2003, 14(9): 829–840.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Mislove A, Oberoi G, Post A, Reis C, Druschel P, Wallach D S. AP3: Cooperative, decentralized anonymous communication. In Proc. the 11th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop, Leuven, Belgium, 2004, Article No.30.

  31. Freedman M, Morris R. Tarzan: A peer-to-peer anonymizing network layer. In Proc. the 9th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), Washington DC, USA, 2002, pp.193–206.

  32. Liu D, Chi C-H, Li M. Normalizing traffic pattern with anonymity for mission critical applications. In Proc. the 37th Annual Simulation Symposium, Arlington, USA, 2004, pp.293–299.

  33. Berthold O, Langos H. Dummy traffic against long term intersection attacks. In Proc. Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop (PET), San Francisco, CA, USA, 2002, pp.199–203.

  34. Dingledine R, Freedman M J, Molnar D. The free haven project: Distributed anonymous storage service. In Proc. Workshop on Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, Berkeley, California, USA, 2000, pp.67–95.

  35. Han J, Liu Y, Xiao L, Xiao R, Ni L M. A mutual anonymous peer-to-peer protocol design. In Proc. the 19th International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IEEE IPDPS), Denver, CA, USA, 2005, p.68.1.

  36. Han J, Liu Y. Mutual anonymity for mobile peer-to-peer systems. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). (To appear)

  37. Han J, Liu Y. Rumor riding: Anonymizing unstructured peer-to-peer systems. In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Santa Barbara, California, 2006, pp.22–31.

  38. Serjantov A. Anonymizing censorship resistant systems. In Proc. the 1st International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2002, pp.111–120.

  39. Waldman M, Rubin A D, Cranor L F. Publius: A robust, tamper-evident, censorship-resistant web publishing system. In Proc. the 9th USENIX Security Symposium, Denver, Colorado, USA, 2000, pp.59–72.

  40. Roger Dingledine. The free haven project: Design and deployment of an anonymous secure data haven [Thesis]. MIT, June 2000.

  41. Sherwood R, Bhattacharjee B, Srinivasan A. P5: A protocol for scalable anonymous communication. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Oakland, California, USA, 2002, pp.58–70.

  42. Levine B N, Shields C. Hordes: A multicast based protocol for anonymity. Journal of Computer Security, 2002, 10(3): 213–240.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Wang Y, Dasgupta P. Anonymous communications on the Internet. In Proc. the IASTED International Conference on Communication, Network and Information Security, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 2005, p.499.

  44. Waters B R, Felten E W, Sahai A. Receiver anonymity via incomparable public keys. In Proc. the 10th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), Washington DC, USA, 2003, pp.112–121.

  45. Luo X, Qin Z, Han J, Chen H. DHT-assisted probabilistic exhaustive search in unstructured P2P networks. In Proc. the 22nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IEEE IPDPS), Miami, Florida, USA, 2008. (To appear)

  46. Nandan A, Pau G, Salomoni P. GhostShare — Reliable and anonymous P2P video distribution. In Proc. the 1st IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GlobeCom) Workshops, Dallas, Texas, USA, 2004, pp.200–210.

  47. Clarke I, Sandberg O, Wiley B, Hong T W. Freenet: A distributed anonymous information storage and retrieval system. In Proc. Workshop on Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, Berkeley, CA, USA, 2000, pp.44–66.

  48. Wright M K, Adler M, Levine B N, Shields C. The predecessor attack: An analysis of a threat to anonymous communications systems. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), 2004, 7(4): 489–522.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Shmatikov V. Probabilistic analysis of anonymity. In Proc. the 15th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop (CSFW), Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2002, pp.119–128.

  50. Zhu Y, Bettati R. Anonymity vs. information leakage in anonymity systems. In Proc. the 25th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Columbus, Ohio, USA, 2005, pp.514–524.

  51. Guan Y, Fu X, Bettati R, Zhao W. A quantitative analysis of anonymous communications. IEEE Transaction on Reliability, 2004, 53(1): 103–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Levine B N, Reiter M K, Wang C, Wright M. Timing attacks in low-latency mix systems. In Proc. the 8th International Conference on Financial Cryptography, Key West, Florida, USA, 2004, pp.251–265.

  53. Serjantov A, Sewell P. Passive attack analysis for connection-based anonymity systems. In Proc. European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS), Norway, 2003, pp.116–131.

  54. Fu X, Graham B, Xuan D, Bettati R, Zhao W. Analytical and empirical analysis of countermeasures to traffic analysis attacks. In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), Kaohsiung, 2003, pp.483–492.

  55. Fu X, Zhu Y, Graham B, Bettati R, Zhao W. On flow marking attacks in wireless anonymous communication networks. In Proc. the 25th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (IEEE ICDCS), Columbus, Ohio, USA, 2005, pp.493–503.

  56. Guan Y, Li C, Xuan D, Bettati R, Zhao W. Preventing traffic analysis for real-time communication networks. In Proc. IEEE Military Communications (MILCOM), Atlantic City, NJ, USA, 1999, vol.1, pp.744–750.

  57. Murdoch S J. Danezis G. Low-cost traffic analysis of Tor. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Oakland, California, USA, 2005, pp.183–195.

  58. Breslau L, Cao P, Fan L, Phillips G, Shenker S. Web caching and Zipf-like distributions: Evidence and implications. In Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, New York, USA, Vol.1, 1999, pp.126–134.

  59. Lu L, Han J, Liu Y, Hu L, Huai J, Ni L M, Ma J. Pseudo trust: Zero-knowledge authentication in anonymous P2Ps. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). (To appear)

  60. Han J, Liu Y. Dubious feedback: Fair or not? In Proc. International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Information Management (P2PIM), Hong Kong, 2006, Article No.49.

  61. Tan G, Jarvis S. A payment-based incentive and service differentiation scheme for peer-to-peer streaming broadcast. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 2007, 19(7): 940–953.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Xiao L, Zhu Y, Xu Z, Ni L. Incentive-based decentralized scheduling for computational grids. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). (To appear)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing, 100085, China

    Ren-Yi Xiao

Authors
  1. Ren-Yi Xiao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ren-Yi Xiao.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

(PDF 86.6 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Xiao, RY. Survey on Anonymity in Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Systems. J. Comput. Sci. Technol. 23, 660–671 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-008-9162-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-008-9162-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation