Security Engineering of Patient-Centered Health Care Information Systems in Peer-to-Peer Environments: Systematic Review

Background: Patient-centered health care information systems (PHSs) enable patients to take control and become knowledgeable about their own health, preferably in a secure environment. Current and emerging PHSs use either a centralized database, peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, or distributed ledger technology for PHS deployment. The evolving COVID-19 decentralized Bluetooth-based tracing systems are examples of disease-centric P2P PHSs. Although using P2P technology for the provision of PHSs can be flexible, scalable, resilient to a single point of failure, and inexpensive for patients, the use of health information on P2P networks poses major security issues as users must manage information security largely by themselves. Objective: This study aims to identify the inherent security issues for PHS deployment in P2P networks and how they can be overcome. In addition, this study reviews different P2P architectures and proposes a suitable architecture for P2P PHS deployment. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) reporting guidelines. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. We searched the following databases: IEEE Digital Library, PubMed, Science Direct, ACM Digital Library, Scopus, and Semantic Scholar. The search was conducted on articles published between 2008 and 2020. The Common Vulnerability Scoring System was used as a guide for rating security issues. Results: Our findings are consolidated into 8 key security issues associated with PHS implementation and deployment on P2P networks and 7 factors promoting them. Moreover, we propose a suitable architecture for P2P PHSs and guidelines for the provision of PHSs while maintaining information security. Conclusions: Despite the clear advantages of P2P PHSs, the absence of centralized controls and inconsistent views of the network on some P2P systems have profound adverse impacts in terms of security. The security issues identified in this study need to be addressed to increase patients\u27 intention to use PHSs on P2P networks by making them safe to use

Torrent Poisoning Protection with a Reverse Proxy Server

A Distributed Denial-of-Service attack uses multiple sources operating in concert to attack a network or site. A typical DDoS flood attack on a website targets a web server with multiple valid requests, exhausting the server’s resources. The participants in this attack are usually compromised/infected computers controlled by the attackers. There are several variations of this kind of attack, and torrent index poisoning is one. A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack using torrent poisoning, more specifically using index poisoning, is one of the most effective and disruptive types of attacks. These web flooding attacks originate from BitTorrent-based file-sharing communities, where the participants using the BitTorrent applications cannot detect their involvement. The antivirus and other tools cannot detect the altered torrent file, making the BitTorrent client target the webserver. The use of reverse proxy servers can block this type of request from reaching the web server, preventing the severity and impact on the service of the DDoS. In this paper, we analyze a torrent index poisoning DDoS to a higher education institution, the impact on the network systems and servers, and the mitigation measures implemented.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Faiblesses de l'identification dans les espaces numériques ouverts de partage de contenus : le cas des réseaux pair-à-pair

National audienceCe chapitre présente les résultats de travaux portant sur la détection et la quantification des problèmes de sécurité induits par l'absence d'identification fiable des pairs et des contenus dans les réseaux P2P de partage de fichiers. Pour cela, nous avons réalisé des explorations d'un réseau P2P largement déployé afin de recenser précisément l'ensemble des pairs et des contenus partagés les plus populaires. Nous avons ensuite analysé les données obtenues afin de détecter les activités suspectes exploitant la faiblesse de l'identification. Ainsi avons-nous constaté pour la première fois la réalité et l'ampleur de certaines attaques publiées et pouvons-nous estimer leur nombre au sein du réseau. Concernant les contenus, nous détectons si ceux-ci sont pollués en étudiant la disparité lexicale des noms proposés par les différents pairs et nous appliquons cette détection afin de quantifier la pollution à l'échelle du réseau

A Measurement Study of the Structured Overlay Network in P2P File-Sharing Systems

The architecture of P2P file-sharing applications has been developing to meet the needs of large scale demands. The structured overlay network, also known as DHT, has been used in these applications to improve the scalability, and robustness of the system, and to make it free from single-point failure. We believe that the measurement study of the overlay network used in the real file-sharing P2P systems can provide guidance for the designing of such systems, and improve the performance of the system. In this paper, we perform the measurement in two different aspects. First, a modified client is designed to provide view to the overlay network from a single-user vision. Second, the instances of crawler programs deployed in many nodes managed to crawl the user information of the overlay network as much as possible. We also find a vulnerability in the overlay network, combined with the character of the DNS service, a more serious DDoS attack can be launched