Caring About the Plumbing: On the Importance of Architectures in Social Studies of (Peer-to-Peer) Technology

International audienceThis article discusses the relevance, for scholars working on social studies of network media, of "caring about the plumbing" (to paraphrase Bricklin, 2001), i.e., addressing elements of application architecture and design as an integral part of their subject of study. In particular, by discussing peer-to-peer (P2P) systems as a technical networking model and a dynamic of social interaction that are inextricably intertwined, the article introduces how the perspective outlined above is particularly useful to adopt when studying a promising area of innovation: that of "alternative" or "legitimate" (Verma, 2004) applications of P2P networks to search engines, social networks, video streaming and other Internet-based services. The article seeks to show how the Internet's current trajectories of innovation increasingly suggest that particular forms of architectural distribution and decentralization (or their lack), impact specific procedures, practices and uses. Architectures should be understood an "alternative way of influencing economic systems" (van Schewick, 2010), indeed, the very fabric of user behavior and interaction. Most notably, the P2P "alternative" to Internet-based services shows how the status of every Internet user as a consumer, a sharer, a producer and possibly a manager of digital content is informed by, and shapes in return, the technical structure and organization of the services (s)he has access to: their mandatory passage points, places of storage and trade, required intersections. In conclusion, this article is a call to study the technical architecture of networking applications as a "relational property" (Star & Ruhleder, 1996), and integral part of human organization. It suggests that such an approach provides an added value to the study of those communities, groups and practices that, by leveraging socio-technical dynamics of distribution, decentralization, collaboration and peer production, are currently questioning more traditional or institutionalized models of content creation, search and sharing

A measurement study of peer-to-peer bootstrapping and implementations of delay-based cryptography

This thesis researches two distinct areas of study in both peer-to-peer networking formodern cryptocurrencies and implementations of delay-based cryptography.The first part of the thesis researches elements of peer-to-peer network mechanisms,with a specific focus on the dependencies on centralised infrastructure required for theinitial participation in such networks.Cryptocurrencies rely on decentralised peer-to-peer networks, yet the method bywhich new peers initially join these networks, known as bootstrapping, presents a significantchallenge. Our original research consists of a measurement study of 74 cryptocurrencies.Our study reveals a prevalent reliance on centralised infrastructure which leadsto censorship-prone bootstrapping techniques leaving networks vulnerable to censorshipand manipulation.In response, we explore alternative bootstrapping methods seeking solutions lesssusceptible to censorship. However, our research demonstrates operational challengesand limitations which hinder their effectiveness, highlighting the complexity of achievingcensorship-resistance in practice.Furthermore, our global measurement study uncovers the details of cryptocurrencypeer-to-peer networks, revealing instances outages and intentional protocol manipulationimpacting bootstrapping operations. Through a volunteer network of probes deployedacross 42 countries, we analyse network topology, exposing centralisation tendencies andunintentional peer exposure.Our research also highlights the pervasive inheritance of legacy bootstrapping methods,perpetuating security vulnerabilities and censorship risks within cryptocurrencysystems. These findings illuminate broader concerns surrounding decentralisation andcensorship-resistance in distributed systems.In conclusion, our study offers valuable insights into cryptocurrency bootstrappingtechniques and their susceptibility to censorship, paving the way for future research andinterventions to enhance the resilience and autonomy of peer-to-peer networks.In the second part of the thesis, attention shifts towards delay-based cryptography,where the focus lies on the creation and practical implementations of timed-release encryptionschemes. Drawing from the historical delay-based cryptographic protocols, thisthesis presents two original research contributions.The first is the creation of a new timed-release encryption scheme with a propertytermed implicit authentication. The second contribution is the development of a practicalconstruction called TIDE (TIme Delayed Encryption) tailored for use in sealed-bidauctions.Timed-Release Encryption with Implicit Authentication (TRE-IA) is a cryptographicprimitive which presents a new property named implicit authentication (IA). This propertyensures that only authorised parties, such as whistleblowers, can generate meaningfulciphertexts. By incorporating IA techniques into the encryption process, TRE-IAaugments a new feature in standard timed-release encryption schemes by ensuring thatonly the party with the encryption key can create meaningful ciphertexts. This propertyensures the authenticity of the party behind the sensitive data disclosure. Specifically, IAenables the encryption process to authenticate the identity of the whistleblower throughthe ciphertext. This property prevents malicious parties from generating ciphertextsthat do not originate from legitimate sources. This ensures the integrity and authenticityof the encrypted data, safeguarding against potential leaks of information not vettedby the party performing the encryption.TIDE introduces a new method for timed-release encryption in the context of sealedbidauctions by creatively using classic number-theoretic techniques. By integratingRSA-OEAP public-key encryption and the Rivest Shamir Wagner time-lock assumptionwith classic number theory principles, TIDE offers a solution that is both conceptuallystraightforward and efficient to implement.Our contributions in TIDE address the complexities and performance challengesinherent in current instantiations of timed-release encryption schemes. Our researchoutput creates a practical timed-release encryption implementation on consumer-gradehardware which can facilitate real-world applications such as sealed-bid auctions withclear steps for implementation.Finally, our thesis concludes with a review of the prospects of delay-based cryptographywhere we consider potential applications such as leveraging TIDE for a publicrandomness beacon.<br/

Study of Peer-to-Peer Network Based Cybercrime Investigation: Application on Botnet Technologies

The scalable, low overhead attributes of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Internet protocols and networks lend themselves well to being exploited by criminals to execute a large range of cybercrimes. The types of crimes aided by P2P technology include copyright infringement, sharing of illicit images of children, fraud, hacking/cracking, denial of service attacks and virus/malware propagation through the use of a variety of worms, botnets, malware, viruses and P2P file sharing. This project is focused on study of active P2P nodes along with the analysis of the undocumented communication methods employed in many of these large unstructured networks. This is achieved through the design and implementation of an efficient P2P monitoring and crawling toolset. The requirement for investigating P2P based systems is not limited to the more obvious cybercrimes listed above, as many legitimate P2P based applications may also be pertinent to a digital forensic investigation, e.g, voice over IP, instant messaging, etc. Investigating these networks has become increasingly difficult due to the broad range of network topologies and the ever increasing and evolving range of P2P based applications. In this work we introduce the Universal P2P Network Investigation Framework (UP2PNIF), a framework which enables significantly faster and less labour intensive investigation of newly discovered P2P networks through the exploitation of the commonalities in P2P network functionality. In combination with a reference database of known network characteristics, it is envisioned that any known P2P network can be instantly investigated using the framework, which can intelligently determine the best investigation methodology and greatly expedite the evidence gathering process. A proof of concept tool was developed for conducting investigations on the BitTorrent network.Comment: This is a thesis submitted in fulfilment of a PhD in Digital Forensics and Cybercrime Investigation in the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin in October 201

PeerHunter: Detecting Peer-to-Peer Botnets through Community Behavior Analysis

Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets have become one of the major threats in network security for serving as the infrastructure that responsible for various of cyber-crimes. Though a few existing work claimed to detect traditional botnets effectively, the problem of detecting P2P botnets involves more challenges. In this paper, we present PeerHunter, a community behavior analysis based method, which is capable of detecting botnets that communicate via a P2P structure. PeerHunter starts from a P2P hosts detection component. Then, it uses mutual contacts as the main feature to cluster bots into communities. Finally, it uses community behavior analysis to detect potential botnet communities and further identify bot candidates. Through extensive experiments with real and simulated network traces, PeerHunter can achieve very high detection rate and low false positives.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 11 tables, 2017 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computin

A framework for proving the self-organization of dynamic systems

This paper aims at providing a rigorous definition of self- organization, one of the most desired properties for dynamic systems (e.g., peer-to-peer systems, sensor networks, cooperative robotics, or ad-hoc networks). We characterize different classes of self-organization through liveness and safety properties that both capture information re- garding the system entropy. We illustrate these classes through study cases. The first ones are two representative P2P overlays (CAN and Pas- try) and the others are specific implementations of \Omega (the leader oracle) and one-shot query abstractions for dynamic settings. Our study aims at understanding the limits and respective power of existing self-organized protocols and lays the basis of designing robust algorithm for dynamic systems

MobileTrust: Secure Knowledge Integration in VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANET) are becoming popular due to the emergence of the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence applications. In such networks, secure resource sharing functionality is accomplished by incorporating trust schemes. Current solutions adopt peer-to-peer technologies that can cover the large operational area. However, these systems fail to capture some inherent properties of VANETs, such as fast and ephemeral interaction, making robust trust evaluation of crowdsourcing challenging. In this article, we propose MobileTrust—a hybrid trust-based system for secure resource sharing in VANETs. The proposal is a breakthrough in centralized trust computing that utilizes cloud and upcoming 5G technologies to provide robust trust establishment with global scalability. The ad hoc communication is energy-efficient and protects the system against threats that are not countered by the current settings. To evaluate its performance and effectiveness, MobileTrust is modelled in the SUMO simulator and tested on the traffic features of the small-size German city of Eichstatt. Similar schemes are implemented in the same platform to provide a fair comparison. Moreover, MobileTrust is deployed on a typical embedded system platform and applied on a real smart car installation for monitoring traffic and road-state parameters of an urban application. The proposed system is developed under the EU-founded THREAT-ARREST project, to provide security, privacy, and trust in an intelligent and energy-aware transportation scenario, bringing closer the vision of sustainable circular economy

Storytelling Security: User-Intention Based Traffic Sanitization

Malicious software (malware) with decentralized communication infrastructure, such as peer-to-peer botnets, is difficult to detect. In this paper, we describe a traffic-sanitization method for identifying malware-triggered outbound connections from a personal computer. Our solution correlates user activities with the content of outbound traffic. Our key observation is that user-initiated outbound traffic typically has corresponding human inputs, i.e., keystroke or mouse clicks. Our analysis on the causal relations between user inputs and packet payload enables the efficient enforcement of the inter-packet dependency at the application level. We formalize our approach within the framework of protocol-state machine. We define new application-level traffic-sanitization policies that enforce the inter-packet dependencies. The dependency is derived from the transitions among protocol states that involve both user actions and network events. We refer to our methodology as storytelling security. We demonstrate a concrete realization of our methodology in the context of peer-to-peer file-sharing application, describe its use in blocking traffic of P2P bots on a host. We implement and evaluate our prototype in Windows operating system in both online and offline deployment settings. Our experimental evaluation along with case studies of real-world P2P applications demonstrates the feasibility of verifying the inter-packet dependencies. Our deep packet inspection incurs overhead on the outbound network flow. Our solution can also be used as an offline collect-and-analyze tool