1,018 research outputs found
The evolution of P2P networks for file exchange: the interaction between social controversy and technical change
Since the irruption of Napster in 1999, Peer-to-Peer computer networks for file exchange have been at the heart of a heated debate that has eventually evolved into a wide social controversy across the world, involving legal, economical, and even political issues. This essay analyzes the effects of this controversy on the technical innovations that have shaped the evolution of those systems. It argues that the usual image of a single two-sided conflict does not account for most of the technical changes involved. P2P entrepreneurs and creators show a wide range of motivations and business strategies -if any- and users are not a monolithic group with a common set of goals and values. As a result, the actual historical evolution of those networks does not follow a simple linear path but a more complex and multidirectional development
Compromising Tor Anonymity Exploiting P2P Information Leakage
Privacy of users in P2P networks goes far beyond their current usage and is a
fundamental requirement to the adoption of P2P protocols for legal usage. In a
climate of cold war between these users and anti-piracy groups, more and more
users are moving to anonymizing networks in an attempt to hide their identity.
However, when not designed to protect users information, a P2P protocol would
leak information that may compromise the identity of its users. In this paper,
we first present three attacks targeting BitTorrent users on top of Tor that
reveal their real IP addresses. In a second step, we analyze the Tor usage by
BitTorrent users and compare it to its usage outside of Tor. Finally, we depict
the risks induced by this de-anonymization and show that users' privacy
violation goes beyond BitTorrent traffic and contaminates other protocols such
as HTTP
2 P2P or Not 2 P2P?
In the hope of stimulating discussion, we present a heuristic decision tree
that designers can use to judge the likely suitability of a P2P architecture
for their applications. It is based on the characteristics of a wide range of
P2P systems from the literature, both proposed and deployed.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch: Exploiting P2P Applications to Trace and Profile Tor Users
Tor is a popular low-latency anonymity network. However, Tor does not protect
against the exploitation of an insecure application to reveal the IP address
of, or trace, a TCP stream. In addition, because of the linkability of Tor
streams sent together over a single circuit, tracing one stream sent over a
circuit traces them all. Surprisingly, it is unknown whether this linkability
allows in practice to trace a significant number of streams originating from
secure (i.e., proxied) applications. In this paper, we show that linkability
allows us to trace 193% of additional streams, including 27% of HTTP streams
possibly originating from "secure" browsers. In particular, we traced 9% of Tor
streams carried by our instrumented exit nodes. Using BitTorrent as the
insecure application, we design two attacks tracing BitTorrent users on Tor. We
run these attacks in the wild for 23 days and reveal 10,000 IP addresses of Tor
users. Using these IP addresses, we then profile not only the BitTorrent
downloads but also the websites visited per country of origin of Tor users. We
show that BitTorrent users on Tor are over-represented in some countries as
compared to BitTorrent users outside of Tor. By analyzing the type of content
downloaded, we then explain the observed behaviors by the higher concentration
of pornographic content downloaded at the scale of a country. Finally, we
present results suggesting the existence of an underground BitTorrent ecosystem
on Tor
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