Privacy as Invisibility: Pervasive Surveillance and the Privatization of Peer-to-Peer Systems

This article addresses the ongoing, increasing privatization of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems – the emergence of systems that users may only join by personal, friend-to-friend invitation. It argues that, within P2P systems, privacy is increasingly coinciding with “mere” invisibility vis-à-vis the rest of the Internet ecosystem because of a trend that has shaped the recent history of P2P technology: The alternation between forms of pervasive surveillance of such systems, and reactions by developers and users to such restrictive measures. Yet, it also suggests that the richness of today’s landscape of P2P technology development and use, mainly in the field of Internet-based services, opens up new dimensions to the conceptualization of privacy, and may give room to a more articulate definition of the concept as related to P2P technology; one that includes not only the need of protection from external attacks, and the temporary outcomes of the competition between surveillance and counter-surveillance measures, but also issues such as user empowerment through better control over personal information, reconfiguration of data management practices, and removal of intermediaries in sharing and communication activities.

Download Full-text

Peer-to-Peer Usage Analysis

Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking, Second Edition ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-014-1.ch154 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 1136-1141

Author(s):

Florent Masseglia ◽

Pascal Poncelet ◽

Maguelonne Teisseire

Keyword(s):

Data Mining ◽

Distributed Database ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Communication Model ◽

P2p Systems ◽

P2p File Sharing ◽

Limited Edition ◽

Usage Analysis ◽

High Dynamics ◽

P2p System

With the huge number of information sources available on the Internet and the high dynamics of their data, peer-to-peer (P2P) systems propose a communication model in which each party has the same capabilities and can initiate a communication session. These networks allow a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access resources from one another. P2P architectures also provide a good infrastructure for data and computer intensive operations such as data mining. In this article we consider a new data mining approach for improving resource searching in a dynamic and distributed database such as an unstructured P2P system, that is, in Masseglia, Poncelet, and Teisseire (2006) we call this problem P2P usage analysis. More precisely we aim at discovering frequent behaviors among users of such a system. We will focus on the sequential order between actions performed on each node (requests or downloads) and show how this order has to be taken into account for extracting useful knowledge. For instance, it may be discovered, in a P2P file sharing network that for 77% of nodes from which a request is sent for “Mandriva Linux,” the file “Mandriva Linux 2005 CD1 i585-Limited- Edition-Mini.iso” is chosen and downloaded; then a new request is performed with the possible name of the remaining iso images (i.e., “Mandriva Linux 2005 Limited Edition”), and in the large number of returned results the image corresponding to “Mandriva Linux 2005 CD2 i585-Limited-Edition-Mini.iso” is chosen and downloaded. Such knowledge is very useful for proposing the user with often downloaded or requested files according to a majority of behaviors. It could also be useful in order to avoid extra bandwidth consumption, which is the main cost of P2P queries (Ng, Chu, Rao, Sripanidkulchai, & Zhang, 2003).

Download Full-text

Inducing User Cooperation in Peer-to-Peer Television

Social Interactive Television ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-656-3.ch009 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 138-156

Author(s):

Jenneke Fokker ◽

Huib de Ridder ◽

Piet Westendorp ◽

Johan Pouwelse

Keyword(s):

Social Activity ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

The Internet ◽

User Cooperation ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Psychological Theories ◽

P2p Technology

Television and the Internet have proven to be a popular combination for both broadcasters and viewers. Because of this popularity they are increasingly facing the consequences of central bottlenecks, which could be overcome by taking a different approach: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology. However, P2P systems can only be successful with as much cooperation among as many users as possible. This chapter explains how this cooperation is hard to enforce, and how inducing it might be more successful. Relevant psychological theories are listed that can be used to induce this user cooperation, along with possible applications of cooperation inducing mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer Television (P2P-TV) systems. The authors aim to provide practical criteria along which these mechanisms can be evaluated on their contribution to social activity in P2P-TV systems.

Download Full-text

A Novel Data Consistence Model Based on Virtual Peers in Peer-to-Peer Systems

International Journal of e-Collaboration ◽

10.4018/ijec.2020070101 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Hong He

Keyword(s):

Data Retrieval ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Data Consistency ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Efficient Storage ◽

Peer To Peer Systems ◽

Consistency Problem ◽

Unstructured P2p ◽

Effectiveness And Efficiency ◽

P2p System

In recent years, peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have become a promising paradigm to provide efficient storage service in distributed environments. Although its effectiveness has been proven in many areas, the data consistency problem in P2P systems are still an opening issue. This article proposes a novel data consistence model, virtual peers-based data consistency (VPDC), which introduces a set of virtual peers to provide guaranteed data consistency in decentralized and unstructured P2P systems. The VPDC model can be easily implemented in any P2P system without introducing any interference to data retrieval. Theoretical analysis on VPDC is presented to analyze its effectiveness and efficiency, and massive experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of a VPDC model in a real-world P2P system. The results indicate that it can significantly improve the data consistence of P2P systems and outperform many similar approaches in various experimental settings.

Download Full-text

Peer-to-Peer Technology for File Sharing

Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technologies ◽

10.4018/978-1-59140-563-4.ch071 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 372-377

Author(s):

S. H. Kwok ◽

Y. M. Cheung ◽

K. Y. Chan

Keyword(s):

File Sharing ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Research Projects ◽

P2p Networks ◽

P2p Computing ◽

Client Server ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Internet Users ◽

P2p File Sharing ◽

P2p Applications

A recent survey revealed that 18 millions American Internet users, or approximately 14% of total American Internet population have peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications running on their computers (Rainie & Madden, 2004). Not surprisingly, P2P applications have become common tools for information sharing and distribution since the appearance of Napster (Napster, 2003) in 1999. P2P systems are the distributed systems in which all nodes are equal in terms of functionality and able to directly communicate with each other without the coordination of a powerful server. Anonymity, scalability, fault resilience, decentralization and self-organization are the distinct characteristics of P2P computing (Milojicic et al., 2002) compared with the traditional client-server computing. P2P computing is believed to be capable of overcoming limitations of the computing environment placed by the client-server computing model. Milojicic et al. (2002), for example, suggested that P2P computing is capable of providing improved scalability by eliminating the limiting factor, the centralized server existing in the client-server computing. In the past few years, P2P computing and its promised characteristics have caught the attention of researchers who have studied the existing P2P networks, and the advantages and disadvantage of P2P systems. Important findings include the excessive network traffic caused by flooding-based searching mechanism that must be tackled in order to fully utilize the improved scalability of P2P systems (Matei, Iamnitchi, & Foster, 2002; Portmann & Seneviratne, 2002). There were proposed efficient searching techniques targeted for both structured and unstructured P2P systems. Other research projects were conducted to study, and were intended to complement, the drawbacks brought by distinct characteristics of P2P systems. For example, the P2P users’ free-riding behavior is generally attributed to the anonymity of such form of communication (Adar & Huberman, 2000). Recent research projects have shifted to a new line of investigation of P2P networks from the economic perspective and applications of P2P systems in workplaces (Kwok & Gao, 2004; Tiwana, 2003).

Download Full-text

Taxonomy of reputation assessment in peer-to-peer systems and analysis of their data retrieval

The Knowledge Engineering Review ◽

10.1017/s0269888914000174 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 463-483 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Farag Azzedin

Keyword(s):

Ad Hoc ◽

Data Retrieval ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Assessment Process ◽

Reputation Systems ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Peer To Peer Systems ◽

Overall Performance ◽

Two Phases ◽

Systems Simulation

AbstractThe need for reputation assessment is particularly strong in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems because the peers’ personal site autonomy is amplified by the inherent technological decentralization of the environment. However, the decentralization notion makes the problem of designing a P2P-based reputation assessment substantially harder in P2P networks than in centralized settings. Existing reputation systems tackle the reputation assessment process in an ad hoc manner. There is no systematic and coherent way to derive measures and analyze the current reputation systems. In this paper, we propose a reputation assessment process and use it to classify the existing reputation systems. Simulation experiments are conducted and focused on the different methods in selecting the recommendation sources and collecting the recommendations. These two phases can contribute significantly to the overall performance owing to precision, recall, and communication cost.

Download Full-text

HIERARCHICAL PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS

Parallel Processing Letters ◽

10.1142/s0129626403001574 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 13 (04) ◽

pp. 643-657 ◽

Cited By ~ 51

Author(s):

L. GARCÉS-ERICE ◽

E. W. BIERSACK ◽

K. W. ROSS ◽

P. A. FELBER ◽

G. URVOY-KELLER

Keyword(s):

Hash Table ◽

Overlay Network ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Distributed Hash Table ◽

Hierarchical Design ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Lookup Services ◽

Peer To Peer Systems ◽

Responsible Group ◽

Overlay Management

Structured peer-to-peer (P2P) lookup services organize peers into a flat overlay network and offer distributed hash table (DHT) functionality. Data is associated with keys and each peer is responsible for a subset of the keys. In hierarchical DHTs, peers are organized into groups, and each group has its autonomous intra-group overlay network and lookup service. Groups are organized in a top-level overlay network. To find a peer that is responsible for a key, the top-level overlay first determines the group responsible for the key; the responsible group then uses its intra-group overlay to determine the specific peer that is responsible for the key. We provide a general framework for hierarchical DHTs with scalable overlay management. We specifically study a two-tier hierarchy that uses Chord for the top level. Our analysis shows that by using the most reliable peers in the top level, the hierarchical design significantly reduces the expected number of hops. We also present a method to construct hierarchical DHTs that map well to the Internet topology and achieve short intra-group communication delay. The results demonstrate the feasibility of locality-based peer groups, which allow P2P systems to take full advantage of the hierarchical design.

Download Full-text

Investigating Cybercrimes that Occur on Documented P2P Networks

International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence ◽

10.4018/jaci.2011040104 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 56-63

Author(s):

Mark Scanlon ◽

Alan Hannaway ◽

Mohand-Tahar Kechadi

Keyword(s):

Communication Technologies ◽

File Sharing ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

P2p Network ◽

Internet Communication ◽

P2p Networks ◽

P2p Systems ◽

And Control ◽

P2p Technology ◽

Virus Distribution

The popularity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Internet communication technologies being exploited to aid cybercrime is ever increasing. P2P systems can be used or exploited to aid in the execution of a large number of online criminal activities, e.g., copyright infringement, fraud, malware and virus distribution, botnet creation, and control. P2P technology is perhaps most famous for the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted materials since the late 1990’s, with the popularity of file-sharing programs such as Napster. In 2004, P2P traffic accounted for 80% of all Internet traffic and in 2005, specifically BitTorrent traffic accounted for over 60% of the world’s P2P bandwidth usage. This paper outlines a methodology for investigating a documented P2P network, BitTorrent, using a sample investigation for reference throughout. The sample investigation outlined was conducted on the top 100 most popular BitTorrent swarms over the course of a one week period.

Download Full-text

A Multi-Dimensional Query Scheme in Structured Overlays

Key Engineering Materials ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/kem.439-440.870 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 439-440 ◽

pp. 870-874 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ming Zhang ◽

Jin Qiu Yang

Keyword(s):

Overlay Networks ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Data Indexing ◽

P2p Systems ◽

Peer To Peer Systems ◽

Simulation Results ◽

Index Service ◽

P2p System ◽

Access To Data ◽

Structured Overlays

Structured peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are creating a large proportion of network traffic in today’s Internet. Peer-to-peer systems enable access to data spread over an extremely large number of machines. A P2P system typically involves thousands or millions of live peers in the network. Multi-dimensional data indexing has received much attention in a centralized database. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a multi-dimensional searching scheme in structured P2P networks. We present the design and implementation of a peer-to-peer index service for high dimensional data that is capable of handling complex queries. We design a VibIndex scheme in structured P2P overlay networks. We analyze this scheme’s performance and present simulation results. Our simulation results demonstrated the benefits of the proposed system and show that the approach is able to search efficiently.

Download Full-text

Investigating Cybercrimes that Occur on Documented P2P Networks

Pervasive and Ubiquitous Technology Innovations for Ambient Intelligence Environments ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-2041-4.ch010 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 109-115

Author(s):

Mark Scanlon ◽

Alan Hannaway ◽

Mohand-Tahar Kechadi

Keyword(s):

Communication Technologies ◽

File Sharing ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

P2p Network ◽

Internet Communication ◽

P2p Networks ◽

P2p Systems ◽

And Control ◽

P2p Technology ◽

Virus Distribution

The popularity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Internet communication technologies being exploited to aid cybercrime is ever increasing. P2P systems can be used or exploited to aid in the execution of a large number of online criminal activities, e.g., copyright infringement, fraud, malware and virus distribution, botnet creation, and control. P2P technology is perhaps most famous for the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted materials since the late 1990’s, with the popularity of file-sharing programs such as Napster. In 2004, P2P traffic accounted for 80% of all Internet traffic and in 2005, specifically BitTorrent traffic accounted for over 60% of the world’s P2P bandwidth usage. This paper outlines a methodology for investigating a documented P2P network, BitTorrent, using a sample investigation for reference throughout. The sample investigation outlined was conducted on the top 100 most popular BitTorrent swarms over the course of a one week period.

Download Full-text