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Research Questions
What are the key components of a typical P2P application? Describe their functions.
What are the essential features of a typical hybrid network architecture design?
What is Sybil attack? Why is it a serious problem?
Why is it possible to launch a DDoS attack using a P2P network?
P2P Application
Peer-to-peer (P2P) programs allow you to share digital files over internet networks with other
users. By connecting one or more computers running the same software, users can share movies,
games, and music files. Verifying the file source becomes challenging, if not impossible, while
using P2P apps. P2P networks are frequently used by cybercriminals to spread malware.
Unauthorized individuals may also be able to access private documents, sensitive company data,
financial or medical records, and other personal information thanks to these applications. (Peer-
to-Peer) P2P computing does not have a specified server or client, at least not in the strict sense;
users (or their machines) are on an equal basis. Depending on the situation, each user who
participates can be both a server and a client. The three primary parts of a standard P2P system
are as follows. The first is the application's Web portal, sometimes referred to as a login server,
which serves as the entry point for the P2P service. In essence, the user connects to this server
initially to see if peers and services are available. The second major component, which is
effectively a directory server that provides peers' availability information to a new peer, is
commonly referred to as the tracker these days. Naturally, the peers—autonomous client
machines with the ability to enter and exit the system at will—make up the third element. Peers
perform a variety of important or even helpful roles. Peers assisting one another in obtaining the
required data packets, for example, is one of the most crucial roles. A P2P computing model's
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early use includes distributing the processing load among numerous dispersed computers. The
reasoning is that the aggregate processing power of many machines can match the processing
power of an expensive supercomputer for many "pleasantly parallel" computing problems, which
are large-scale data parallel problems with very little or even no dependency among parallel
tasks. A WSN can be thought of as a P2P platform because of the sensors' innately autonomous
and decentralized behaviors. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is typically made up of
incredibly tiny, autonomous devices known as sensor nodes that run on batteries and have
constrained amounts of memory and processing capacity. In a typical application scenario,
sensors work together to monitor environmental and physical conditions. They then wirelessly
transfer the data they collect to a base station or sink node for additional processing. Most likely,
file sharing is what first got P2P computing started. The concept is straightforward: the user
wants to locate a specific file (music in MP3, for example) and download it right away. Since
many users have the same goal, there is a sizable aggregate pool of files available for distribution
across users. So, essentially, a file sharing P2P application has four components: search, peer
selection, connection, and performance. (Kwok, 2024) “Let every person be subject to the
governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been
instituted by God.” -Romans 13:1 When it comes to P2P sometimes it can be legal but other
times it can be illegal. For example, downloading, pirating, or sharing copyrighted material is
wrong, and the Bible tells us that not following the laws is a sin. While P2P can be a good thing,
if you are using it illegally since it is hard to trace, then you are sinning and going against God.
Hybrid Network Architecture
Hybrid models are a combination of peer-to-peer and client–server models. A common hybrid
model is to have a central server that helps peers find each other. Spotify would be an example of
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a hybrid model. As a result, numerous attempts are made to incorporate the greatest features of
both worlds into hybrid systems like UBCA and Bris-tle. QoS assurances are particularly
desirable and critical aspects in media applications like audio and video, which is why many
network architecture designs have QoS provisions. Regretfully, we haven't yet seen these study
concepts put into practice in the real world. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, which
could be one reason why QoS guaranteed architecture has not been implemented in a practical
way. Security and rewards rank among the most important of them. (Kwok, 2024) Unstructured
P2P topology currently forms the basis of the majority of widely used P2P topology sharing
systems. This architecture distributes query information by the flooding method, which has a
very poor efficiency but strong stability. An attribute migration state-oriented technique of
analyzing network communication behavior is presented in accordance with the changing
characteristics of the communication attribute state of the network behavior, which occupies a
large network bandwidth and communicates more frequently. For P2P network management, the
study of P2P traffic identification is extremely important. A P2P traffic identification approach
based on neural networks is developed in order to improve the identification impact of P2P
traffic, given the drawbacks of the existing methods, which include substantial error and unstable
identification results. The network file sharing system Kapa, which combines the benefits of
structured and unstructured P2P topologies, is built on a hybrid hierarchical P2P topology and
has strong practicality. This method's reliability and recognition effect for peer-to-peer
applications have been confirmed. In order to guarantee transaction security, the P2P network
lending platform itself must be able to comprehend and grasp the true information of multiple
parties, including screening and evaluating the creditworthiness and asset status of clients.
Higher standards for network topology performance are imposed by this. P2P network
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administration has certain issues as a result of the application types' increasing complexity and
diversity as a result of the network's ongoing expansion of use. A neural network-based P2P
traffic identification approach is suggested in order to better manage P2P networks in light of the
dynamic nature of P2P traffic. (Wang, 2021) “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend
themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” -Ecclesiastes 4:12 Using a hybrid
model is similar to more than one person working together. When you put two or three or more
good things together you can form something stronger and better than the one by itself. The
verse above shows that the Bible teaches us something similar.
Sybil Attack
It is possible for a malevolent user to have control over several peers in a peer-to-peer network.
In particular, this type of user uses a lot of P2P client apps on the network, which means that in
the background, several peers are really the same physical user. Such dominance in participation
may eventually result in the P2P system's functioning being under your control. For instance, the
bad user can just outnumber other system participants who are honorable. This is frequently
referred to as the Sybil attack. The root of this problem is mapping of peer identities to physical
users. If a centralized entity is used as a server, you can have a single point of failure which is
never a good thing. If a distributed approach is used is that a malicious user could still get
multiple identifiers using spoofed IP addresses. Another approach that could be used is a fully
distributed approach that uses a tree-structured network. This makes the Sybil attack more
resource consuming but if the malicious user has plenty of resources a Sybil attack is still
possible. Using network coordinates could also be use for honest peers to decide whether new
peers are physical users but again if the malicious user can spoof multiple physical addresses an
attack can still happen. SybilGuard could be used which is based on the social network graph
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which would have a small quotient cut. Which is effective in limiting the number of attack edges
if not too many honest users are compromised. (Kwok, 2024) “No weapon that is fashioned
against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
-Isaiah 54:17 God wants us to know that He will always protect us as his followers. However, a
company must also take measures to protect themselves, their employees, and their customers.
The same way God wants us to be protected. A company should also want to be protected, and
knowing what a Sybil attack is and approaches to protect against it, is just the start.
DDoS and P2P
Every node operating on the user's computer is linked to the peer network. Attackers may utilize
these peers to send DDoS assaults against specific targets. Thus, enemies may use the P2P
network as a launchpad for widespread attacks. Peers in all such P2P networks primarily carry
out two tasks, which are file sharing and file searching. In a peer-to-peer network, peers are
linked directly to one another. Additionally, they are connected to a directory server that keeps
track of peer details. Peers can learn about each other and the peers who possess the resources
they desire in this way. Although resource lookup appears to be client/server based,
communication and resource transmission nevertheless follow the P2P approach. Different types
of assaults are conceivable in these networks. It is well known that attackers employ P2P
networks to conduct assaults since they are dispersed throughout the world atop Wide Area
Networks (WANs). Nodes are widely available; thus, hackers can exploit them and use them as
zombies to execute DDoS attacks. (Jaideep, 2018) There are two types of attack strategies for
exploiting a P2P network. Those are index poisoning and routing table poisoning. An adversary
that engages in index poisoning attacks alters the peers' index table in such a way that keys are
mostly mapped to the address of a victim peer—a peer that really does not have the requested
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data. As a result, a wave of peers would approach the afflicted peer and ask for specific popular
files, eventually overwhelming it. Like this, the adversary can also contaminate a lot of peers'
routing table entries, causing routing requests to go through to a victim peer. (Kwok, 2023) “The
pursuit of God, and of living in peace with Him, takes many forms. At its most fundamental
level, individuals initially seek peace with God when they give their lives to Him. For many
believers, the ongoing pursuit of God takes the form of spiritual practices, including worship,
fellowship, giving, prayer, and others.” (Phillips, 2021) Once someone gives their life to Him,
they will easily follow His teachings. If they are living for him and following His teachings,
then they will make sure to do the right things, and they will make sure to take the necessary
steps to not only protect themselves, but also any employees or customers they may have. Part
of protecting them is to know about different types of attacks like the ones listed above, and then
taking the necessary steps and doing the research to make sure that they protect against them.
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References
Kwok, Y.-K. R. (n.d.). Peer-to-Peer Computing (1st ed.). Taylor and Francis.
Jaideep, Gera & Battula, Bhanu. (2018). Detection of DDOS attacks in distributed peer to peer
networks. International Journal of Engineering & Technology. 7. 1051.
10.14419/ijet.v7i2.7.12227.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) apps. Coppin State University. (n.d.). https://www.coppin.edu/peer-peer-p2p-
apps#:~:text=Using%20Peer%2Dto%2DPeer%20(,computers%20running%20the%20same
%20software.
Phillips, M., Phillips, L. (2021). Shalom at Work: Bridging the Sunday-Monday Gap. The Journal
of Biblical Integration in Business, 24(1), 19-28.
https://cbfa-jbib.org/index.php/jbib/article/view/591/594
Wang, Y., Feng, Y., Shang, L., Zhang, H., & Zhang, B. (2021). Research on Topology and
Security Behaviour Intelligent Analysis by Hybrid P2P Traffic.Journal of Physics:
Conference Series,1982(1) https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1982/1/012030
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