Mitigation of Sybil Attacks in Structured P2P Overlay Networks

Abstract

Sybils, i.e., the bane of malicious identities under a common control entity, are commonly controlled by an attacker. In Sybil attack, a single malicious user forges multiple fake identities and pretends to be multiple, distinct physical node in the system. However, Sybil attack is one of the most dangerous attacks that plague current structured Peer-to-Peer overlay networks. This attack is employed to target honest peers and hence subvert the system. In this paper, we describe a new methodology to analyze, detect, and mitigate Sybil attacks. We examine in detail this attack, the most challenging problem that currently propagates in structured Peer-to-Peer overlay networks. We identify features and search for behavioral attributes that may serve to identify such attacks. We were able to analyze them in depth, using honey pots, which allows us to collect information to distinguish Sybil nodes from honest nodes. Furthermore, we introduce a mitigation strategy that alleviates some of the effects of such an attack by injecting some commands into the Sybil node or subvert the communication channel.