Secure Routing Approach for Unstructured P2P Systems

Abstract

Although P2P systems have found its way into almost every field of application, the lack of adequate security concepts, research for specific security algorithms and implementations of suitable security mechanisms are still limiting their full potential. We are focusing on getting an overall view on the security of heterogeneous unstructured P2P systems and finding solutions to this challenging task. This work tries to make the first step towards secure unstructured P2P systems by applying security to routing. Existing secure routing protocols are either intended for structured P2P systems or use mechanisms not adequate for heterogeneous P2P system. We used the dynamic source routing protocol and proposed security extensions as foundation, adapted and modified the inherent principles to comply with the P2P concept and verified the applicability in a real world system.