Protecting the PIPE from malicious peers
Brian F. Cooper, Mayank Bawa, Neil Daswani, Héctor García-Molina · 2002
Digital materials can be protected from failures by replicating them at multiple autonomous, distributed sites. A Peer-to-peer Information Preservation and Exchange (PIPE) network is a good way to build a distributed replication system. A significant challenge in such networks is ensuring that documents are replicated and accessible despite malicious sites. Such sites may hinder the replication of documents in a variety of ways, including agreeing to store a copy but erasing it instead, refusing to serve a document, or serving an altered version of the document. We define a model of PIPE networks, a threat model for malicious sites, and propose basic solutions for managing these malicious sites. The basic solutions are inefficient, but demonstrate that a secure system can be built. We also sketch ways to improve the efficiency of the system.