Veracity: practical secure network coordinates via vote-based agreements
Micah Sherr, Matt Blaze, Boon Thau Loo · 2009
Decentralized network coordinate systems promise efficient network distance estimates across Internet endhosts. These systems support a wide range of network services, including proximity-based routing, neighbor selection in overlays, network-aware overlays, and replica placement in content-distribution networks. This paper describes Veracity, a practical fullydecentralized service for securing network coordinate systems. In Veracity, all advertised coordinates and subsequent coordinate updates must be independently verified by a small set of nodes via a voting scheme. Unlike existing approaches, Veracity does not require any a priori secrets or trusted parties, and does not depend on outlier analysis of coordinates based on a fixed set of neighbors. We have implemented Veracity by modifying an open-source network coordinate system, and have demonstrated within a simulated network environment and deployment on PlanetLab that Veracity mitigates attacks for moderate sizes of malicious nodes (up to 30% of the network), even when coalitions of attackers coordinate their attacks. We further show that Veracity resists high levels of churn and incurs only a modest communication overhead.