Abstract

Large-scale peer-to-peer systems face security threats from faulty or hostile remote computing elements. To resist these threats, many such systems employ redundancy. However, if a single faulty entity can present multiple identities, it can control a substantial fraction of the system, thereby undermining this redundancy. One approach to preventing these “Sybil attacks” is to have a trusted agency certify identities. This paper shows that, without a logically centralized authority, Sybil attacks are always possible except under extreme and unrealistic assumptions of resource parity and coordination among entities.

Links

• Microsoft Research

• Springer

Citation

Douceur, J.R., 2002. The Sybil Attack, in: Druschel, P., Kaashoek, F., Rowstron, A. (Eds.), Peer-to-Peer Systems, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 251–260. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45748-8_24