Title: An anonymity mechanism with reduced server-side cost in peer-to-peer networks

Authors: Hao Peng; Dandan Zhao; Jianmin Han; Jianfeng Lu

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, 688 Yingbin Road, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang, China ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, 688 Yingbin Road, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang, China ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, 688 Yingbin Road, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang, China ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, 688 Yingbin Road, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang, China

Abstract: In peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, each peer's trustworthiness is evaluated according to its pseudonym's rating values given by other peers. One of the fundamental challenges in peer-to-peer networks is to protect peers' identity privacy on the communication path. In this paper, we present an anonymity mechanism to achieve all the peers' anonymity in peer-to-peer networks by changing pseudonyms with the help of a trusted third party (TTP) server. Compared with the existing reputation using pseudonyms (RuP) mechanism, our mechanism has reduced TTP server's cost by more than 50% in terms of numbers of RSA and AES decryption operations and message overhead. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our proposed anonymity mechanism to counter malicious peers.

Keywords: peer-to-peer; P2P networks; trustworthiness; anonymity; trust; server-side cost; peer identity; privacy preservation; privacy protection; trusted third party; TTP servers; pseudonyms; simulation; malicious peers.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2016.080413

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2016 Vol.9 No.5/6, pp.409 - 416

Received: 18 Aug 2014
Accepted: 24 Oct 2014
Published online: 22 Nov 2016 *

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