Title: Detection and mitigation of the eclipse attack in chord overlays

Authors: Cristina Rottondi; Alessandro Panzeri; Constantin Tchetnkou Yagne; Giacomo Verticale

Addresses: Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Italy ' Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Italy

Abstract: Distributed hash table-based overlays are widely used to support efficient information routing and storage in structured peer-to-peer networks, but they are also subject to numerous attacks aimed at disrupting their correct functioning. In this paper, we analyse the impact of the eclipse attack on a chord-based overlay in terms of number of key lookups intercepted by a collusion of malicious nodes. We propose a detection algorithm for the individuation of ongoing attacks to the chord overlay, relying on features that can be independently estimated by each network peer, which are given as input to a C4.5-based binary classifier. Moreover, we propose some modifications to the chord routing protocol in order to mitigate the effects of such attacks. The countermeasures introduce a limited traffic overhead and can operate either in a distributed fashion or assuming the presence of a centralised trusted entity. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed mitigation techniques.

Keywords: distributed hash tables; DHT; chord overlays; eclipse attacks; peer-to-peer networks; P2P networks; key lookups; malicious nodes; network security; routing protocols; attack detection; traffic overhead.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCSE.2016.078440

International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 2016 Vol.13 No.2, pp.111 - 121

Received: 08 Mar 2014
Accepted: 16 Jun 2014

Published online: 19 Aug 2016 *

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