Toward Authentication between familiar Peers in P2P Networking Systems

摘要

Due to the anonymity of peers in P2P networking systems and absence of a CA, the authentication of peers is the main problem. A secure environment can only be achieved, when peers are sure, that they are communicating with the partner desired. After the first contact peers are known to each other. But there is still the possibility that a malicious peer masquerades itself as another one using a spoofing attack. A mechanism is needed to ensure secure re-authentication of peers, who have met each other once and are known to each other. This work focuses exactly on this problem and proposes a mechanism for familiar peers to get certainty about the identity of their known communication partner. The proposed mechanism combines a cryptographic protocol inspired by the dinner cryptographic protocol and zero knowledge protocol to ensure continuously re-authentication of peers in each new session.