Study of Security Problems in P2P E-Commerce

Peer-to-Peer, commonly abbreviated to P2P, is any distributed network architecture composed of participants that make a portion of their resources directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances. P2P applications include key characteristics of anonymity, autonomy, and decentralization. As the technical advantages of P2P, e-commerce based on P2P technology is now in its stage of development, and many people are dedicated to the study. P2P e-commerce as a new commercial mode, there are still important challenges to overcome before the full potential of P2P e-commerce can be really realized. In this paper, we discuss some security related issues about P2P e-commerce, such as authentication, authorization, non-repudiation, and integrity; moreover, we discuss some trust models in P2P e-commerce. By analyzing the main features of P2P e-commerce, we sum up some design principles of trust model in P2P e-commerce. We believe that as long as the security issues are adequately addressed, the P2P e-commerce would achieve great success in the future e-commerce markets.