Leveraging Identity-Based Cryptography for Node ID Assignment in Structured P2P Systems

Structured peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have grown enormously because of their scalability, efficiency, and reliability. These systems assign a unique identifier to each user and object. However, current assignment schemes allow an adversary to carefully select user IDs and/or simultaneously obtain many pseudo-identities-ultimately leading to an ability to disrupt the P2P system in very targeted and dangerous ways. In this paper, we propose novel ID assignment protocols based on identity-based cryptography. This approach permits the acquisition of node IDs to be tightly regulated without many of the complexities and costs associated with traditional certificate solutions. We broadly consider the security requirements of ID assignment and present three protocols representing distinct threat and trust models. A detailed empirical study of the protocols is given. Our analysis shows that the cost of our identity-based protocols is nominal, and that the associated identity services can scale to millions of users using a limited number of servers.