Modeling and analysis of P2P content distribution under coordinated attack strategies

Content delivery by P2P networks plays an important role nowadays, meanwhile, content owners may attack the networks to block unauthorized content distribution. In this paper, analytical models are developed to analyze the “battle” between users and content owners. The effect of the two most commonly applied attacks, content pollution and index poisoning, are compared. The impact of user behavior is also analyzed. Our analysis reveals that the key factors which influence the P2P content distribution are the persistence of clean copies, the false positive rate of the used security scheme and the initial conditions of the P2P network. Best strategies for attackers as well as intelligent strategies for users seeking for the clean content within large-scale P2P networks are suggested.