The analysis of security threats in structured P2P load balancing schemes

Dynamic load balancing is one key adaptation mechanism often deployed in networking and computing systems. Numerous proposals exist for load balancing in peer-to-peer networks. These schemes either focus on good balanced namespace and balanced stream, or work on the minimum balancing overhead. All of them will enhance the availability of P2P system to some extent. However, few attentions have been paid on security threats introduced by the load balancing. In this paper, we build the framework model of two main categories of load balancing schemes in P2P system: ID manipulating and virtual server. Vulnerability analysis is conducted for both solutions and attack tree model is proposed which will help designing countermeasures to thwart attacks toward load balancing system in P2P.