Chapter 10. P2P Security

by Alan Moffet and Robert Flenner

In This Chapter

• Security Requirements

• Network Identity

• Foundations of Security

• Identification

• Authentication

• Authorization

• Privacy and Anonymity

• Trust

• Accountability

• Software for Developing Secure P2P Applications

• Additional Resources

With all the chatting and sharing going on, peer-to-peer computing sounds friendly, almost neighborly. Exchange some information? Borrow a few computing cycles? How about your credit card number? Obviously there are limits to what we want to be able to share, or whom we want to trust. We want to protect ourselves and the things we value, such as our property.

In this respect, peer-to-peer computing does not offer any challenges beyond those presented by ordinary networked computing. However, when thinking about how to implement the mechanisms for identifying, authenticating, and authorizing users across a widely distributed and often changing network, peer-to-peer systems have unique requirements that come with their own set of challenges.

In this chapter, we will examine the issues and technological solutions that are common to network computing as well as the additional considerations brought about by peer-to-peer computing.