Anonymous P2P

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An anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. [1] Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants. [2]

Contents

Interest in anonymous P2P systems has increased in recent years for many reasons, ranging from the desire to share files without revealing one's network identity and risking litigation [3] to distrust in governments, concerns over mass surveillance and data retention, and lawsuits against bloggers. [4]

Motivation for anonymity

There are many reasons to use anonymous P2P technology; most of them are generic to all forms of online anonymity.

P2P users who desire anonymity usually do so as they do not wish to be identified as a publisher (sender), or reader (receiver), of information. Common reasons include:

A particularly open view on legal and illegal content is given in The Philosophy Behind Freenet.

Governments are also interested in anonymous P2P technology. The United States Navy funded the original onion routing research that led to the development of the Tor network, which was later funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is now developed by the non-profit organization The Tor Project, Inc.

Arguments for and against anonymous P2P communication

General

While anonymous P2P systems may support the protection of unpopular speech, they may also protect illegal activities, such as fraud, libel, the exchange of illegal pornography, the unauthorized copying of copyrighted works, or the planning of criminal activities. Critics of anonymous P2P systems hold that these disadvantages outweigh the advantages offered by such systems, and that other communication channels are already sufficient for unpopular speech.

Proponents of anonymous P2P systems believe that all restrictions on free speech serve authoritarian interests, information itself is ethically neutral, and that it is the people acting upon the information that can be good or evil. Perceptions of good and evil can also change (see moral panic); for example, if anonymous peer-to-peer networks had existed in the 1950s or 1960s, they might have been targeted for carrying information about civil rights or anarchism.

Easily accessible anonymous P2P networks are seen by some as a democratization of encryption technology, giving the general populace access to secure communications channels already used by governments. Supporters of this view, such as Phil Zimmermann, argue that anti-surveillance technologies help to equalize power between governments and their people, [5] which is the actual reason for banning them. John Pilger opines that monitoring of the populace helps to contain threats to the "consensual view of established authority" [6] or threats to the continuity of power structures and privilege.

Freedom of speech

Some claim that true freedom of speech, especially on controversial subjects, is difficult or impossible unless individuals can speak anonymously. If anonymity is not possible, one could be subjected to threats or reprisals for voicing an unpopular view. This is one reason why voting is done by secret ballot in many democracies. Controversial information which a party wants to keep hidden, such as details about corruption issues, is often published or leaked anonymously.

Anonymous blogging

Anonymous blogging is one widespread use of anonymous networks. While anonymous blogging is possible on the non-anonymous internet to some degree too, a provider hosting the blog in question might be forced to disclose the blogger's IP address (as when Google revealed an anonymous blogger's identity [7] ). Anonymous networks provide a better degree of anonymity. Flogs (anonymous blogs) in Freenet, Syndie and other blogging tools in I2P and Osiris sps are some examples of anonymous blogging technologies.

One argument for anonymous blogging is a delicate nature of work situation. Sometimes a blogger writing under their real name faces a choice between either staying silent or causing a harm to themselves, their colleagues or the company they work for. [8]

Another reason is risk of lawsuits. Some bloggers have faced multimillion-dollar lawsuits [9] (although they were later dropped completely [10] ); anonymous blogging provides protection against such risks.

Censorship via Internet domain names

On the non-anonymous Internet, a domain name like "example.com" is a key to accessing information. The censorship of the Wikileaks website shows that domain names are extremely vulnerable to censorship.[ citation needed ] Some domain registrars have suspended customers' domain names even in the absence of a court order.[ citation needed ]

For the affected customer, blocking of a domain name is a far bigger problem than a registrar refusing to provide a service; typically, the registrar keeps full control of the domain names in question. In the case of a European travel agency, more than 80 .com websites were shut down without any court process and held by the registrar since then. The travel agency had to rebuild the sites under the .net top-level domain instead. [11]

On the other hand, anonymous networks do not rely on domain name registrars. For example, Freenet, I2P and Tor hidden services implement censorship-resistant URLs based on public-key cryptography: only a person having the correct private key can update the URL or take it down.

Control over online tracking

Anonymous P2P also has value in normal daily communication. When communication is anonymous, the decision to reveal the identities of the communicating parties is left up to the parties involved and is not available to a third party. Often there is no need or desire by the communicating parties to reveal their identities. As a matter of personal freedom, many people do not want processes in place by default which supply unnecessary data. In some cases, such data could be compiled into histories of their activities.

For example, most current phone systems transmit caller ID information by default to the called party (although this can be disabled either for a single call or for all calls). If a person calls to make an inquiry about a product or the time of a movie, the party called has a record of the calling phone number, and may be able to obtain the name, address and other information about the caller. This information is not available about someone who walks into a store and makes a similar inquiry.

Effects of surveillance on lawful activity

Online surveillance, such as recording and retaining details of web and e-mail traffic, may have effects on lawful activities. [12] People may be deterred from accessing or communicating legal information because they know of possible surveillance and believe that such communication may be seen as suspicious. According to law professor Daniel J. Solove, such effects "harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of viewpoints being expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity." [13]

Access to censored and copyrighted material

Most countries ban or censor the publication of certain books and movies, and certain types of content. Other material is legal to possess but not to distribute; for example, copyright and software patent laws may forbid its distribution. These laws are difficult or impossible to enforce in anonymous P2P networks.

Anonymous online money

With anonymous money, it becomes possible to arrange anonymous markets where one can buy and sell just about anything anonymously. Anonymous money could be used to avoid tax collection. However, any transfer of physical goods between two parties could compromise anonymity. [14]

Proponents argue that conventional cash provides a similar kind of anonymity, and that existing laws are adequate to combat crimes like tax evasion that might result from the use of anonymous cash, whether online or offline. [15]

Functioning of anonymous P2P

Anonymity and pseudonymity

Some of the networks commonly referred to as "anonymous P2P" are truly anonymous, in the sense that network nodes carry no identifiers. Others are actually pseudonymous: instead of being identified by their IP addresses, nodes are identified by pseudonyms such as cryptographic keys. For example, each node in the MUTE network has an overlay address that is derived from its public key. This overlay address functions as a pseudonym for the node, allowing messages to be addressed to it. In Freenet, on the other hand, messages are routed using keys that identify specific pieces of data rather than specific nodes; the nodes themselves are anonymous.

The term anonymous is used to describe both kinds of network because it is difficult—if not impossible—to determine whether a node that sends a message originated the message or is simply forwarding it on behalf of another node. Every node in an anonymous P2P network acts as a universal sender and universal receiver to maintain anonymity. If a node was only a receiver and did not send, then neighbouring nodes would know that the information it was requesting was for itself only, removing any plausible deniability that it was the recipient (and consumer) of the information. Thus, in order to remain anonymous, nodes must ferry information for others on the network.

Spam and DoS attacks in anonymous networks

Originally, anonymous networks were operated by small and friendly communities of developers. As interest in anonymous P2P increased and the user base grew, malicious users inevitably appeared and tried different attacks. This is similar to the Internet, where widespread use has been followed by waves of spam and distributed DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Such attacks may require different solutions in anonymous networks. For example, blacklisting of originator network addresses does not work because anonymous networks conceal this information. These networks are more vulnerable to DoS attacks as well due to the smaller bandwidth, as has been shown in examples on the Tor network.

A conspiracy to attack an anonymous network could be considered criminal computer hacking, though the nature of the network makes this impossible to prosecute without compromising the anonymity of data in the network.

Opennet and darknet network types

Like conventional P2P networks, anonymous P2P networks can implement either opennet or darknet (often named friend-to-friend) network type. This describes how a node on the network selects peer nodes:

Some networks like Freenet support both network types simultaneously (a node can have some manually added darknet peer nodes and some automatically selected opennet peers) .

In a friend-to-friend (or F2F) network, users only make direct connections with people they know. Many F2F networks support indirect anonymous or pseudonymous communication between users who do not know or trust one another. For example, a node in a friend-to-friend overlay can automatically forward a file (or a request for a file) anonymously between two "friends", without telling either of them the other's name or IP address. These "friends" can in turn forward the same file (or request) to their own "friends", and so on. Users in a friend-to-friend network cannot find out who else is participating beyond their own circle of friends, so F2F networks can grow in size without compromising their users' anonymity.

Some friend-to-friend networks allow the user to control what kind of files can be exchanged with "friends" within the node, in order to stop them from exchanging files that user disapproves of.

Advantages and disadvantages of opennet compared to darknet are disputed, see friend-to-friend article for summary.

List of anonymous P2P networks and clients

Public P2P clients

I2P clients

Defunct (Public P2P clients) or no longer developed

  • MuWire [19] - was a filesharing software, with chat rooms. Even if running inside the I2P network, it is not called a 'I2P client' because it has a I2P router embedded, so this makes it a standalone software. The project got shut down on 14 February 2023 [20]
  • Bitblinder (2009–2010) - file sharing
  • Bitmessage - an anonymous decentralized messaging system serving as a secure replacement for email
  • Cashmere (2005) - resilient anonymous routing [21]
  • Entropy (2003–2005) - Freenet compatible
  • EarthStation 5 (2003–2005) - anonymity controverted
  • Herbivore (2003–2005) - file sharing and messaging. Used the Dining cryptographers problem. [22]
  • Marabunta (2005–2006) - distributed chat
  • MUTE (2003–2009) - file sharing [23]
  • NeoLoader - a filesharing software compatible with bittorrent and edonkey2000. Anonymous when used with the "NeoShare" feature (that use the proprietary "NeoKad" network) [24]
  • Netsukuku - a peer-to-peer routing system aiming to build a free and independent Internet
  • Nodezilla (2004–2010) - an anonymizing, closed source network layer upon which applications can be built
  • Osiris (Serverless Portal System) - an anonymous and distributed web portals creator.
  • OFF System (2006–2010) - a P2P distributed file system through which all shared files are represented by randomized data blocks
  • RShare (2006–2007) - file sharing
  • Share - a Japanese filesharing client modeled on Winny
  • Syndie - a content (mainly forums) syndication program that operates over numerous anonymous and non-anonymous networks (open source, written in Java)
  • StealthNet (2007–2011) - the successor to RShare
  • Winny - a Japanese filesharing program modeled on Freenet which relies on a mixnet and distributed datastore to provide anonymity

Private P2P clients

Private P2P networks are P2P networks that only allow some mutually trusted computers to share files. This can be achieved by using a central server or hub to authenticate clients, in which case the functionality is similar to a private FTP server, but with files transferred directly between the clients. Alternatively, users can exchange passwords or keys with their friends to form a decentralized network.

Examples include:

Private F2F (friend-to-friend) clients

Friend-to-friend networks are P2P networks that allows users only to make direct connections with people they know. Passwords or digital signatures can be used for authentication.

Examples include :

Hypothetical or defunct networks

Hypothetical

The following networks only exist as design or are in development

  • anoNet - extensible IP anonymizer with steganography support (in development)
  • Crowds - Reiter and Rubin's system for "blending into a crowd" has a known attack
  • P2PRIV - Peer-to-Peer diRect and anonymous dIstribution oVerlay - anonymity via virtual links parallelization - currently in development and has significant, unsolved problems in a real world environment
  • Phantom Anonymity Protocol - a fully decentralized high-throughput anonymization network (no longer in development) [25]
  • Race (Resilient Anonymous Communication for Everyone) - A project by DARPA to build an anonymous, attack-resilient mobile communication system that can reside completely within a network environment, capable of avoiding large-scale compromise by preventing compromised information from being useful for identifying any of the system nodes because all such information is encrypted on the nodes at all times, even during computation; and preventing communications compromise by virtue of obfuscating communication protocols.

Defunct or dormant

Anonymous P2P in a wireless mesh network

It is possible to implement anonymous P2P on a wireless mesh network; unlike fixed Internet connections, users don't need to sign up with an ISP to participate in such a network, and are only identifiable through their hardware.

Protocols for wireless mesh networks are Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) and the follow-up protocol B.A.T.M.A.N., which is designed for decentralized auto-IP assignment. See also Netsukuku.

Even if a government were to outlaw the use of wireless P2P software, it would be difficult to enforce such a ban without a considerable infringement of personal freedoms. Alternatively, the government could outlaw the purchase of the wireless hardware itself.

See also

Other

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freenet</span> Peer-to-peer Internet platform for censorship-resistant communication

Hyphanet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web without fear of censorship. Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke, who defined Freenet's goal as providing freedom of speech on the Internet with strong anonymity protection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peer-to-peer</span> Type of decentralized and distributed network architecture

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network, forming a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Distributed hash table</span> Decentralized distributed system with lookup service

A distributed hash table (DHT) is a distributed system that provides a lookup service similar to a hash table. Key–value pairs are stored in a DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key. The main advantage of a DHT is that nodes can be added or removed with minimum work around re-distributing keys. Keys are unique identifiers which map to particular values, which in turn can be anything from addresses, to documents, to arbitrary data. Responsibility for maintaining the mapping from keys to values is distributed among the nodes, in such a way that a change in the set of participants causes a minimal amount of disruption. This allows a DHT to scale to extremely large numbers of nodes and to handle continual node arrivals, departures, and failures.

BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms, and file browsing/sharing capabilities. The name WASTE is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E. is an underground postal service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNUnet</span> Framework for decentralized, peer-to-peer networking which is part of the GNU Project

GNUnet is a software framework for decentralized, peer-to-peer networking and an official GNU package. The framework offers link encryption, peer discovery, resource allocation, communication over many transports and various basic peer-to-peer algorithms for routing, multicast and network size estimation.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is an anonymous network layer that allows for censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer communication. Anonymous connections are achieved by encrypting the user's traffic, and sending it through a volunteer-run network of roughly 55,000 computers distributed around the world. Given the high number of possible paths the traffic can transit, a third party watching a full connection is unlikely. The software that implements this layer is called an "I2P router", and a computer running I2P is called an "I2P node". I2P is free and open sourced, and is published under multiple licenses.

A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social networks, and anonymity proxy networks such as Tor via an anonymized series of connections.

The Free Haven Project was formed in 1999 by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students with the aim to develop a secure, decentralized system of data storage. The group's work led to a collaboration with the United States Naval Research Laboratory to develop Tor, funded by DARPA.

Private peer-to-peer (P2P) systems are peer-to-peer (P2P) systems that allow only mutually trusted peers to participate. This can be achieved by using a central server such as a Direct Connect hub to authenticate clients. Alternatively, users can exchange passwords or cryptographic keys with friends to form a decentralized network. Private peer-to-peer systems can be divided into friend-to-friend (F2F) and group-based systems. Friend-to-friend systems only allow connections between users who know one another, but may also provide automatic anonymous forwarding. Group-based systems allow any user to connect to any other, and thus they cannot grow in size without compromising their users' privacy. Some software, such as WASTE, can be configured to create either group-based or F2F networks.

The Kad network is a peer-to-peer (P2P) network which implements the Kademlia P2P overlay protocol. The majority of users on the Kad Network are also connected to servers on the eDonkey network, and Kad Network clients typically query known nodes on the eDonkey network in order to find an initial node on the Kad network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribler</span> Peer-to-peer filesharing software and protocol

Tribler is an open source decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

Peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) systems like Gnutella, KaZaA, and eDonkey/eMule, have become extremely popular in recent years, with the estimated user population in the millions. An academic research paper analyzed Gnutella and eMule protocols and found weaknesses in the protocol; many of the issues found in these networks are fundamental and probably common on other P2P networks. Users of file sharing networks, such as eMule and Gnutella, are subject to monitoring of their activity. Clients may be tracked by IP address, DNS name, software version they use, files they share, queries they initiate, and queries they answer to. Clients may also share their private files to the network without notice due to inappropriate settings.

Garlic routing is a variant of onion routing that encrypts multiple messages together to make it more difficult for attackers to perform traffic analysis and to increase the speed of data transfer.

An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable. It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet. It accesses the Internet on the user's behalf, protecting personal information of the user by hiding the client computer's identifying information such as IP addresses. Anonymous proxy is the opposite of transparent proxy, which sends user information in the connection request header.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phex</span>

Phex is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the gnutella network, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, so Phex is free software. Phex is based on Java SE 5.0 or later.

Tahoe-LAFS is a free and open, secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant, distributed data store and distributed file system. It can be used as an online backup system, or to serve as a file or Web host similar to Freenet, depending on the front-end used to insert and access files in the Tahoe system. Tahoe can also be used in a RAID-like fashion using multiple disks to make a single large Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes (RAIN) pool of reliable data storage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Retroshare</span> Free software

Retroshare is a free and open-source peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built by GNU Privacy Guard (GPG). Optionally peers may exchange certificates and IP addresses to their friends and vice versa.

Internet censorship circumvention, also referred to as going over the wall or scientific browsing in China, is the use of various methods and tools to bypass internet censorship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZeroNet</span> Peer to peer web hosting

ZeroNet is a decentralized web-like network of peer-to-peer users, created by Tamas Kocsis in 2015, programming for the network was based in Budapest, Hungary; is built in Python; and is fully open source. Instead of having an IP address, sites are identified by a public key. The private key allows the owner of a site to sign and publish changes, which propagate through the network. Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages. In addition to using bitcoin cryptography, ZeroNet uses trackers from the BitTorrent network to negotiate connections between peers. ZeroNet is not anonymous by default, but it supports routing traffic through the Tor network.

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