DeSybil: Defending against Sybil Attacks using Social Networks
Qun Li
Distributed systems are vulnerable to sybil attacks, in which the
adversary creates many bogus identities, called sybil identities, and
compromises the running of the system or pollutes the system with fake
information. The sybil identities can "suppress" the honest identities
in a variety of tasks, including online content ranking, DHT routing,
file sharing, reputation systems, and Byzantine failure defenses. Sybil
attacks can be mitigated by assuming the existence of a trusted central
authority. This authority can rate limit the introduction of fake
identities by requiring the users to provide some credentials, like
social security numbers, or by requiring payment. However, such
requirements will prevent the users from accepting these systems in
that they impose additional burdens on users. A central authority can
also easily be the target of denial-of-service attacks and thus reduce
the reliability of the entire system. In this project we are
investigating using social networks to mitigate sybil attacks.
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