Safe and Private Data Sharing with Turtle: Friends Team-Up and Beat the System (Transcript of Discussion)

Abstract

Today I will talk about a project which aims at designing a peer-to-peer network for safe and private data sharing. The motivation for this work is a development that threatens to shut down peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and that’s a recent tactic by the recording industry to take legal action against peerto- peer type networks. So first I want talk about the peer-to-peer file sharing phenomenon: in general, its origin, some of the positive social aspects of such a thing, and the tactical attacks that a peer-to-peer network is subject to. I will then focus on a specific attack that motivates our work, namely illegal users being sued, and discuss possible defences. Our solution, which we call Turtle because as you will see, it is slow but safe, cannot reach the performance of general existing file sharing networks, but at the same time we think it does a good job in protecting users against legal harassment.