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European Symposium on Research in Computer Security

ESORICS 2010: Computer Security – ESORICS 2010 pp 607–625Cite as

RatFish: A File Sharing Protocol Provably Secure against Rational Users

  • Conference paper

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSC,volume 6345)

Abstract

The proliferation of P2P computing has recently been propelled by popular applications, most notably file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. These protocols provide remarkable efficiency and scalability, as well as adaptivity to dynamic situations. However, none of them is secure against attacks from rational users, i.e., users that misuse the protocol if doing so increases their benefits (e.g., reduces download time or amount of upload capacity).

We propose a rigorous model of rational file sharing for both seeders and leechers, building upon the concept of rational cryptography. We design a novel file sharing protocol called RatFish, and we formally prove that no rational party has an incentive to deviate from RatFish; i.e., RatFish constitutes a Nash equilibrium. Compared to existing file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent, the tracker in RatFish is assigned additional tasks while the communication overhead of a RatFish client is kept to a minimum. We demonstrate by means of a prototype implementation that RatFish is practical and efficient.

Keywords

  • Nash Equilibrium
  • Rational User
  • Cheat Action
  • Download Time
  • Sharing Protocol

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saarland University,  

    Michael Backes, Oana Ciobotaru & Anton Krohmer

  2. MPI-SWS,  

    Michael Backes

Authors
  1. Michael Backes
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  2. Oana Ciobotaru
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  3. Anton Krohmer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Information Security and Critical Infrastructure Protection Research Group, Dept. of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission Ave., GR-10434, Athens, Greece

    Dimitris Gritzalis & Marianthi Theoharidou & 

  2. Dept. Electrical Engineering-ESAT/COSIC, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, Bus 2446, 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Bart Preneel

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Backes, M., Ciobotaru, O., Krohmer, A. (2010). RatFish: A File Sharing Protocol Provably Secure against Rational Users. In: Gritzalis, D., Preneel, B., Theoharidou, M. (eds) Computer Security – ESORICS 2010. ESORICS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6345. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15497-3_37

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15497-3_37

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15496-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15497-3

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