Anonymous P2P

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An anonymous P2P computer network is a particular type of peer-to-peer network in which the users and their nodes are pseudonymous by default. The primary difference between regular and anonymous networks is in the routing method of their respective network architectures. These networks allow for unfettered free flow of information, legal or otherwise.

The P2P community's interest in anonymous P2P has increased rapidly in recent years for many reasons, including distrust of government (especially in undemocratic regimes), and digital imprimatur. Such a network may also appeal to those wishing to share copyrighted files illegally - organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America have successfully tracked and threatened to sue users on non-anonymous P2P networks.

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[edit] Anonymous P2P as a misnomer

The term 'anonymous P2P' is somewhat of a misnomer. This is because by design, a network node must be pseudonymous since it must have an "address" at which it can be reached by other peer nodes in order to exchange data. However, usually this address, especially on anonymous networks, does not contain any directly identifiable information. Thus a user is highly, but not completely, anonymous. (In friend-to-friend networks, only your friends can know that your address is used to exchange files.)

When receiving data on any network it must come from somewhere and data must have been requested by someone. The anonymity comes from the idea that no one knows who requested the information as it is difficult - if not impossible - to determine if a user requested the data for himself or simply requested the data on behalf of another user. The end result is that everyone on an anonymous network acts as a universal sender and universal receiver to maintain anonymity.

If people are only universal receivers and do not send, then one would know that the information they were requesting was for themselves only, removing any plausible deniability that they were the recipients (and consumers) of the information. Thus, in order to remain anonymous, one must ferry information for others on the network.

[edit] Uses of anonymous P2P

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

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

  • The material is illegal or incriminating;
  • material is legal but socially deplored, embarrassing or problematic in the individual's social world, or their workplace, religion, or other groups;
  • material is legal but distribution is illegal (copyright);
  • fear of legal or illegal retribution (whistleblowers, unofficial leaks, public interest, activisits who do not believe in restrictions on information or knowledge);
  • censorship (local, organizational, or governmental level);
  • personal privacy preferences (prevention of tracking or datamining activities, desire not to be known to have the information); and
  • material and its distribution are both legal, but in high demand. Anonymous P2P may be used to distribute the network load to more efficiently download something like a new free software release.

A particularly open view on legal and illegal content is the Philosophy of Freenet.

Governments are also interested in anonymous P2P technology. The United States Navy used to finance the development of Free Haven's onion routing Tor network for politically sensitive negotiations and to aid in hiding the identity of government employees for intelligence gathering work.

[edit] Views on the desirability of anonymous P2P

Proponents of anonymous P2P sometimes argue that such technology is desirable and in some cases necessary to ensure freedom of speech and the free flow of information. They claim that true freedom of speech, especially on controversial subjects, is difficult or impossible unless individuals can speak anonymously. They argue that if anonymity were 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.

Anonymous P2P also has value in normal daily communication. When communication is anonymous, the decision to reveal the identity 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 party to be forced to reveal their identity. As a matter of personal freedom, many people do not want processes in place by default which supply unnecessary data. Such data, they say, could also be complied into histories of their activities, and which in their opinion, should be inherently controlled by the caller, not the called.

For example the current phone system transmits caller ID information by default to the other party. If one is calling to make an inquiry about a product or a time of a movie, the person called has a record of the phone number which called and therefore the name, address and the potential for more information about the person. If one were to walk into a store or up to a person on the street and make a similar inquiry all this personal information would not be involved. Anonymous P2P simply allows for a currently existing activity in “meatspace” to now occur over a communications network.

Opponents argue that while anonymous P2P systems may support the protection of unpopular speech, it also protects illegal activities not protected under free speech, such as fraud, libel, the exchange of illegal pornography or pirated music and films, the planning of criminal activities, distribution of untraceable spam, or denial-of-service attacks. They hold that the advantages offered by such systems do not outweigh these disadvantages, and that other communication channels are already sufficient for unpopular speech.

[edit] Consequences of P2P anonymity

Pornography trading is common on anonymous P2P networks, and some believe that the networks aid terrorism. There are several responses to these criticisms. The first is that all information is neutral, and that it is the people acting upon the information that can be good or evil. The second is that perceptions of good and evil change (See moral panic): If anonymous peer-to-peer networks had been around in the 1950s or 1960s, they might have been targeted for carrying information about civil rights or anarchism.

Other issues include:

  • Anonymous spam, and DDoS attacks can be performed.
  • It is difficult or impossible to uphold laws that can be broken through P2P networks. This could lead to the breakdown of intellectual property (though see digital rights management and copyright social conflict).
  • With anonymous money, it becomes possible to arrange anonymous markets where one can buy and sell just about anything anonymously. Assassination markets would be the dark side of this. Also note that any transfer of physical goods between two parties could compromise anonymity.
  • It is easy to publish any information you want without the possibility of having your physical identity revealed. This could be used to openly publish information that governments forbid, like warez, software violating software patents, and child pornography. On the other hand, controversial information which the government wants to keep hidden, such as details about corruption issues, could still be published.
  • Anonymous money could be used to avoid tax collection. That could lead to a movement towards anarcho-capitalism. It is highly unlikely that all transactions could be done anonymously, however, and a government could still rely on property taxes.

Some friend-to-friend networks allow you to control what kind of files your friends exchange with your node, in order to stop them from exchanging files that you disapprove of.

A common ideal for anonymous peer to peer networks is to make it impossible to hinder the spread of information. This is typically achieved through encryption, making all kinds of information indistinguishable from each other.

[edit] Technical drawbacks of current anonymous P2P networks

There are a variety of drawbacks in the current design of many anonymous P2P applications and networks. One of the major ones is that it is difficult or impossible to hide the fact you are running such an application, meaning that a government could simply outlaw its use to prevent the free flow of information. In countries where strong encryption is forbidden, governments have easy leverage to forbid the usage of anonymous P2P.

Detection of the use of these applications could be done by a person's ISP through the use of nonstandard ports by default (this solution, along with using a layer of standard SSL, would be a very simple form of steganography). Traffic analysis of all your links by your ISP could easily show that you automatically forward some documents. A solution to this could be to send random padding bytes even when the links are inactive. While this is an effective defense, it creates a constant bandwidth overhead.

The above drawbacks do not apply to anonymous P2P used 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 identifyable through their hardware. 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, or require every wireless device to be registered under the owner's name.

[edit] References

  1. ↑  Watters, P.A., Martin, F. & Stripf, S. (2005). Visual steganalysis of LSB-encoded natural images. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Information Technology and Applications, Sydney, Australia.

[edit] See also

Portal:Cryptography
 Cryptography Portal

[edit] Anonymous P2P clients

  • ANts P2P is a P2P file sharing system which anonymizes and encrypts traffic, and supports HTTP publishing
  • Azureus, a BitTorrent client with the option of using I2P or Tor (open source, written in Java)
  • Entropy - a Freenet alternative
  • Freenet - a censorship-resistant distributed file system for anonymous publishing (open source, written in Java)
  • GNUnet - anonymizing file sharing application
  • I2P - an anonymizing network layer upon which applications can be built (open source, written in Java)
  • Marabunta - an anonymous distributed P2P network only UDP
  • MUTE - anonymizing file sharing client. MFC Mute, Kommute and Napshare are alternative clients
  • Nodezilla
  • Rodi
  • RShare - file sharing system which anonymizes and encrypts the traffic
  • Share - the successor to Winny; the biggest filesharing network in Japan
  • Tor - While Tor is not a P2P client itself, it provides a method for other P2P programs to become anonymous. It is also one of the larger research projects for anonymous networks.
  • Turtle - Turtle is a friend-to-friend (F2F) network - a special type of peer-to-peer network in which all your communication goes only to your friends, and then to their friends, and so on, to the ultimate destination.
  • WASTE - for small networks of 3-120 users for private filesharing in a group
  • Winny - was very popular in Japan (freeware, written in C++ for Windows)

[edit] Full IPV4 Anonymous networks

[edit] Hypothetical or defunct networks

[edit] External links

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