Reducing efficiency of connectivity-splitting attack on newscast via limited gossip

Abstract

Newscast is a Peer-to-Peer, nature-inspired gossip-based data exchange protocol used for information dissemination and membership management in large-scale, agent-based distributed systems. The model follows a probabilistic scheme able to keep a self-organised, smallworld equilibrium featuring a complex, spatially structured and dynamically changing environment. Newscast gained popularity since the early 2000 s thanks to its inherent resilience to node volatility as the protocol exhibits strong self-healing properties. However, the original design proved to be surprisingly fragile in a byzantine environment subjected to cheating faults. Indeed, a set of recent studies emphasized the hardwired vulnerabilities of the protocol, leading to an efficient implementation of a malicious client, where a few naive cheaters are able to break the network connectivity in a very short time. Extending these previous works, we propose in this paper a modification of the seminal protocol with embedded counter-measures, improving the resilience of the scheme against malicious acts without significantly affecting the original Newscast’s properties nor its inherent performance. Concrete experiments were performed to support these claims, using a framework implementing all the solutions discussed in this work.