Analysis of the data flow in the newscast protocol for possible vulnerabilities

Abstract

Newscast is a model for information dissemination and membership management in large-scale, agent-based distributed systems. It deploys a simple, peer-to-peer data exchange protocol. The Newscast protocol forms an overlay network and keeps it connected by means of an epidemic algorithm, thus featuring a complex, spatially structured, and dynamically changing environment. It has recently become very popular due to its inherent resilience to node volatility as it exhibits strong self-healing properties. In this paper, we analyze the robustness of the data flow within the Newscast model against a set of vulnerabilities that have not been taken into account in previous analysis. In particular, we perform an attack based on a cache content corruption which is able to defeat the protocol by breaking the network connectivity. Concrete experiments are performed using a framework that implements both the protocol and the corruption model considered in this work. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.