Abstract—Attentions to security on P2P networks have recently been increased, especially with respect to worm epidemics. Most of countermeasures that are proposed to prevent worm propagation are ineffective in P2P overlay networks. In this paper, we use heterogeneity among peers to prevent worm propagation in Gnutella network. Our solution is based on the observation that in P2P networks, there are different types of peers which have different vulnerabilities due to their different platforms. Therefore, a worm, which normally uses a specific vulnerability for propagation, can only infect a specific type of peers in the network. We modify Gnutella joining procedure to restrict worm infection to a small fraction of the network.
Index Terms—Heterogeneity, P2P active worm, worm propagation, Gnutella
The authors are with the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran (e-mail: basadegh@aut.ac.ir; amirreza_nl@aut.ac.ir).
Cite: Amir-Reza Niakan-Lahiji and Babak Sadeghiyan, "Worm Containment in Gnutella Network with Heterogeneity," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 451-455, 2012.