On Tracking Freeriders in Gossip Protocols

Peer-to-peer content dissemination applications suffer immensely from freeriders, i.e., nodes that do not provide their fair share. The Tit-for-Tat (TfT) incentives have received much attention as they help make such systems more robust against freeriding. However, these rely on an asymmetric component, namely opportunistic pushes, that let peers receive content without sending anything in return. Opportunistic push constitutes the Achilles’ heel of TfT-based protocols as illustrated by the fact that all known attacks against them exploit it. This problem becomes even more serious when used by colluding freeriders. In this paper, we discuss the possibility of using accountability to secure gossip-based dissemination protocols based on asymmetric exchanges. The fact that gossip protocols are dynamic and randomized makes our approach robust against collusion and alleviates the need for cryptography. We present the challenges raised by an auditing approach and give insights into how to build a freerider-tracking protocol for gossip-based content dissemination.