Quan Yuan, Aaron Little, Maggie Kabore and Youssouf Kabore
University of Texas of the Permian Basin, US

P2P file sharing systems are the most popular forms of file sharing to date. Its client-server architecture attains faster file transfers, however with its peer anonymity and lack of authentication it has become a gold mine for malicious attacks. One of the leading sources of disruptions in the P2P file sharing systems is the index poisoning attacks. This attack seeks to corrupt the indexes used to reference files available for download in P2P systems with false data. In order to protect the users from these attacks it is important to find solutions to eliminate or mitigate the effects of index poisoning attacks. This paper will analyze index poisoning attacks, their uses and solutions proposed to defend against them.

Peer-to-peer, index poisoning, ethical usage, attack prevention