CST: P2P Anonymous Authentication System Based on Collaboration Signature

Abstract

Anonymity has received increasing attention in the literature due to the users' awareness of their privacy nowadays. While anonymity related issues have been extensively studied in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, numerous concerns have been raised about the issue of providing authentic partners in P2P systems. In addition, the network authority requires controlled anonymity so that misbehaving entities in the network remain traceable. We are working on seeking novel and more effective methods to control anonymity, authentication and traceability. In this paper, we propose a security architecture to ensure anonymity and authentication for honest users and keep traceability for misbehaving users in P2P systems. We use Collaboration Signature Trust (CST) to resolve the conflicts among anonymity, authentication and traceability. Security analysis shows that the CST can perfectly solve tradeoff between anonymity, authentication and traceability.