Graffiti Networks: A Subversive, Internet-Scale File Sharing Model

TL;DR

This paper introduces Graffiti Networks, a new P2P file sharing model leveraging the Internet as a third-party storage, highlighting its feasibility and challenges through a year-long deployment study.

Contribution

It presents a novel file sharing paradigm using third-party internet storage and evaluates its viability with real-world deployment data.

Findings

Demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale, long-term file sharing via third-party web platforms.

Identified significant challenges in mitigating such subversive sharing methods.

Provided insights into protecting web resources from malicious file sharing activities.

Abstract

The proliferation of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocols is due to their efficient and scalable methods for data dissemination to numerous users. But many of these networks have no provisions to provide users with long term access to files after the initial interest has diminished, nor are they able to guarantee protection for users from malicious clients that wish to implicate them in incriminating activities. As such, users may turn to supplementary measures for storing and transferring data in P2P systems. We present a new file sharing paradigm, called a Graffiti Network, which allows peers to harness the potentially unlimited storage of the Internet as a third-party intermediary. Our key contributions in this paper are (1) an overview of a distributed system based on this new threat model and (2) a measurement of its viability through a one-year deployment study using a popular web-publishing platform. The results of this experiment motivate a discussion about the challenges of mitigating this type of file sharing in a hostile network environment and how web site operators can protect their resources.