| Rumor Riding: A Mutual Privacy Approach for Anonymizing Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Systems with Improved Reliability | |
|
MSRDG International Journal of Computer Scientific Technology & Electronics Engineering
© 2026 by MSRDG IJCSTEE Journal Volume 2 Issue 1 Year of Publication: 2026 |
Paper Download Article ID MSRDG-IJCSTEE-V2I1P104 |
|
Abstract: Unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks offer inherent scalability and fault tolerance, yet they remain acutely vulnerable to identity exposure, traffic analysis, and correlation attacks. Existing anonymisation schemes predominantly protect only the querying node, leaving the responding node—and the communication arc between them—largely unshielded. This paper introduces Rumor Riding, a novel mutual-privacy protocol that simultaneously conceals the identities of both originators and responders within unstructured P2P overlays. The protocol operates through a lightweight cryptographic token mechanism termed RumorToken, which binds query propagation to a probabilistic relay scheduler, thereby resisting intersection, timing, and Sybil attacks without requiring a centralised authority or structured routing substrate. Adaptive relay-chain depth selection and an acknowledgement-based delivery verification mechanism together yield substantially higher message delivery ratios under adversarial churn compared to contemporary alternatives. Formal privacy analysis demonstrates sender and receiver unlinkability under the standard adversary model, and simulation experiments conducted over networks of up to 2,000 heterogeneous peers confirm that Rumor Riding reduces privacy breach probability by 37–44% while improving message delivery reliability by up to 20.8 percentage points relative to GossipShuffle and Freenet. The protocol introduces only modest communication overhead—approximately 2,900 bytes per query—making it practical for resource-constrained environments. |
|
| Keywords: Peer-to-peer anonymity, Mutual privacy , Unstructured overlay networks. RumorToken, Gossip protocols, Privacy-preserving routing, Churn resilience | |
