arXiv subjects

Sebastian Rust

Publications and source records attributed to Sebastian Rust.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Monitoring Data Requests in Decentralized Data Storage Systems: A Case Study of IPFS

Decentralized data storage systems like the Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) are becoming increasingly popular, e. g., as a data layer in blockchain applications and for sharing content in a censorship-resistant manner. In IPFS, data is hosted by an open set of nodes and data requests are broadcast to connected peers in addition to being routed via a distributed hash table (DHT). In this paper, we present a passive monitoring methodology that exploits this design for obtaining data requests from a significant and upscalable portion of nodes. Using an implementation of our approach for the IPFS network and data collected over a period of fifteen months, we demonstrate how our methodology enables profound insights into, among other things: the size of the IPFS network, activity levels and structure, and content popularity distributions. We furthermore present that our methodology can be abused for attacks on users' privacy. For example, we were able to identify and successfully surveil the IPFS nodes corresponding to public IPFS/HTTP gateways.We give a detailed analysis of the mechanics and reasons behind implied privacy threats and discuss possible countermeasures.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2020

Mapping the Interplanetary Filesystem

The Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is a distributed data storage service frequently used by blockchain applications and for sharing content in a censorship-resistant manner. Data is distributed within an open set of peers using a Kademlia-based distributed hash table (DHT). In this paper, we study the structure of the resulting overlay network, as it significantly influences the robustness and performance of IPFS. We monitor and systematically crawl IPFS' DHT towards mapping the IPFS overlay network. Our measurements found an average of 44474 nodes at every given time. At least 52.19% of these reside behind a NAT and are not reachable from the outside, suggesting that a large share of the network is operated by private individuals on an as-needed basis. Based on our measurements and our analysis of the IPFS code, we conclude that the topology of the IPFS network is, in its current state, closer to an unstructured overlay network than it is to a classical DHT. While such a structure has benefits for robustness and the resistance against Sybil attacks, it leaves room for improvement in terms of performance and query privacy.

cs.NI↗