An Empirical Study of Collusion Behavior in the Maze P2P File-Sharing System
Qiao Lian
Zheng Zhang
Mao Yang
Ben Y. Zhao
Yafei Dai
Xiaoming Li
Microsoft Research Technical Report #MSR-TR-2006-14 (February 2006)
[Full Text in PDF Format, 294KB]
Paper Abstract
Peer-to-peer networks often use incentive policies to encourage cooperation between
nodes. Such systems are generally susceptible to collusion by groups of users in order
to gain unfair advantages over others. While techniques have been proposed to combat
collusion, our lack of understanding of user collusion in existing systems makes
evaluating such mechanisms difficult. In this paper, we report analysis and measurement
results of user collusion in Maze, a large-scale peer-to-peer file sharing system with
a point-based incentive policy. We search for the existence of colluding behavior by
examining complete user logs of the entire system, and use a set of collusion detectors
to identify several major collusion patterns. In addition, we evaluate how proposed
reputation policies would perform in Maze, and identify reasons why they might miss
their objectives. Our results are generally applicable to largescale peer-to-peer
systems, and can help guide the design of more robust incentive schemes.