research-article

Conflict on a communication channel

Authors:

Maxwell YoungAuthors Info & Claims

PODC '11: Proceedings of the 30th annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS symposium on Principles of distributed computing

Pages 277 - 286

https://doi.org/10.1145/1993806.1993855

Published: 06 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Imagine that Alice wants to send a message m to Bob, and that Carol wants to prevent this. Assume there is a communication channel between Alice and Bob, but that Carol is capable of blocking this channel. Furthermore, there is a cost of S dollars to send on the channel, L dollars to listen on the channel and J to block the channel. How much will Alice and Bob need to spend in order to guarantee transmission of m?

This problem abstracts many types of conflict in information networks including: jamming attacks in wireless networks and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the Internet, where the costs to Alice, Bob and Carol represent an expenditure of energy or network resources. The problem allows us to quantitatively analyze the economics of information exchange in an adversarial setting and ask: Is communication cheaper than censorship?

We answer this question in the affirmative by showing that it is significantly more costly for Carol to block communication of m than for Alice to communicate it to Bob. Specifically, if S, L and J are fixed constants, and Carol spends a total of B dollars trying to block m, then Alice and Bob must spend only O(B^{φ - 1} + 1)=O(B^.62+1) dollars in expectation to transmit m, where φ = (1 + √5)/2 is the golden ratio. Surprisingly, this result holds even if (1) B is unknown to both Alice and Bob; (2) Carol knows the algorithms of Alice and Bob, but not their random bits; and (3) Carol has total knowledge of past actions of both players.

Finally, we apply our work to two problems: (1) DoS attacks in wireless sensor networks and (2) application-level DDoS attacks in a wired client-server scenario. Our applications show how our results can provide an additional tool in mitigating such attacks.

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Cited By

Chakraborty TSaia JYoung M(2024)Defending Hash Tables from Algorithmic Complexity Attacks with Resource BurningTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2024.114762(114762)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2024.114762
Gupta DSaia JYoung M(2023)Bankrupting Sybil despite churnJournal of Computer and System Sciences10.1016/j.jcss.2023.02.004135(89-124)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2023.02.004
Gupta DSaia JYoung M(2021)Bankrupting Sybil Despite Churn2021 IEEE 41st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS51616.2021.00048(425-437)Online publication date: Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS51616.2021.00048
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Index Terms

Conflict on a communication channel
1. Networks
  1. Network types
    1. Mobile networks
    2. Wireless access networks
2. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms
    1. Approximation algorithms analysis
      1. Routing and network design problems

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cover image ACM Conferences

PODC '11: Proceedings of the 30th annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS symposium on Principles of distributed computing

June 2011

406 pages

ISBN:9781450307192

DOI:10.1145/1993806

General Chair:
Cyril Gavoille
LaBRI, University of Bordeaux, France
,
Program Chair:
Pierre Fraigniaud
CNRS and University of Paris Diderot, France

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

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Published: 06 June 2011

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June 6 - 8, 2011

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Overall Acceptance Rate 740 of 2,477 submissions, 30%

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Cited By

Chakraborty TSaia JYoung M(2024)Defending Hash Tables from Algorithmic Complexity Attacks with Resource BurningTheoretical Computer Science10.1016/j.tcs.2024.114762(114762)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2024.114762
Gupta DSaia JYoung M(2023)Bankrupting Sybil despite churnJournal of Computer and System Sciences10.1016/j.jcss.2023.02.004135(89-124)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2023.02.004
Gupta DSaia JYoung M(2021)Bankrupting Sybil Despite Churn2021 IEEE 41st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)10.1109/ICDCS51616.2021.00048(425-437)Online publication date: Jul-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS51616.2021.00048
Anderton WChakraborty TYoung M(2021)Windowed backoff algorithms for WiFi: theory and performance under batched arrivalsDistributed Computing10.1007/s00446-021-00403-9Online publication date: 13-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-021-00403-9
Chen HZheng CEmek YCachin C(2020)Brief Announcement: Resource Competitive Broadcast against Adaptive Adversary in Multi-channel Radio NetworksProceedings of the 39th Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing10.1145/3382734.3405697(286-288)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3382734.3405697
Aggarwal ASaia J(2020)ANTS on a PlaneStructural Information and Communication Complexity10.1007/978-3-030-54921-3_3(47-62)Online publication date: 28-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54921-3_3
Chang YKopelowitz TPettie SWang RZhan W(2019)Exponential Separations in the Energy Complexity of Leader ElectionACM Transactions on Algorithms10.1145/334111115:4(1-31)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341111
Chen HZheng CScheideler CBerenbrink P(2019)Fast and Resource Competitive Broadcast in Multi-channel Radio NetworksThe 31st ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures10.1145/3323165.3323186(179-189)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
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Khan ZLehtomäki JVasilakos AMackenzie AJuntti M(2018)Adaptive wireless communications under competition and jamming in energy constrained networksWireless Networks10.1007/s11276-016-1324-x24:1(151-171)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11276-016-1324-x
King VPettie SSaia JYoung M(2018)A resource-competitive jamming defenseDistributed Computing10.1007/s00446-017-0313-331:6(419-439)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00446-017-0313-3
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