An Analysis of OSN based Sybil Defenses

Details

Supervisor:	David Koll
Duration:	3-6 months
Type:	Student Project and/or Master Thesis
Status:	open

A Sybil attack can inject many forged identities (called Sybils) to subvert a target system. Because of the severe damage that Sybil attacks can cause to a wide range of networking applications, there has been a proliferation of Sybil defense schemes. Of particular attention are those that explore the online social networks (OSNs) of users in a victim system in different ways. Unfortunately, while effective Sybil defense solutions are urgently needed, it is unclear how effective these OSN-based solutions are under different contexts. For example, all current approaches have focused on a common, classical scenario where it is difficult for an attacker to link Sybils with honest users and create attack edges; however, researchers have found recently that a modern scenario also becomes typical where an attacker can employ simple strategies to obtain many attack edges.

In this work we want to analyze the state of OSN-based Sybil defenses. Our objective is not to design yet another solution, but rather to thoroughly analyze, measure, and compare how well or inadequate the well-known existing OSN-based approaches perform under both the classical scenario and the modern scenario.