Dec
6
I’ve been meaning to share this for some time, as I find the blurb on P2P dangers very well written. Last year, V3.co.uk (formerly Vnunet), released an article about the Top 10 Dangerous IT Technologies. Shaun Nichols and Iain Thompson offered the following write-up on the dangers of P2P. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:
7. Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology
Shaun Nichols: Imagine a system where people send each other boxes of food at random. Each person will receive some food from an unknown source which they will then eat and share among their family.If you had no idea who was making that food or what they put in it, you’d be more than a bit reluctant to eat it, wouldn’t you?
This is a lot like the risk posed by P2P networking. Just as taking candy from strangers is dangerous, so can downloading and opening software packages from strangers. File-sharing services are some of the best places to pick up malware infections. Even Mac users have been hit by malware from P2P networks.
Not only is P2P good for spreading malware, it’s good for managing those infections. Botnets such as Storm and Conficker use peer-to-peer techniques to manage their hordes of infected systems.
Iain Thomson: P2P is a genuinely useful technology, despite what the record companies would like you to think. It enables the efficient transport of large files and makes a lot of business models work.
But from a security standpoint it’s highly dangerous. After all, you’re downloading what you hope is the right file from someone you don’t know. Given the fact that I check with the sender before opening every email attachment, the idea of downloading via P2P gives me the willies, and sends security buffs wild.
P2P could be safe if we had a decent system of reputation online. People’s online habits could be correlated into a system whereby users could tell if they were trustworthy, something that would not only make P2P much safer but help overall online commerce. Until then I’ll stick to legitimate downloads, thanks.
Read more: http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2241965/top-dangerous-technologies#ixzz17N0I7bNi
