OSDI '06 Proceedings of the 7th symposium on Operating systems design and implementation
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Many current distributed systems users that will are satiable; users will stop providing service to others if they are themselves receiving a sufficient quantity of service. This is often the product of "tit-for-tat-like" designs, which attempt to combat free riding by denying service to those who are not providing it. While this approach provides an incentive for cooperation, it has the unfortunate side effect that if there is no service for a peer to provide, then he will generally receive reduced or no service. Ironically, this opens the systems up to an attack that we call the lotus-eater attack: the attacker supplies the service to some peers, thus satiating them. Once those peers are satiated, they stop providing service to others. The peers not being satiated by the attacker then receive reduced or no service. A wide range of systems are satiable and thus potentially vulnerable to this attack. In BitTorrent, peers restrict trade to the best partners they can find. Similarly, in BAR Gossip peers stop trading when there is nothing they want. In scrip systems, peers need to perform service for others often enough to maintain a supply of money and will stop once their supply is adequate. Even systems not designed to be tit-for-tat-like may be satiable. For example, a node in a sensor network might shut down to save power if it has received all the updates it needs.