S4h : A peer-to-peer search engine with explicit trust

Abstract

S4h is a peer-to-peer search engine with explicit trust. By using a complaint-based reputation system in conjunction with the established peer-to-peer building block of a Kademlia-based distributed hash table, the search engine is built with the ability to use indirect knowledge to remove peers that act maliciously, thereby minimizing common attacks against search engines including censorship and promoting. I developed an implementation of the design and ran experiments to validate that the combined behavior works as the reputation system expects.