Delivery-Date: Tue Nov 25 11:50:35 2008
Message-Id: <200811251949.mAPJnHwv010576@bourbon.usc.edu>
To: cs551@merlot.usc.edu
Subject: Re: Get Flood
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:49:17 -0800
From: Bill Cheng <william@bourbon.usc.edu>

Someone wrote:

  > Can you explain what does plausible deniability mean?

One important feature of the SERVANT network is that it
provides anonymity.  It's not just about you cannot know
who initiate a STORE or who initiated a GET.  You have
anonymity for all messages (except the ones that where
put in to allow grading).

All messages are either flooded or forwarded.  So, a node
can deny that it's the recipient of a message and claim
that it's only forwarding a message.  Similarly, a node
can deny that it's the origin of a message and claim that
it's only forwarding a message.  This way, unless the
authority can record most of the traffic in the SERVANT
network, it would be difficult for the authority to figure
out exactly who initiated a message and who was the intended
recipient of the message.
--
Bill Cheng // bill.cheng@usc.edu <URL:http://merlot.usc.edu/william/usc/>


  On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 8:27 AM, Bill Cheng <william@bourbon.usc.edu> wrote:
  > Someone wrote:
  >
  >  > When get message is flooded, suppose a node gets the message and
  >  > identifies the fileid and sha1 as being the ones that belong to a file
  >  > it has, then should it send the get response and not flood the request
  >  > or should it still flood the request message.
  >
  > It should continue to flood the GET request for the reason
  > of plausible deniability.
  > --
  > Bill Cheng // bill.cheng@usc.edu <URL:http://merlot.usc.edu/william/usc/>