Malicious Files and Vaux
One of the key tenets of the VauxIo project is the inability to delete files. However since anyone can upload files to a vaux node there needs to be a way to prevent the spread of malicious files. An example of such a file is a massive file filled with random data. The server will be unable to tell if its junk or, encrypted data we care about. I’ve been thinking about how to fix this for the last few days and this blog post is me trying to figure out how I want to implement this.
Possible Solution: Voting
The first thought I had was a voting system. Users on each node can flag a file as malicious. The node then tells the nodes it is peered with that this file is bad. In this way each node gets a vote on if the file should be deleted. If a majority of nodes think the file should be deleted it will be. My friend Ryan pointed out that by doing a straight vote, unpopular files could be voted off the network. In order to fix this he suggested that when a vote is complete a spam score is set for the file. This score is the percentage of nodes that voted in favor of removing the file. Each node then can set a maximum allowed spam score. In this way even if people try and vote unpopular files off the network they can still survive on nodes with a high spam tolerance. A system designed like this will mitigate the spread of bad files while still protecting legitimate files from being removed from the network.
The Problem with Voting.
The problem with this system is that it is easy for people to swing the vote by just spinning up a bunch of nodes and having them vote in their favor. A possible solution to this, is to change how the vaux network is designed. If the vaux network is built more like a tree in that each node has parents and children we can then use that as a way to prevent vote spamming. What I’ve been thinking about it giving each sub tree within the full tree a single vote. Each node can only send 1 vote to its parent. That vote is either a majority vote of its subtrees, or its own opinion if it is a leaf node. In theory, this doing this will prevent spam votes from actually swaying the majority of the entire network.
Final Thoughts
This is just a rough idea of what I’ve been thinking about the last few days. I’m not sure if it will work or if its feasible but it should make it possible for the VauxIo network to self regulate itself when it comes to malicious files. Questions and comments are welcome.