A Survey of Attacks on the BitTorrent Protocol from Its Operational Viewpoints 1 Soojin Kim, 2 Seungoh Choi, and 1,2,3 Byeong-hee Roh 1 Dept. of Information and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea 2 Dept. of Computer Engineering, Graduate School, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea 3 Dept. of Software Convergence Technology, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea {strawvery, uwer1, bhroh}@ajou.ac.kr Abstract As BitTorrent has become one of the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing protocols, various security threats have appeared from its vulnerable protocol architecture. In this paper, we analyzed the vulnerabilities of BitTorrent protocol, and surveyed existing attacks on the protocol. Then, we classified the attacks from the protocol’s operational viewpoints. Basically, the protocols are categorized into two parts: tracker-based and trackerless. Keywords: BitTorrent, Tracker, Peer-to-peer networks, Attack, DDoS 1. Introduction Recently, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing applications consume a great part of the Internet backbone bandwidth. With the distributive nature of P2P applications, the P2P protocols provide more efficient file sharing capability than traditional client-server-based protocols [1]. The BitTorrent [2] has gained the most popularity in P2P users due to its capability of more scalable architecture and rapid file distribution than other P2P protocols. The BitTorrent adopts file- centric design and incentive-based operation. Numerous BitTorrent client programs running on various operating systems have been developed, and they are compatible with each other. So, users can choose any client program to access BitTorrent P2P networks. However, the BitTorrent encounters various security threats as in most of Internet applications. There have been much of works on the BitTorrent attacks [3][5]-[25][31]-[33], which are not only similar ones as in other P2P protocols, but also those applicable only to the BitTorrent from its inherent protocol architecture. In this paper, we analyze vulnerabilities of the BitTorrent protocol, and survey existing attacks on the protocol. Then, we classify the attacks from the protocol’ s operational viewpoints. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we briefly describe the BitTorrent protocol architecture. In Section 3, the survey of attacks on the BitTorrent protocol is illustrated. Finally, we conclude the paper in Section 4. 2. The BitTorrent Architecture [2] The BitTorrent architecture is composed of three entities: a tracker, a seeder (peers with the entire file), and a leecher (non-seeder peers). The tracker is responsible for managing swarms. A swarm is a group of peers having the content with same file identifier. The file identifier includes file directory, file piece, file information, and so on, and is generated by using a hash function. When a seeder wants to share a file, the seeder provides a torrent file including the metadata for whom it desired, and then announces to the tracker about the shared file. Once the tracker obtains the announced message from the seeder, it generates a swarm for the file unless the tracker finds other exact-matched swarm. If a leecher requests the swarm to the tracker by using torrent file or magnet, the tracker provides the swarm to the leecher. Likewise, the tracker plays a key role in providing the requested information to the leechers as a coordinator in a centralized manner. After obtaining the swarm from the tracker, the leecher starts to communicate with peers in the swarm without the tracker. Then, the leecher periodically requests pieces of the file to the peers by sending INTEREST messages, and advertises the information on the pieces it has by sending HAVE and BIT- FIELD messages. By repeating requests and advertisements on the pieces, the leecher finally completes A Survey of Attacks on the BitTorrent Protocol from Its Operational Viewpoints Soojin Kim, Seungoh Choi, Byeong-hee Roh Research Notes in Information Science (RNIS) Volume14,June 2013 doi:10.4156/rnis.vol14.80 449
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A Survey of Attacks on the BitTorrent Protocol from Its Operational
Viewpoints
1Soojin Kim,
2Seungoh Choi, and
1,2,3Byeong-hee Roh
1Dept. of Information and Computer Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea
2Dept. of Computer Engineering, Graduate School, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea
3Dept. of Software Convergence Technology, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea
{strawvery, uwer1, bhroh}@ajou.ac.kr
Abstract As BitTorrent has become one of the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing protocols, various
security threats have appeared from its vulnerable protocol architecture. In this paper, we analyzed
the vulnerabilities of BitTorrent protocol, and surveyed existing attacks on the protocol. Then, we
classified the attacks from the protocol’s operational viewpoints. Basically, the protocols are
categorized into two parts: tracker-based and trackerless.