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Security analysis of the micro transport protocol with a misbehaving receiver
BitTorrent is the most widely used Peer-to-Peer (P2P) protocol and it comprises the largest share of traffic in Europe. To make BitTorrent more Internet Service Provider (ISP) friendly, BitTorrent Inc. invented the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP). It is based on UDP with a novel congestion control called Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT). This protocol assumes that the receiver always gives correct feedback, since otherwise this deteriorates throughput or yields to corrupted data. We show through experimental investigation that a misbehaving uTP receiver, which is not interested in data integrity, can increase the bandwidth of the sender by up to five times. This can cause a congestion collapse and steal large share of a victim’s bandwidth. We present three attacks, which increase the bandwidth usage significantly. We have tested these attacks in a real world environment and show its severity both in terms of number of packets and total traffic generated. We also present a countermeasure for protecting against the attacks and evaluate the performance of that defence strategy
The evolution of P2P networks for file exchange: the interaction between social controversy and technical change
Since the irruption of Napster in 1999, Peer-to-Peer computer networks for file exchange have been at the heart of a heated debate that has eventually evolved into a wide social controversy across the world, involving legal, economical, and even political issues. This essay analyzes the effects of this controversy on the technical innovations that have shaped the evolution of those systems. It argues that the usual image of a single two-sided conflict does not account for most of the technical changes involved. P2P entrepreneurs and creators show a wide range of motivations and business strategies -if any- and users are not a monolithic group with a common set of goals and values. As a result, the actual historical evolution of those networks does not follow a simple linear path but a more complex and multidirectional development
Understanding the Properties of the BitTorrent Overlay
In this paper, we conduct extensive simulations to understand the properties
of the overlay generated by BitTorrent. We start by analyzing how the overlay
properties impact the efficiency of BitTorrent. We focus on the average peer
set size (i.e., average number of neighbors), the time for a peer to reach its
maximum peer set size, and the diameter of the overlay. In particular, we show
that the later a peer arrives in a torrent, the longer it takes to reach its
maximum peer set size. Then, we evaluate the impact of the maximum peer set
size, the maximum number of outgoing connections per peer, and the number of
NATed peers on the overlay properties. We show that BitTorrent generates a
robust overlay, but that this overlay is not a random graph. In particular, the
connectivity of a peer to its neighbors depends on its arriving order in the
torrent. We also show that a large number of NATed peers significantly
compromise the robustness of the overlay to attacks. Finally, we evaluate the
impact of peer exchange on the overlay properties, and we show that it
generates a chain-like overlay with a large diameter, which will adversely
impact the efficiency of large torrents
A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment
As ISPs face IPv4 address scarcity they increasingly turn to network address
translation (NAT) to accommodate the address needs of their customers.
Recently, ISPs have moved beyond employing NATs only directly at individual
customers and instead begun deploying Carrier-Grade NATs (CGNs) to apply
address translation to many independent and disparate endpoints spanning
physical locations, a phenomenon that so far has received little in the way of
empirical assessment. In this work we present a broad and systematic study of
the deployment and behavior of these middleboxes. We develop a methodology to
detect the existence of hosts behind CGNs by extracting non-routable IP
addresses from peer lists we obtain by crawling the BitTorrent DHT. We
complement this approach with improvements to our Netalyzr troubleshooting
service, enabling us to determine a range of indicators of CGN presence as well
as detailed insights into key properties of CGNs. Combining the two data
sources we illustrate the scope of CGN deployment on today's Internet, and
report on characteristics of commonly deployed CGNs and their effect on end
users
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