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posted by n1 on Friday August 22 2014, @06:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-bits-from-you dept.

TorrentFreak reports:

New research reveals that BitTorrent swarms can be slowed down significantly by malicious peers. Depending on the number of seeders and the clients they use, download times can be increased by 1000%. The attacks are possible through an exploit of the BitTorrent protocol for which the researchers present a fix.

[...] In an article published in "Computers & Security", Adamsky and his colleagues reveal an exploit which allows attackers to get a higher download rate from seeders than other people.

In technical terms, the exploit misuses BitTorrent's choking mechanism of clients that use the "Allowed Fast" extension. Attackers can use this to keep a permanent connection with seeders, requesting the same pieces over and over.

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  • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday August 22 2014, @07:10PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Friday August 22 2014, @07:10PM (#84445)

    ...violate the CFAA?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @01:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @01:45AM (#84821)

    They are bound to use this technique to block illegal downloads of their content--all they have to do is use IP addresses that are not blocked by PeerGuardian [wikipedia.org] and the like.

    Another poster mentioned:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act [wikipedia.org]

    As grounds to go after hosts that do this.

    If the hosts are 'owned' by HugeMultinationalCo, suing them in court on denial-of-service grounds is POINTLESS unless you are a HugeMultinationalCo yourself....