| Title | Exploit Allows Malicious Peers to Slow Down BitTorrent Seeders' Bandwidth | |
| Date | Friday August 22 2014, @06:57PM | |
| Author | n1 | |
| Topic | ||
| 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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printed from SoylentNews, Exploit Allows Malicious Peers to Slow Down BitTorrent Seeders' Bandwidth on 2024-04-24 22:57:25