A Distributed Denial-of-Service(DDoS) Attack Using BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer(P2P) Network

Recently, many hackers attacks are done with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) strategy. Most famous centralized Peer to Peer (P2P) networks can be easily used for realize these attacks. File-sharing protocols such BitTorrent or an extension of Gnutella use centralized server for orchestrate 7-level connections between peers. This procedure create a point-of-failure because malicious centralized-server modifies can redirect peer connections toward a target machine on a specific port. Main attack's aim is exhausting machine resources, causing denial-of-service. However, are not generated big traffic peaks: are only setted big number of connections which are maintained alive until timeout. This paper analysed distributed denial-of-service attacks realized with a p2p file-sharing network by unconscious peers and possible methods of defence with their advantages and disadvantages.