4 ms·

> you are assuming that torrents only work when there are seeders, but that's not true at all. No, I'm saying that if someone is trying to DDoS your torrent, t

by x1798DE 10y ago

> you are assuming that torrents only work when there are seeders, but that's not true at all. No, I'm saying that if someone is trying to DDoS your torrent, the bandwidth doesn't scale with the number of downloaders because all the malicious nodes are using download bandwidth but (deliberately) not providing upload bandwidth. I was playing a bit fast and loose with the term "leecher" (I meant someone downloading but <i>not uploading at all</i>, as opposed to active participants in the swarm), but I thought that was understood. Even if you had a system where people were prioritized based on how much they were sharing, there are a lot of ways to get around that protocol with a big enough botnet. Don't get me wrong, the built-in scaling features of things like torrents are great, I'm just saying I don't see an easy way for it to solve DDoS because it relies on cooperation from the participants.

the8472 10y ago
Well, that depends on what kind of ddos we're talking about. The primitive ones simply pick a server and flood it with some kind of request. The distributed part makes it harder to block and provides more bandwidth than most single points can take If you make your content distributed it can be mirrored by many more nodes than are needed to satisfy demand, removing some of the asymmetry while also making it more difficult for the attacker to pick his targets. Note that p2p networks can also respond to demand. E.g. in torrents clients don't seed all the content they have all the time, they first check statistics which swarms could use the bandwidth most. So if there were some content under attack by fake downloaders it would look like a swarm in need of extra bandwidth and thus more real nodes would join it to serve content, thus making the attack more costly. > Even if you had a system where people were prioritized based on how much they were sharing, there are a lot of ways to get around that protocol with a big enough botnet. With a big enough botnet you can also take out any ddos protection service.
user5994461 10y ago
The P2P protocols are penalizing leechers. Or to be accurate, your client is giving priority (for you to upload) to people who are uploading contents to you.
nebabyte 10y ago
> because all the malicious nodes are using download bandwidth but (deliberately) not providing upload bandwidth And avoiding being throtted how?

by x1798DE 10y ago

the8472 10y ago

Well, that depends on what kind of ddos we're talking about. The primitive ones simply pick a server and flood it with some kind of request. The distributed part makes it harder to block and provides more bandwidth than most single points can take If you make your content distributed it can be mirrored by many more nodes than are needed to satisfy demand, removing some of the asymmetry while also making it more difficult for the attacker to pick his targets. Note that p2p networks can also respond to demand. E.g. in torrents clients don't seed all the content they have all the time, they first check statistics which swarms could use the bandwidth most. So if there were some content under attack by fake downloaders it would look like a swarm in need of extra bandwidth and thus more real nodes would join it to serve content, thus making the attack more costly. > Even if you had a system where people were prioritized based on how much they were sharing, there are a lot of ways to get around that protocol with a big enough botnet. With a big enough botnet you can also take out any ddos protection service.

user5994461 10y ago

The P2P protocols are penalizing leechers. Or to be accurate, your client is giving priority (for you to upload) to people who are uploading contents to you.

nebabyte 10y ago

> because all the malicious nodes are using download bandwidth but (deliberately) not providing upload bandwidth And avoiding being throtted how?