BitTorrent Servers Under DDoS Attacks

jZnat writes "CNet News.com reports that popular BitTorrent tracker hosts such as Suprnova and LokiTorrent underwent DDoS attacks on Wednesday (I'll bet you noticed). The culprits are primarily unknown, but these sites were flooded beyond control from the attack. This appears to be striking an interest in revising the BT protocol and Suprnova's interest in making their own protocol."

Come on

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know it's the MPAA and RIAA.

Re:Come on

[femto]

You may jest, but read some of the reports coming out of the current Kazza case in Australia.

For example [smh.com.au]:

The Federal Court heard yesterday that the major record labels are also engaged in a program of actively disrupting the file-sharing network by bombarding it with billions of decoys and spoofs that pose as song files.

On the bright side, the article also contains the following quote from the judge:

The judge said it was important that any legal remedy did not trespass on freedom of communication. "You are entitled to protect copyright. You are not entitled to control the internet," he said.

The list of suspects

[WebCowboy]

...is longer than that. It could be an intriguing investigation...kind of like "who shot JR".

RIAA if I'm not mistaken lobbied (unsucdessfully thank goodness) to have legislation put in place to permit them to hack into suspect computers at their discretion if I recall, and MPAA is just another pea in that IP-hoarding pod.

Other suspects? There are too many to mention, but boradly speaking they might fall into one of several categories besides the above:

* Large closed source software vendors or someone connected to them (Microsoft, etc). They would be trying to shut down a big source of piracy. I doubt it is Microsoft, they are not that dumb. In any case suprnova et al are not the right target...that is shooting the messenger, not the perpetrators who make use of their resources.

* One of the above-mentioned perpetrators (copyright violators who up/download cracked software and movies). I've noticed that a sizeable minority of heavy BT users out there are immature and petty (probably teenagers sequestered in their basements). If they are knocked off suprnova or similar sites or are slagged in a community forum they get all out of joint and retaliate. The stupid turds brought it on themselves and such retaliation is not warranted.

* Some of the seedier on-line proprietors, such as those who run revenue generating sites imitating the free suprnova.org, because if the free sites go away it might steer more revenue to them. I wouldn't put it past them

* Commercial porno sites. P2P networks are full of porn (you don't even have to search on an obvious sexual keyword sometimes) and it is pretty much all ripped off of some pay site. Most (not all, but most) on-line porn businesses are run by people lacking morals and intelligence (witness the whining by one porno purveyor about Google caching thumbnail images and deep-linking into his site with regard to the latter). SO it is very likely a porn-vendor arranged the dDOS attacks.

Part of me hopes it really was RIAA or MPAA...they are cartels that are unhealthy for the industry and it would be cool if there was finally a reason to shut them down. However, I think it's one of the latter 3 groups I mentioned.

Re:The list of suspects

[Breakfast Pants]

You mention all these people as if there has to be a motive other than "its a popular site." It was most likely a 13 year old.

Re:explain me ?

[ultranova]

Can anyone explain the torrent principle ?

Suppose server X hosts a really popular large file of, say, 100MB in size. Suppose that server only has 1MB/sec upstream bandwith. Suppose users A and B both want the file. The server needs to send the file twice, once for A and once for B. Obviously, this takes twice as long as sending the file just once. And if there's two more people, C and D, also downloading the file, it needs to be sent four times and takes four times as long as sending it only once. In other words, the more people are downloading the file, the slower each download gets.

The torrent principle tries to solve this problem. The idea is that A and B start downloading different parts of the large file. For example, A could start downloading the first half and B the second half. Once A has downloaded some of the file, he starts sending it to B, and B does the same. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that both A and B have the same bandwith as the server, and that everyone has the same up- and downstream bandwith.

Now, A is getting the file from server X at 1/2 MB per second. A is also downloading the file from B at 1/2 MB per second, and thus is getting a combined speed of 1 MB/sec. The same goes for B.

This is the torrent principle: use the upstream bandwith of downloaders to help ease the load on server.

Now, A and B need to learn about each other's existence in order to cooperate in this way. In BitTorrent, this is done via a tracker. You download a small torrent file, which contains the address of the tracker, the names and sizes of the files in this torrent, and checksums for each part of the file (to prevent people from sending fake parts). Someone generated this torrent file from file(s) he had on his computer, uploaded it to a torrent tracker, and then launched BitTorrent. BitTorrent checks the files against the checksums, notices that there is no pieces missing, and thus doesn't try to download any - just upload (making it a so-called "seed"). It then connects to a tracker and lets it know that "I'm here". When someone else uses this torrent file, their BitTorrent client connects to the tracker, asks for addresses of peers, and starts downloading pieces from them (and uploading pieces to them - there is a simple "tit for tat" method that ensures that you serve best the nodes which upload to you, thus ensuring that everyone will indeed participate). Once a node gets all the file pieces and has thus finished the download, it becomes a "seed" and keeps on uploading untill the user terminates it.

So, the trackers are absolutely vital for BitTorrent; without them, the clients can not learn about each other, and thus can't connect to each other and up- and download.

Re:explain me ?

[AKnightCowboy]

Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that both A and B have the same bandwith as the server, and that everyone has the same up- and downstream bandwith.

Of course, we all know that's never true which is the problem with other P2P software. ADSL and cable modems unfairly favor downloading (consuming) content rather than uploading (serving). This is just another example of the corporate world trying to control the dissemination of information. There's no good technical reason they couldn't run a symmetrical DSL signal over your voice line like they do ADSL, they just don't want to. It's the same reason many of these ISPs still require you to login via PPPoE and get a dynamic IP for your "always on, high speed dedicated connection". They're stuck in a 1995 mentality of dialup users consuming content rather than sharing information. Dynamic IPs on cable and DSL really bug me. You can get one plan with dynamic IP and PPPoE from SBC for $29/month, but add in a static IP and suddenly you're looking at $75/month. WTF? You need to account for that customer using an IP address whether you assign it dynamically or whether it is static... why the rape on static prices?

Re:explain me ?

[cdrudge]

The corporate world isn't trying to control the dissemination of information. They are protecting their profits. It's not necessary for them to have symetric lines for most DSL customers as their downloading habits are very much skewed towards the download bandwidth. It's also cheaper for them to provide aDSL service then it is to provide sDSL. Upload bandwidth I beleive is more expensive, bit for bit, then the download. There is also distance limitations on the speeds available. sDSL may work well at relative slow speeds, but once you get to faster speeds, the upload speeds greatly reduce. Verizon offers download speeds between 768kbit@18,000 feet and and 7.1mbit@9,000 feet. There is no way that they can provide 7.1mbit upload speeds@9,000 feet.

Dynamic IP addresses are used for several reasons. The first is that it discourages customers from running servers. It doesn't eliminate it, but it makes it more of an inconvienence.

Those that truly need static addresses typically are willing to pay a premium for it. Business customers for instance. They can't afford to have e-mail not delivered or their website unavailable during that short period when an IP address may be updated. In this case, it is about the $$$. Most ISPs will renew a lease so in effect your dynamic address is typically static, but it's not guaranteed though.

Dynamic addresses are also cheaper for the ISP. In many cases the addresses aren't actually owned by the ISP but instead "leased" to them. The ISP ends up paying for each one of them. If they give everyone static, they need to have 1 or more addresses per customer. If they hand them out on a as-needed basis, they can save money as not everyone needs one at all times. At most they would need the same number of addresses as what they would need with static. At the least, they would need 1 per active customer. As leases expire the addresses can be reused, reducing the total number of addresses needed over the long term.

PPPoE is used because it can simplify the back end support and accounting process for the ISP as they can use essentially the same system for both dialup and DSL customers. If everyone is essentially treated as a PPP customer, regardless of the actual connection method, the same authenticaion servers can be used, the same tracking/billing servers, etc. ISPs didn't have to get another set of conectivity to migrate dialup users over to DSL.

Re:explain me ?

[Hatta]

The corporate world isn't trying to control the dissemination of information. They are protecting their profits.

Same thing.

It's not necessary for them to have symetric lines for most DSL customers as their downloading habits are very much skewed towards the download bandwidth. It's also cheaper for them to provide aDSL service then it is to provide sDSL. Upload bandwidth I beleive is more expensive, bit for bit, then the download.

How about cable? There's no technical reason for asymmetric cable conn

Re:explain me ?

[myov]

Dynamic IP addresses are used for several reasons. The first is that it discourages customers from running servers. It doesn't eliminate it, but it makes it more of an inconvienence.


My dynamic IP changes once a year. It has nothing to do with running a server (dyndns anyone?) - if they wanted to do that, they would be blocking inbound ports. If anyone remembers @home, you could actually configure your machine for static once you received your IP (which was necessary due to the stability of fetching a DH

Re:explain me ?

[gbjbaanb]

If 'the man' wanted to control dissemination of information you'd think he'd try to limit downloads, not uploads.

I think you've bought into the conspiracy that just doesn;t exist. All these ISPs don;t care what you do, they only care that you pay them and don;t cause them any (costly) support calls.

Adding a static IP is something they *can* charge you extra for and people will pay it. So they do.

In the UK, my ISP gives a free static IP if you ask for it, so I have one. I think they have different cost mo

Stinks of RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA adopting Lycos's tactics?

Re:Stinks of RIAA

[gl4ss]

or lycos selling it's services, or mpaa/riaa spamming on behalf of suprnova to get them attacked?

talk about a can of worms, that lycos screensaver...

Re:Stinks of RIAA

[m50d]

I wonder if it was a put-up job by the Spammer's Alliance to show us all that DDoSing is really a bad thing.

Some possibilities to check out

[MickLinux]

You know, I have 5 moderator points, and I just couldn't find a single good post to mod up, here. So I'll say what I think needs saying.

How do you know that the Lycos spam-DDoS screen saver *isn't* what is taking out bittorrent?

I can think of a number of possibilities, any of which might be worth investigation.

(1) - As was mentioned elsewhere, it *could* be that lycos is leasing its services out to the RIAA.

(2) - It could be that the spammers are using Bittorrent servers

(3) - It could be that the spammers have hijacked the bittorrent servers (as I understand, a lot of bittorrent hijacking has come from China. Perhaps not coincidentally, a lot of spammers use servers in China to host their activities.)

(4) - It could be that the spammers have somehow masked their servers' real identities to look like bittorrent servers.

There are a few possibilities that might be worth checking out. Anyhow, I'll hold onto my 5 points, I guess. Shoot, I might just deposit them in the bank and wait till inflation takes em out.

Slashdot just ain't what it used to be (as you can tell by looking at my low slashdot ID number).

Re:Some possibilities to check out

[jimand]

I must be a long-time member. I don't think I've ever been able to respond to a "low slashdot ID" comment with "that's not low, you nube".

Re:Some possibilities to check out

[Legion303]

"Slashdot just ain't what it used to be (as you can tell by looking at my low slashdot ID number)."

In my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow for 5 miles to drop our posts in the Slashdot suggestion box.

Both ways.

To add insult to injury...

[Infinityis]

As if that weren't enough, now they'll most certainly feel some variant of the Slashdot effect as people try to check it out. Way to go!

Re:To add insult to injury...

[MC Negro]

As if that weren't enough, now they'll most certainly feel some variant of the Slashdot effect

No linky in the blerb. Most of slashdot has adopted the custom of simply middle-clicking a link to a new tab and then avoiding all forms of digesting information from that opened link (it's what's fashionable now). I seriously doubt the average Slashdot reader will take the time to resort to the arcane practice of TYPING URLs simply to simulate the view of smoldering server ashes. They'll wait until IBM releases the their next voice-to-text software program ("UNCLE SPEAK & SPELL, ENTERPRISE EDITION") for that.

Although I was hoping for a link in the blerb. Maybe that would induct "Best Gang-Raping of a Server" into the awards section.

Re:To add insult to injury...

[mrbuttboy]

....typing URLs .....like,by hand? what,everybody doesn't highling-right click-open in new tab?.....wow.....

I love firefox.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:To add insult to injury...

[Bob Uhl]

Some of us just use the middle button as God intended...

Firefox now has a setting to open links from other apps in a new tab. That's the great thing about free software: useful features do get added in a timely fashion--and if they don't you can add them yourself.

Flaw in your logic

[Raul654]

You have a fatal flaw in your logic. You are assuming that people will read the article.

I can see it now...

[Infinityis]

Future Slashdot headline: Lycos apologizes for wrongly targeted DDoS attacks

Re:I can see it now...

[damiam]

Suprnova traffics in torrent files, not copyrighted material. Of the content represented by those torrents, pretty much all of it is legal in some parts of the world.

Re:I can see it now...

[cpt kangarooski]

So, by my saying that there is a place on the web called suprnova.org, I've just contributed to the infringement of copyright? Should I be prosecuted for spreading information that someone might use illegally?

Maybe.

If that was a material contribution, there was a direct infringement, and you had actual or constructive knowledge of such infringement, then yes.

My favorite case on this -- because it's clearly written and tends to shock people; I don't actually like the holding -- is Intellectual Reserve v. [uh.edu]

suprnova.com and .net

[dncsky1530]

I would like to know whether suprnova.com and suprnova.net were hit by the DDoS attacks. They try and maky money of the popularity of suprnova.org and there are a number of people that actually get suckered into paying those sites.

Re:suprnova.com and .net

[Infinityis]

Oh, good idea, I shou^H^H^H^H^H^H whoever is the culprit should have done that. You're absolutely right.

Re:suprnova.com and .net

[usernotfound]

my suitemate saw me using suprnova.org, and promply went to his room, and signed up for suprnova.com.

if only he had asked me what i was doing...but i got a good laugh out of it.

Re:suprnova.com and .net

[Rufus211]

it's all about the original suprnova.tk (which no longer works...)

Re:suprnova.com and .net

[guttergod]

It is more likely that the attacks originates from the fake suprnovas. If the main sources for torrents go down, they might sucker yet more users to pay for their service.

So it's time to...

[WARM3CH]

So it's time to switch to a serverless network under an open-source project? You mean something like Kademlia in the eMule [emule-project.net]?

Re:So it's time to...

[Anonymous Coward]

or Gnutella, with a shitload of open source clients.

or Gnutella2, with Shareaza and Gnucleus and a few others.

or Freenet... or OpenFT...

Re:So it's time to...

[mrogers]

Gnutella is pretty easy to DoS, just launch as many queries as your connection can sustain, all with max TTL. Gnutella2 might be even easier because you can focus on superpeers. Not that they're bad filesharing systems, but whoever is DoSing BitTorrent could probably DoS Gnutella just as easily.

Next-gen P2P?

[Alwin Henseler]

So it's time to switch to a serverless network under an open-source project?

A network with no central servers or even 'supernodes' reduces the effect of DoS-attacks, and leaves no single person or company to attack with a lawsuit. But that alone isn't enough. Other problems remain, like the privacy issue. Many P2P networks reveal IP addresses of nodes on 'the other end'. Thus, after retrieval of a file, you know from what IP address(es) the file came from. That leaves the network vulnerable for attacks or legal steps against individual users.

To prevent this, it must be impossible to find out who/where a retrieved file (or search query) actually came from (IP, geographical location or otherwise).

Besides the well known Freenet [freenetproject.org], there's another promising one called ANts [sourceforge.net]. From what I can tell, it works by passing data between nodes, without passing info on the endpoints where data is coming from/going to. Each node passes data on, but doesn't know if the next node will keep it, or in turn pass it on to yet another node in a path. IP addresses are replaced with a virtual 'network ID' (regularly discarded), and combined with encryption, a single node can't tell what it's passing on, where it came from, or where it's going. IP addresses are only known for a few neighbours it contacts directly. For an analogy, think anonymous remailers. The project page also mentions something similar called MUTE [sourceforge.net]. I guess you could call projects like this 3rd generation P2P networks. Looking forward to it! (and please add if you know more like these)

Re:Next-gen P2P?

[mrogers]

There's also GNUnet [ovmj.org], which is similar to Freenet but with files broken up into equal-sized chunks to allow parallel downloads. All these systems are fine for avoiding an adversary like the RIAA that has limited powers and only wants to collect a few IP addresses for lawsuits, but they shouldn't be considered anonymous or censorship-resistant in any strong sense. Freenet, MUTE and JetiAnts can be DOSed pretty easily and GNUnet's anonymity can be undermined [ovmj.org]. I'm researching censorship-resistant communication for my PhD so I've got a literature review [ucl.ac.uk] and bibliography [ucl.ac.uk] online if you're interested.

Re:Next-gen P2P?

[ZorbaTHut]

One that I've been thinking of for a while is Kademlia-over-Tor. It seems like a natural matchup, and if you packaged the Tor client with SecureMule (or whatever you'd call it) it would only be maybe six times slower than normal. :)

Another nice advantage: suddenly firewalls don't matter, since every computer is connecting outwards to servers.

On the other hand, a nice stopgap solution is to just force eMule to route through Tor right now. You end up with a LowID but it works. Especially if you don't demand

Re: Exeem

[BobSutan]

They're already working on it.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/02/2016 24 4&tid=95

bad guys

[l3v1]

Whoever was responsible, it surely isn't one of the many-many, oh yes, and many other :) people, who use bittorent regularly to fetch stuff. That is, we all have some hunch who might be the bad guy: a). those who oppose all forms of sharing (won't name them, you know those bad, bad, bad guys in associations :) needn't have been themselves personally, but you know this alright b). somebody who just has something against suprnova or the others.

Re:bad guys

[shashark]

Napster creator unveils new company [ft.com] Any Coincidence ?

Re:bad guys

[Qzukk]

The sad thing is that it probably wasn't the MPAA or the RIAA. I've seen this over and over on several IRC networks (dalnet especially). Some idiot gets banned from their favorite channel, and instead of taking it like a man or going home and crying themselves to sleep, they get pissed off and start DDoSing the entire network. Since they got kicked, they have to ruin the fun for everyone.

I'm sure that in the end it will be something along these lines: someone in the forum started flaming, words were exchanged, feelings were hurt, and some pimply-faced 14 year old decided to get even.

Re:bad guys

[l3v1]

There must come a time when you will stop deluding yourselves on this mass scale. Your stealing stuff and these companies are not evil trying to stop you, you're the ones that are evil.

I don't think I'm the delusional here. I never stated pirating is good. Never would. But that doesn't justify the actions (generally, not specifically) of the beloved associations, which have been anything but ethical or agreeable.

What I'm tired of sometimtes are narrow people like yourself, sir, who see the sharing (be

Own protocol?

[tod_miller]

Suprnova's interest in making their own protocol.

I am all up for new protocols, but there is a reason why we do not have:

http, httmyp, tthpp, hhtp, mshttp [I wouldnt doubt], SCOhttp, HPhttp

Don't fragment the issues, work on a common protocol, if we can uncouple protocol and application (which has happened in all major networks I think) then good.

Go for it supe..r..pr..nva...! but make it open.

I kinda knew bit torrents would be attacked, can't they just publish the ip's that are attacking them, and get us to click on them a bit?

teardrop attack?

Fracturing is inevitable...

[Kjella]

...there's just too many variables that are directly opposing.

Central vs decentral
Peers vs supernodes vs superservers vs tracker
Anonymity vs speed
Integrity vs fuzzy search
Search by content vs by index vs by hash vs...
Routing vs direct links
Indexing vs index poisoning
Trust vs anonymity
Leeching vs control

It is impossible to create a network that can achieve all of them at once.

Http is by comparison a trivial protocol. It involves only the connection between two hosts. Creating a virtual network of P2P clients is more like reimplementing the whole of layers 3 (IP), 4 (TCP), 5 (sessions) in the OSI model.

Kjella

Dammit!

[halcyon1234]

I knew I shouldn't have installed that new screensaver from the MPAA.

I hope they do make their own protocol

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used bittorrent a fair bit for downloading and upload large files which either I own the copyright to, or the person distributing them does.

It's very good indeed when you want to distribute something from a slowish adsl line to maybe 30 or 40 people.

I was somewhat dismayed when I first found out anout these bittorrent file sharing sites because they are leading to bittorrent being considered a tool for "illegal" file sharing when it's clearly a very useful general tool too.

Of course I'm not happy th

Do you need a static IP to serve bittorrent?

[MichaelCrawford]

I'd like eventually to serve uncompressed WAV files of my piano compositions [geometricvisions.com] so people can burn quality CDs. Can I do this off my linux box over my cable modem?

I don't have the first clue how to get started. Thank you for enlightening me despite my not having already found the answer via google.

Re:Do you need a static IP to serve bittorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Michael,
Im hoping you read this ;).

You don't need a static IP, just get a DNS address from DynDNS.org for your tracker..or use a public tracker [http://thebeehive.info/?p=tlist&o=score&w=desc&o f f=0
is suprnovas list, i havent had much luck as of yet]
to host your torrent files and seed them.. If your files are popular, running a tracker AND seeding might be too much for your modem.

If you need any more help you can find my contact info @ lfi.net

- Mike

Re:Do you need a static IP to serve bittorrent?

[Lehk228]

do everyone a favor and post .flac files instead, smaller size for the same quality

Re:Do you need a static IP to serve bittorrent?

[k3v0]

Use a DynDns account and azureus [sourceforge.net]. It facilitates the making of the torrent file and has a nice web based tracker. You'll also need the Java JRE to run Azureus, btw.

A perfect example

[centipetalforce]

This is a perfect example of why it's not quite right to take the law into your own hands against someone who you **feel** is wrong.
I have had my site targeted before, and I run a completely legit, whitehat site. Just because someone thinks they're better off financially without a competitor does not mean he's justified to try to take me down.

The culprit

[Vulcann]

Lets see now....

I would be interested in doing a DDoS attack like this...

1. If I was a rival service trying to kill these guys.
2. If I were MPAA and wanted to kill these buggers off Blaster style.
3. If I were some dumb script kiddie trying to make a statement because of want of attention.

Point 1 doesnt make sense because it would make more sense for my service to figure out a way to plug into the rival network and siphon off they're shares. It would get me more notice and wont get me noticed as a nasty SO

Small-timers get it too

[captaineo]

I ran a very small BitTorrent tracker for distributing our videos. (2 torrents, very few clients)

A few weeks ago we started receiving a massive attack, mostly from client addresses in Asia.

The attack wasn't a DDoS per se - they were just "hijacking" my tracker by using it for their own torrents. But the volume of traffic (>100 requests/sec) had the effect of a DoS attack.

I was surprised that the standard BitTorrent server does not have some way to prevent unwanted torrents from appearing on your tracker. I was also surprised that my "small-time" tracker (only named by via 1 web page) attracted such a hijacking.

I will not run a tracker without the ability to deny usage to unwanted torrents. Although I'm uncertain about running any tracker at all now, since the hijack basically killed our internet connection.

At the very least, do not run a BitTorrent tracker on a critical DNS name like your primary web site. The attacking clients in my case were all performing DNS lookups. (I could tell they were attacking a DNS name, not an IP address, by changing my DNS entries). Luckily I had used a separate DNS entry for the tracker, so I just pointed it to 127.0.0.1 to stop the attack. But if I had used my primary web server's address, I'd be in real trouble.

Re:Small-timers get it too

[Pathwalker]

I was surprised that the standard BitTorrent server does not have some way to prevent unwanted torrents from appearing on your tracker.

Of course BitTorrent has a way to restrict the torrents a tracker will serve.

You set --allowed_dir and point it at a directory containing the torrents you want to allow.

I know it's been supported since 3.4.1a at the latest.

Re:Small-timers get it too

[m00nun1t]

I had a look at 127.0.0.1 to see what "videos" you are talking about. There's some really kinky videos there - pervert.

Re:Small-timers get it too

[Nogami_Saeko]

It's a good point about using an alternate address for your tracker - or even using an alternate static IP for that box if you have one available.

Most (all?) torrent servers offer an option to reject unauthorized external torrents though. I personally use Azureus, which is a great bittorrent client, as well as a server. There's an option in there to reject serving torrents that aren't authorized by the admin.

N.

Re:You think it was DDoS, but...

[hacker]

"I'm getting a bunch of ssh brute force attacks from asia too, check your logs everyone."

I too, was getting these about 2 months ago, a few hundred per-hour, until I decided to lock sshd down to known IPs that I regularly ssh from:

sshhosts="10.0.1.0/24 12.34.56.78 your.host.here";
for host in $sshhosts; do
iptables -A INPUT -j ACCEPT -p tcp -s $host --dport 22
done
iptables -A INPUT -j DROP -p tcp --dport 22

Problem solved. I'm going to be moving this to portknocking soon, so that'll open it back

Supernova is up

[gordgekko]

Supernova is up as of a few minutes ago but I can't get to Lokitorrent.

Loki's dead right now...

[Vertigo01]

As of right now (0047 : 03/12/2004 GMT-8) Loki Torrent seems to be dead... Slashdot effect? or another DDos ? (or is there a difference?)

ouch..

[sinner0423]

I'm not sure who is going to give sn.org/lt.com any sympathy over this, they are just glorified warez sites, after all.

Although this DoS does highlight the largest problem with BitTorrent - it still relies on a central(tracker) server to operate.

I believe it's that specific "function" of BT that got me one of those nifty letters [dslreports.com] in the mail. I can't see any kind of a workable solution to this problem, everything that has to do with file trading has an entry point somewhere along the line.

Can someone please explain to me

[fsterman]

Why we need another one? I mean besides the web links (which emule provides for)the reason Bittorrent has become so popular is for it's centralized nature. Not 30 thousand random files we search though, but picked files, somewhat filtered though for quality. I can't see how this is going to replicate that experiance and be decentralized. What is significantly different?

Re:Can someone please explain to me

[mrogers]

It's not centralization that prevents you from having to search through 30,000 random files, it's the ability to link to a particular file in a verifiable way. Merkle hash trees [open-content.net] can achieve the same thing in any filesharing network. In a hash tree the file is broken up into equal-sized chunks. The chunks form the bottom layer of the tree. Each chunk is hashed, and the concatenated hashes form the next layer of the tree. Repeat until there's only one hash, and that's your filename. You can request branches

Suprnova is down anyway

[Zorilla]

How is this different from how Suprnova.org has behaved lately? For the past ten days or so, they have been down more than they have been up. Either DDoS attacks have started long before Wednesday as reported, or they really are as incompetent as I thought they are when it comes to administering a web server.

(Disclaimer: I suck at Apache)

New protocols are not an answer

[gnuASM]

I find it interesting that the focus with regards to DDoS attacks that I have read about is not on proper security and precautions, but rather the client/server applications being attacked. Because your Apache server is DDoS'd, does that mean you distribute your website through ftp? Of course not, you take further security precautions and strengthen your protection against DDoS attacks. Why then should there be a need to "create a new protocol" to "protect" from attacks?

Protocols in and of themselves do not inherently have protection from these kinds of attacks. That is not the purpose of a protocol. The purpose of a protocol is to establish an agreed method of communications between two or more identified systems in a connection. This is where the problem persists: identification.

DDoS is not successful because it overrides the buffers or socket space for connections to a server. It is successful because these sockets are kept open longer than they should be.

What a server needs is not a "secure" protocol, because any protocol (method of communication) can be compromised so long as the attacker can make the protocol believe that an identified, valid entitiy has made a connection and intends to communicate.

Instead, system administrators need to strengthen the rules in their firewalling and subsystem (kernel) to improve the latency of the socket states so that the system will not fail when attacked. I believe GNU/Linux has many tools available as well as kernel modules already available in order to accomplish much of this already.

Rather than wasting time in creating YAP (Yet Another Protocol), the time and effort may be better utilized creating the system and firewalling tools needed to combat DDoS at its root.

This brings it even further to the point of not necessarily even having to reconfigure and install and reconfigure again the varied tools needed for server-side protection, but even look as close as the router itself and the built-in firewalls there.

I believe even Cisco has given some hardware advice for DDoS here [cisco.com].

We don't necessarily need to be creating so much as we should be perfecting and improving.

A DDoS is not the only reason

[Kjella]

The best answer to a distributed attack is a distributed network. If no node in the network is essential to its operation, such an attack isn't possible.

suprnova.org probably doesn't want to be the world's supplier of content, even without the DDoS part. I find your reasoning completely backwards. Why should your Apache server be the only server?

If you had a dozen mirrors hosted around the world, it'd be much harder to take down. With web pages, you can do that. With trackers, you can not. Not yet. Because the protocol doesn't support it.

Kjella

A Little correction....

[blue_monki]

Suprnova isn't a tracker :) If you want to put something up on it you have to find your own tracker first!

Re:A Little correction....

[advocate_one]

Yes but... if you can't find the .torrent file in the first place, then the fact that the tracker isn't affected isn't of any use to you... I've noticed several torrent agglomerator search sites dissapear under strange circumstances... one last week was the subject of a domain hijack... others have gone down under heavy load, so I suspect they've been DDOS'ed as well

Shonkey provider alert

[@madeus]

The culprits are primarily unknown, but these sites were flooded beyond control from the attack.

'flooded beyond control' indeed - 'beyond control of the group monkeys pretending to be network administrators' might be a more accurate summary.

My advice is to get a better provider, one with Arbor's [arbor.net] Peakflow or similar home grown solution in place, for example.

Netcraft confirms it:

[JThundley]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Bittorrent is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Bittorrent community when IDC confirmed that Bittorrent market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all P2P services. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Bittorrent has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Bittorrent is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict Bittorrent's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Bittorrent faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Bittorrent because Bittorrent is dying. Things are looking very bad for Bittorrent. As many of us are already aware, Bittorrent continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Azureus is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Azureus developers Bob Wentz and J.D. Stone only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Azureus is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

BitTornado leader TheShad0w that there are 7000 users of BitTornado. How many users of burst! are there? Let's see. The number of BitTornado versus burst! posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 BitTornado users. Bittorrent posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of BitTornado posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dbblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Jesus Christ this trolling shit is hard to do. I know I left the other half with BSD :(

Re:Netcraft confirms it:

[hrm]

You can tell slashdot culture is going down the drain when even the trolls can't be bothered to send in a properly updated post.

Not just you, but the old people in Korea and Soviet Russia are absent as well. And who's imagining beowulf clusters of bittorrent sites these days, even if it's in Japan?

The ./ posts confirm it: trolling is dying!

Why do you keep mentioning SUPRnova damn it

[Anonymous Coward]

STOP MENTIONING SUPRNOVA .. you're ruining it for everyone who actually knows what the hell it is... please stop!!!

Re:Why do you keep mentioning SUPRnova damn it

[johannesg]

Just to clarify, the site he is talking about is this one [suprnova.org]. What he is trying to say is this: if the bad guys ever find out about it [suprnova.org], they might try to do something stupid and most likely illegal such as performing a DDOS. And we really don't want it [suprnova.org] to go down, since it is a most excellent source for TV shows, movies, games, and music.

I guess the first rule of www.suprnova.org [suprnova.org] is: don't talk about www.suprnova.org [suprnova.org].

Re:Why do you keep mentioning SUPRnova damn it

[Abcd1234]

Well, given I can't yet buy season one of Stargate: Atlantis, I see no way to catch up on the show other than to download the episodes. If, however, there is an official way for me to acquire those episodes (preferably in HDTV resolution), I'd love to hear about it.

This happened not even a week ago to eMule's IRC

[bl4nk]

Almost a week ago, eMule's [emule-project.net] default IRC network (LiquidIRC) was DDoS'ed and Floodbot'ed [emule-project.net]. LiquidIRC has been taken down for an unknown amount of time due to the attacks..

Related?

This could be more widespread than these two sites

[Nightbrood]

While these two sites may be the biggest sites that we know of under DDoS attacks to me it seems to be more widespread. I am a moderator of a small Mazda enthusiast forum and we underwent a variety of DDoS attacks pretty much all night from varying addresses. I have no clue why someone would want to DDoS a small non-profit forum (we have our own server) but seems to me like Suprnova.org and the other BitTorrent sites are just collateral in a much larger game.

Luckily for us, we have a very good admin and he was updating the firewall rules pretty much left and right. Site never went down but at least we weren't posted on the front page of Slashdot either... then things would have been a bit different.

first the spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

and no one spoke out.
then it was bittorrent, and no one spoke up.
then its your own connection...

Still down?

[mogrify]

lokitorrent [lokitorrent.com] is still down as of Friday morning... ouch.

Cunning spammers?

[alex_tibbles]

Perhaps the spam sites that are being DDOSed by Lycos include these sites, either because the DB of spam sites is wrong, or the spammers have re-directed (perhaps at DNS level) the traffic....

Nostalgic

[mattr]

Well, I have a story from 1995 in Japan when I started one of the first couple of ISPs in Japan. One guy who didn't understand the net came into our tiny humming office and said he wanted us to build a "missile" that he could use to shoot at other people (well I guess computers) through the net. I gave up talking to him and showed him the door. Is Tenet asking for manufacturers to voluntarily provide the keys and a blind eye to give the government the ability to do this sort of thing? Say to shut down a spam zombie computer or to get the street address of any node on the net? Well.. aside from that anecdote I think this calls for the following analysis.

In the following excerpt by the past head of the CIA,

line 1 is either (a) silly, (b) evil, or (c) intelligent depending on your point of view. Silly because it sounds like sticking your finger in a hole in a dike; evil because it could mean anything draconian; intelligent in case it happens to be only talking about companies running critical infrastructure, who would maybe have to take rigorous security audits or not be allowed to have those facilities online. (c) makes sense but is the lowest probability, since the talk was made intentionally very vague and without press.

Line 2 similarly is (a) silly or (b) evil if talking about anybody not running sensitive infrastructure, and (c) intelligent if talking about the critical facilities. Line 3 sounds like he wants software companies to be more careful about security. Sounds like a good thing but then again what the CIA calls security is smoke and mirrors for ulterior motives, control, and punitive damage (until recently only outside U.S. borders), whereas most other people would call building strong personal firewalls and encryption security because it keeps the individual owner safe. No stomach for multiple choice here. Perhaps he has an occupational disease which prevents him from saying anything clearly and putting himself on the line? No chance of rehabilitation for this guy. Even if he was I guess the successor of the President's father or something like that. Maybe he should take up skydiving?

My analysis is that this is a retired professional scary guy trying to be relevant but incapable of doing anything but sounding silly or scary to anyone with a brain. People without brains generally think he's smart, etc. Which is too bad because if he could learn to speak more clearly he would be more effective and might have something useful to say about dealing with cyber-security threats (though I'd rather hear from the NSA's linux team about it than from a failed spymaster). This is why businesspeople in the real world never listen to government types. They can never say anything useful about anything directly, it is always vague scariness about vapor policies with a hint of powerplay behind it. BORING 90s SHIT!

Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.

Mr. Tenet called for industry to lead the way by "establishing and enforcing" security standards.

Products need to be delivered to government and private-sector customers "with a new level of security and risk management already built in."

Re:That's fine

[Spellbinder]

it is more like shooting a guy because he wears a gun on the street
because we know most guns are used to kill peoples
self justice is wrong .. no matter what
think about the federal police agents burned in mexico while protecting the school from drug dealers

Re:That's fine

[Badfysh]

When carrying table legs always remember: 1. NEVER pretend it's a sawn off shotgun. 2. NEVER tell somebody in a pub you are going to kill them with a shotgun. 3. When confronted by armed police, PUT YOUR TABLE LEG DOWN. This is a good time to stop pretending you have a shotgun, or Darwinism may occur.

Re:That's fine

[Umbral Blot]

Indeed this is a striking comparison to the previous story about spam sites suffering drom a DDoS attack. I for one had quite different reactions to them. Perhaps this shows that I am a hypocrite. However there is another component. Spammers target individuals, infact the maority of individuals. Corperations however are not people, despite how they may be treated by the law, and I think that Bittorrent is by far less damaging to corperations than spam is to the productivity of people (not to mention th

I agree

[poohsuntzu]

We have one opinion about taking down spammers, but we have a seperate opinion about services that we may be using.

I think that's perfectly fine. For some reason, people want us to have a single unified opinion about a broad range of subjects that are different from one another. Each answer and opinion needs to be circumstantial and based on each instance rather than sweeping generalizations, otherwise we end up in a situation similar to:

(Note: This isn't a political statement, nor am I trying to show my

Re:I agree

[miu]

Thus ends todays object lesson on why argument by analogy is a bad idea.

Rape, abortion, adoption? Do you even listen when you talk? Those issues are 1000 times more difficult and important than spam and you degrade those issues (and those facing them) by using them in an inane analogy about punishing spammers.

You are not comparing apples and oranges here, you are comparing 'the history of 16th century textile production advances' with 'the scent of red wine'.

Re:Wait a minute

[poohsuntzu]

Well, no. There was a thread discussion, but not a big one. There are still a large group of us who still think the Lycos attack was a good step, and we are free to have that opinion.

The internet isn't a courtroom, nor a single national jurisdiction. How can we rely upon either to solve problems in a world not founded nor oriented around neither. The internet is the Wild Wild West, and will remain that way. And like the Wild Wild West, you can have sheriff's all you want... but in the end.. a man's got to

Re:Wait a minute

[FluffyPanda]

The problem is that the community doesn't have the same say over the actions of DDoSers that a wild west town's citizens would have over their sheriff.

If a small group decided that slashdot was politically unsettling (and they'd have quite a lot to go on) and decided to take it down for a few days I expect that most of us would be annoyed.

DDoSing the pirates and spammers of the web is just one more way to fill the net with junk, and it's usually a small group (or single lycos) who decide to take the actio

Re:Wait a minute

[neitzsche]

If a small group decided that slashdot was politically unsettling (and they'd have quite a lot to go on) and decided to take it down for a few days I expect that most of us would be annoyed.

But damn my boss would be happy!

Re:That's fine

[NonSequor]

DDOS attacks do not target individuals regardless of how pleasant it is to think so. If you're sending a server enough traffic to be a nuisance, that traffic will be a nuisance elsewhere as well.

Saying that it's okay to DDOS spammers is especially obnoxious given that the most important argument against spam isn't that it's annoying but rather that it is a waste of bandwidth that other people are paying for.

Re:That's fine

[TheSurfer]

Please speak for yourself. The fact that you're living in a country with strict file copying/distribution laws doesn't mean this is the same in the rest of the world. At least here in the most countries of Europe there's nothing wrong with distributing copies of music, video and software.

Europe : Against illegal sharing/copying

[MMaestro]

MOST countries in Europe consider the unauthorized distribution of music, video and software to be illegal. The only reason you don't hear about it is because the RIAA, the MPAA and major PC video game developers/producers in the U.S. are on the forefront of this argument. No one wants to hear about how the Swedish version of the RIAA suddenly started illegal sharers because thats OLD NEWS compared to the U.S.'s RIAA whos been suing people for over a year now. If a European country was to suddenly announce

Re:Europe : Against illegal sharing/copying

[incal]

Still there is difference between considering illegality of so-called piracy and actively pursuing so-called pirates. In many larger cities of Poland and Germany, you can easily find a computer stockmarkets, usually run on weekends. An example would be my city, Wroclaw(Breslau), where Technical University - a goverment funded institution, runs such stockmarket. There you can get everything - from brand new DVD movies, cheap as 2$/piece, to cheap (3-5$) software packages like 3dsmax or Adobe CS.

I know perso

German campaign

[Slashamatic]

There is a fairly high-key campaign going on in Germany run by the distributors. Of course, the joke is that most people are getting English language versions which are on limited distribution if at all. I have even seen posters up in the IT department of a large German bank!

Re:That's fine

[PDA_Boy]

At least here in the most countries of Europe there's nothing wrong with distributing copies of music, video and software.

If you are in a country with membership of the EU, you might be interested* in reading Directive 2001/29 EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society [eu.int]. This has most definitely had an impact on the copyright regime in the UK, although, even before this, unauthorised distribution of copyrighted files was not permitted.

And, on the

Re:That's fine

[Anonymous Coward]

moral rights preserve the "artistic integrity" of a work. You could have "moral rights" in the complete absence of copyright. Copyight controls distribution of a work.

It's a common myth that one needs copyright to defend against plagiarism - this is completely false. If I give a verbatim copy of a work and say "this was authored by $WHOEVER_DID" I haven't plagiarised.

Also, Europeans are sophisticated enough to understand that illegal and wrong aren't the same thing. Most europeans I know see nothing WRO

Re:That's fine

[Dot.Com.CEO]

The key word in my message is "distributing". I doubt that distributing an album to 300 people through bittorrent falls under non-commercial personal use copies

Re:That's fine

[clambake]

The key word in my message is "distributing". I doubt that distributing an album to 300 people through bittorrent falls under non-commercial personal use copies

And I'm sure the people distributing those copies don't believe that 70 years after the death of the artists counts as the "limited time" granted in the constitution... go figure.

Re:That's fine

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Last time I checked suprnova.org, I didn't see many 70-year old warez, but then again I don't know what sites you frequent...

Re:That's fine

[clambake]

Last time I checked suprnova.org, I didn't see many 70-year old warez, but then again I don't know what sites you frequent...
--
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.

Defending copyright holders in the body and then quoting cryptic discordian secrets in the .sig. French-canadian bean soup to you too.

Huh?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I don't know what the hell your statistics prove,or even if they're right, but I do know that, wherever he or she is, your high school mathematics teacher would be proud of you.

Have you given serious thought to a career in marketing or PR? With that kind of commitment to mumbo jumbo and ridiculous statistics you'd be a natural.

Re:How much is left?

[FluffyPanda]

A slight flaw in your thinking. You assume that the internet is currently running at capacity, and that there will not be an increase in that capacity.

Both assumptions are wrong. 35% of current internet traffic may be bittorrent, but that doesn't mean that 35% of the internet's capacity is.

Wait a minute

[sosume]

You are making a classic error here.

"%35 of all traffic is Bittorrent"

versus

"Networks are usually "congested" at 60%."

But your error is this: how much percent of the available capacity does 100% internet traffic account for? Your calculation isn't quite valid..