Free Riding in BitTorrent is Cheap

Free Riding in BitTorrent is Cheap

Abstract

While it is well-known that BitTorrent is vulnerable to selfish behavior, this paper demonstrates that even entire files can be downloaded without reciprocating at all in BitTorrent. To this end, we present BitThief, a free riding client that never contributes any real data. First, we show that simple tricks suffice in order to achieve high download rates, even in the absence of seeders. We also illustrate how peers in a swarm react to various sophisticated attacks. Moreover, our analysis reveals that sharing communities—communities originally intended to offer downloads of good quality and to promote cooperation among peers—provide many incentives to cheat.

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Authors
  • Locher, Thomas
  • Moore, Patrick
  • Schmid, Stefan
  • Wattenhofer, Roger
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Supplemental Material
Shortfacts
Category
Paper in Conference Proceedings or in Workshop Proceedings (Paper)
Event Title
5th Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets)
Divisions
Communication Technologies
Subjects
Informatik Allgemeines
Event Location
Irvine, California, USA
Event Type
Workshop
Event Dates
November 2006
Date
2006
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