Turning P2P Networks into DDoS Engines: A Survey

Recently, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks contribute to a large fraction of the Internet backbone traffic. Consequently, misusing such networks for malicious purposes is a potential side effect. In this review article, we investigate different techniques of misusing P2P overlay networks to launch large-scale next-generation Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In particular, we investigate representative systems of the structured (Overnet), unstructured (Gnutella) and hybrid (BitTorrent) P2P overlay networks. Real world experiments indicate the high performance, difficulty in detection and tracking, and the low cost of launching such attacks.