A DDoS attack by flooding normal control messages in Kad P2P networks

This paper introduces a new DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack by flooding control messages from normal users in Kad network, which is DHT-based P2P network. The proposed attack can make normal nodes participated into the Kad network to act as if they were zombies to generate numerous control messages destined to a target system unintentionally. With the flooded control messages from those nodes, it can cause a DDoS effect to a certain system. We implemented the attacks by modifying the open source program called eMule client, and tested the impact of the proposed attack in our own constructed real Kad network test bed.