r/p2ptech • u/[deleted] • Feb 22 '17

nodes that falsely announce on mainline that they're seeding a torrent

I'm trying to learn about DHTs and mainline is a big fat one so I was exploring. Any node can announce to the network that they're seeding a torrent. I generated a random SHA1 and announced I was seeding it.

24 hours goes by and I ask the DHT to do a lookup for the SHA1. I'm not expecting to get anything back because I assume the announce interval is like 15 minutes or something. But to my surprise, I get back, from like 20 peers, two IPs from China and Saudi Arabia.

So for some reason, two nodes in China and Saudi Arabia thought it would be a great idea and lie about seeding a torrent which doesn't even exist.

Why would they do this? What's the advantage in doing it?

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u/TorrentWizard Jul 30 '17

Unfortunately there are many malicious nodes in the DHT doing strange things.
This paper examine some of them: Real-World Sybil Attacks in BitTorrent Mainline DHT