Exploiting BitTorrent

What is BitTorrent?

BitTorrent is a Peer2Peer filesharing protocol. It was designed in 2001 by Bram Cohen, to replace centralized server structures like FTP servers. Filesharing can be organized more efficient, no central server that has to provide all the upload. Also redundancy will be gained, due to distribution of the files to all the clients.

How does it work?

The files are divided into pieces, all the pieces that belong to one file are named in a so called torrent-file, which is a meata data file also containing the hash cheksums for each piece and additional information.