The paper proposes StegTorrent a new network steganographic method for the popular P2P file transfer service-BitTorrent. It is based on modifying the order of data packets in the peer-peer data exchange protocol. Unlike other existing steganographic methods that modify the packets' order it does not require any synchronization. Experimental results acquired from prototype implementation proved that it provides high steganographic bandwidth of up to 270 b/s while introducing little transmission distortion and providing difficult detectability.
In this paper the results of the BitTorrent measurement study are presented. Two sources of BitTorrent data were utilized: meta-data files that describe the content of resources shared by BitTorrent users and the logs of one of the currently most popular BitTorrent clients -µTorrent. µTorrent is founded upon a rather newly released UDP-based µTP protocol that is claimed to be more efficient than TCP-based clients. Experimental data have been collected for fifteen days from the popular torrent-discovery site thepiratebay.org (more than 30,000 torrents were captured and analyzed). During this period the activity and logs of an unmodified version of µTorrent client downloading sessions have been also captured. The obtained experimental results are swarmoriented (not tracker-oriented as has been previously researched), which has allowed us to look at BitTorrent and its users from an exchanged resources perspective. Moreover, comparative analysis of the clients' connections with and without µTP protocol is carried out to verify to what extent µTP improves BitTorrent transmissions. To the authors' best knowledge, none of the previous studies have addressed these issues.
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