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KaZaA: Behind the Scenes

KaZaA: Behind the Scenes. Shreeram Sahasrabudhe Lehigh University sas4@lehigh.edu. Fasttrack network. Created in Mar 2001, Fasttrack was a software company that developed a software library for a P2P network. KaZaA was their first application to use the library.

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KaZaA: Behind the Scenes

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  1. KaZaA: Behind the Scenes Shreeram Sahasrabudhe Lehigh University sas4@lehigh.edu

  2. Fasttrack network • Created in Mar 2001, Fasttrack was a software company that developed a software library for a P2P network. • KaZaA was their first application to use the library. • Today, Grokster and iMesh are other licensed clients of the Fasttrack network.

  3. Why Fasttrack? • KaZaA has over 200million downloads and shows over 4 million users online at any time. • It’s a closed protocol • All Traffic is encrypted • Minimal information available about the network – scalability, robustness and operation.

  4. {File 1?} {File 1?} Search query {File 1?} Peer 2: File 1 GET File 1 What we know? • 2-tier Architecture: nodes & supernodes • Supernodes are high bandwidth users who aid searches of neighborhood nodes. Supernode Supernode Supernode Peer 1 Peer 2 Peer 3 File 2 File 4 File 5 File 1 File 3 File 6 File 3 File 7 File 10 • A detailed study was done earlier by…?? RIAA of course

  5. Project Idea / Goals • To understand how the Fasttrack network works. • No focus on cryptanalysis of the traffic. • Understand behavior (communication, allocation etc.) of supernodes. • Establish patterns in supernode communication.

  6. Methodology • Ran KaZaA software on a lab machine for about 4 weeks. • Using a custom packet sniffer we logged the packet information such as: Date & Time of Packet, Source Address, Destination address and Protocol. • Analyzed the log files using Perl scripts to give us detailed report of each log file: • Total Unique Destination IP Addresses • List of destination IP addresses and number of packets sent to each. • Total Unique Source IP Addresses • List of source IP addresses and number of packets received from each. • Besides this, we also analyzed the traffic during the login of KaZaA.

  7. Install & Login Observations • The available KaZaA setup file is just a web install. • During setup, it connects to a peer and downloads the KaZaA install file – kmd210.exe • Each time you try to install it connects to a new peer with varying download speeds. At login • Connects to a central login server rr1.kazaa.com (7 IP addresses) in Denmark. • Sends information like country, client, version etc.

  8. Immediately after, the peer sends ICMP ping messages to about 4 – 5 other peers. • Those who reply to these messages are then contacted by a separate TCP connection on specific destination ports. • The purpose of this communication seems to be to let the peer know of a port to contact us. • On repeated attempts to login – different sets of peers are contacted! • If none of the peers reply to initial ping messages then a different set of peers are sent UDP packets. Then the same procedure as above.

  9. Traffic Analysis and Observations • Parsed the list of IP addresses in each report to get their frequency. • About 7 address were communicating with our machine on a regular basis for over 4 days. (3 from Lehigh ;), 3 from other universities and 1 broadband) • These were our candidates for supernodes. • Also, our node had reached the status of Guru (309 points). A new node starts with a status of medium (100 points). • We were now set to do further detailed analysis with an improved packet sniffer when …

  10. …the Traffic Stopped!

  11. This is not the first of its kind. • The giFT project, a relatively big project, was successful in reverse engineering the Fasttrack protocol. • Fasttrack changed their protocol (and encryption) and things were back to where they started. • Currently two projects are working on this task: • Project Fasttrack www.projectfasttrack.com • RapidRoad www.rapidroad.tk • None of the above companies have released any public software or documentation to validate their claimed progress.

  12. Queries? Thank You!

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