The Pain of Gnutella

On March 14, 2000, Nullsoft, the developer of Winamp and now owned by America Online (AOL), released an "open-source Napster clone" called Gnutella (pronounced nu-tell-a). Gnutella is a peer-to-peer file-sharing protocol that has gained a worldwide audience similar to the Napster audience. Simple to load and use, Gnutella offers a quick way to share files (such as MP3, software, image, audio, and video files) across the Internet.

In a recent onsite security and network analysis, I was confronted with this Gnutella beast. While enabling peer-to-peer file sharing, Gnutella creates a significant threat to any corporate network, including bandwidth overload and security holes large enough to fly an F-18 through.

Get a Gnutella trace file here!

Look for a complete article on Gnutella in the September issue of Novell Connection magazine!

Got other ideas for articles/documentation or training? Send email directly to Laura at lchappell@packet-level.com.

Laura Chappell
Sr. Protocol Analyst
Copyright 2000 Protocol Analysis Institute, L.L.C.

Other Articles:
• Catching the Lovsan Worm in Action [PDF]
• Time is of the Essence
• The Wonderful Thing About Triggers... [PDF]
• The Pain of Gnutella
• About the 2301 Traffic
• 10 Cool Things You Can Do with the EtherPeek Demo [PDF]
• Basic Packet Filtering [PDF]
• Advanced Packet Filtering [PDF]
• Looking at the Sniffer Dashboard [PDF]
• TrenchTime: Ports to Watch
• Did Your Know: Wireless Networks are Not Immune to Sniffing? [PDF]
• The 10 Truths of Network Troubleshooting [PDF]
• Carnivore? [PDF]
• Sniffer: Using the Capture Panel [PDF]