Ask HN: I've Built a DHT Torrent Sniffer and Search Engine. Should I Release?

At the very least, please do a write-up for us on how you're achieving 5-10k announcements a second.

You should def release it, what else can you do with it? Just let it rot and fade away?

All AGPL / GPL licensed code requires that the AGPL / GPL license also be distributed with the application. Moreover, AGPL / GPL also requires public attribution (acknowledgement / credit) of those who have created and contributed to the source code.

Ofcourse, if somebody wants to be dishonest and unethical, they can violate these terms to hide the fact that they are using AGPL code in their SaaS application. There's not much you can do about it in such cases. But if anyone (like current or former employee) leaks this info to the public, they can face legal trouble and bad PR in the future as it would be akin to using pirated software.

>Now, I am thinking about releasing it as open-source for others to study, but not sure if I should, because it might be used for "evil".

For evil? I wouldn't worry about that. Not now.

You should put prominent warnings it's not "consumer grade" or whatever, but I think there's more value in sharing your code than there is risk someone will perform an attack they otherwise couldn't. Conversely, the second amendment wasn't just meant to apply to guns -- in America, "arms" can absolutely mean "cyber".

Now, to be fair... the NRA is basically a way for boomers old enough to get "reoccurring income" to write off donations to the GRU on their taxes at this point, but there was a time in this country[0] when they used to give people who had a re-occurring subscription were sent a video called "Stop! Don't touch!!" (or something to that effect), which was meant to be their first lesson on guns -- and make no mistake, when you "cyber", you're reaching into the toolbox.

There was a period in the 2000s where it was EXTREMELY difficult to get some of these tools up and running, and then, in parallel, you could also experience hardware or driver issues, and people quite rightfully used to scare the everloving shit out of the type of person who would bring esoteric knowledge to light too quickly.

Even if you knew exactly which commands to run, in which order, you had to deal with stuff like the fact the drivers for Airport literally won't go into monitor mode, which is when you tell the radio in your laptop to store not just the packets addressed to it, but any packets that happen to... drift on by.

I really cannot emphasize enough how hilarious it was to me that it took until about twenty goddamn twenty[-1] for some folks to realize the main benefit to "cyber" is that it's remote -- since I was about twelve years old, I've run into people who do... very rude things with the computer, paired with wielding the fact that in the united states, possession of what is now being called "CSAM" was what's called a "strict liability" offense -- pair that with gatekeeping access to the title "security researcher" and it led to a very uneven playing field.

(They'd also do things like say oh, gee, you can't get a security clearance if you engage in software piracy, while also telling folks it's probably better to just torrent stuff than use some shady torrent site... and mentioning they have a security clearance in another thread or whatever.)

Now, if this program was, say, a script that spiders through a hard drive using the Luhn algorithm[1] to suss out if the drive contains PII or automates bringing down one's wireless interface, changing the MAC address, then bringing it back up... that might be something you might not want to give to your enemies by putting onto Github or whatever.

Myself, I usually still stick to the Pirate Bay -- I've still got a backlog of stuff I haven't watched... it feels like just a short time ago I was getting all emo I had no one to watch "Cats"[2] with, ha-HA!!

But this? I think you're good to go, and I thank you for taking the time to learn the version control system and share your code.

If anything, you'll be aiding public health. Streaming services are abusive... I own very few movies since I've moved around so much -- it became a running gag with my exes -- but it's like back when cable briefly wasn't going to have commercials, then within pretty much one generation they added them right back in addition to collecting the subscription money[3]... those sorts of people should be shown that video from the 80s of the one KGB defector explaining that America is unique, and there is nowhere else to defect to.

(He was right, and if you abuse your access folks might be unwelcoming.)

-- [-1] I purposefully waited about two years to make that joke... at least two times.

[0] (I'm posting from my home)

[1] I was told it's used to verify something is a CC # but apparently it can get some false positives -- that wasn't mentioned last time I looked it up, hehe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm

[2] Did you people forget that they called it Redphone because it was supposed to REDUCE tensions?

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20150501092025/nytimes.com/1981/...

This showed up in my news feed, and I wondered if it was a coincidence that I just learned about that site from your comment and then the next day I see they're getting spammed by idiots abusing DMCA: https://torrentfreak.com/i-know-what-you-download-overwhelme...