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BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

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111–120 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#111

Post by dmurray »

armitron wrote: post #101
flatline wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t? So someone can craft a payload that contains a rootkit or similar and has the same name and hash as the thing you wanted, and this is okay? (Disclaimer: I don’t know all that much about how hashes are used internal to the protocol)

The vast majority of data shared over bittorrent is not executable. So your scenario becomes an issue if you're downloading executable data that you deem :trusted: without any additional verification besides the hash itself. If that's the case, you have bigger worries than the hash.

Or if there's a vulnerability in a popular media player.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#112

Post by user5994461 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #94
sleavey wrote: post #71

SHA1 has a collision, so now it uses SHA256. How long until a SHA256 collision? Shouldn't the new protocol just add support for many modern hash functions, and client updates can disable support for hashes that become insecure later? Or does this introduce its own headaches? That's what SSH does, right?

Isn’t the fact that OpenSSL et al allow so many arbitrary ciphers the reason of a whole load of problems?

Nope, the problem is that software never upgrade their ssl stack to support the newer ciphers. Especially Microsoft that's easily 10 years behind on the current SSL version.

Without the ability to support multiple versions, it would be impossible to upgrade anything at all. That would be a whole load of other problems.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#113

Post by kuroguro »

PossiblyKyle wrote: post #103

Since we're on this topic, what's your torrent client of choice HN? I plainly use BitTorrent nowadays

qbittorrent, hands down :) Open source, cross platform and relatively small footprint (native), uTorrent-like UI.

I believe it uses libtorrent under the hood, so this might be integrated soon.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#114

Post by oblio »

armitron wrote: post #39
oblio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it's not used anymore, from what I know. Few places use it for distribution, I guess they don't consider it worth the hassle. Blizzard was using it to distribute binaries. I guess mobile internet was its downfall as few people want to seed from a mobile connection.

There are vast data archives exposed through private trackers that work on top of bittorrent. This isn't widely known due to their private, invite-only (and in some cases, entirely closed) nature but the fact remains that these exist and are fundamental in multiple, widely divergent communities.

Can you give some examples? It all sounds very... mysterious. At least, what kind of content are we talking about?

Re: BitTorrent v2

#115

Post by spockz »

nabla9 wrote: post #68
coronadisaster wrote: post #2

It would be nice to have a torrent system where noone that is uploading has all the data for a specific torrent (or at least they arent uploading the whole file to any specfic person... probably would be harder to prosecute in the event that some files become illegal)... You could take 1% of the billonaire's fortune and give it to the "victims" and everyone would be happy.

If you want to circumvent the law, you must find a legal technicality, not a technical technicality. The key weakness in every smartass technical technicality to circumvent the law is forgetting that intent is core concept when the law is interpreted in the court. Did the defendant have intent to do X? Did the defendant use some purpose build technique to avoid doing the most literal interpretation X ? .. Yeah, defen…

IANAL, but afaik this depends on whether the legislation is English law or Latin law from origin. Where Latin law is more about the intent and english, and therefore US law, is more about the letter of the law. Perhaps the distinction is along a different axis but this is how I remember.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#116

Post by slyall »

mac01021 wrote: post #33
proverbialbunny wrote: post #25

It feels like this isn't a large enough leap forward. It would be nice if BitTorrent v2 made it harder for ISPs to identify what is bit torrent traffic. AT&T artificially slows down upload speeds.

Why don't ISPs bill by the gigabyte and be done with it?

Well in New Zealand we used to charge-per-byte but as things got cheaper this has largely gone away. Some of the cheaper how fibre accounts have something like a 100G/month limit but I guess it isn't worth the trouble to charge even here where bandwidth is much more expensive than the US.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#117

Post by [deleted] »

xibalba wrote: post #30
mawalu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean beside being responsible for ~50% of the global internet traffic in 2009? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

Insofar as the majority of that traffic is likely illegal (in terms of sharing pirated property) I would not consider it useful.

[deleted]

Re: BitTorrent v2

#118

Post by vermilingua »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #84
frenchman99 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't? Is it not possible to be tricked into downloading a malicious binary that you then execute on your computer?

Unlike the Photoshop 2020 WareZ Cracked Unlocked 2020 Xvid Torrentz WZ FUN.torrent, that I just downloaded

Yes, because warez is the only valid use of bittorrent.

Most Linux distros offer an installation iso via torrent, large files with many blocks. If you can change just a small part of those files, you’ve got compromised machines before the install even begins.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#119

Post by deathgrips »

xibalba wrote: post #30
mawalu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean beside being responsible for ~50% of the global internet traffic in 2009? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

Insofar as the majority of that traffic is likely illegal (in terms of sharing pirated property) I would not consider it useful.

This falls apart when you examine prohibited goods. Guns are illegal in most countries because they are very useful.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#120

Post by danarmak »

oauea wrote: post #98
armitron wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A v2-aware client that also supported v1 and hybrid torrents would tick all boxes and be able to participate in multiple swarms (for the same torrent). The main issue that I see is the existence of millions of torrents in private trackers that would have to be manually updated for v2. Are people going to bother? I think not. So for me, v2 is practically a new-torrents-only affair.

The sites could perform a bulk update for all their torrents if they so chose.

To update you need the data so you can rehash it. A typical tracker only has the torrent files and would take a very long time and spend a lot of possibly expensive bandwidth to download all the tracked torrents. And some torrents may not be seeded all the time.
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