Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#221

Post by tinus_hn »

bawolff wrote: post #187
martinald wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? It's a just an iteration from how eDonkey2000/eMule worked, which actually also had a DHT based 'trackeless' mode, many years before BT came around.

The tit-for-tat algorithm is what makes bit torrent special and solved a real problem with the previous gnutella-esque generation of p2p file sharing programs. As far as i know emule did not have that at the time.

BitTorrent uses TCP properly instead of implementing a poor version of TCP using UDP which is why it is much faster than eDonkey.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#222

Post by userbinator »

vermilingua wrote: post #118
calvinmorrison wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You would need to create a colliding pair (because the single existing one is so well known), itself not a simple thing, and create the two executables specifically with additional code discriminating between the two pairs to do two different things. You can't replace existing files with this attack, which means you'd have to create your own Linux distro with this extra "feature" and can't attack existing ones.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#223

Post by moonbug »

huhtenberg wrote: post #106
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.

It's nearly impossible to obfuscate a protocol to work around filtering. You'd want to look like some other protocol and you want that protocol be encrypted by default. Otherwise yours will get fingerprinted via the deep packet inspection. The most obvious choice is to run your protocol over TLS. But then they can just throttle long-lived bulky TLS connections where neither side is on 443. You can then require the re…

>Other choices here are OpenVPN, WireGuard and, possibly, IPsec

or, get a better ISP? not all technical problems need a technical solution.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#224

Post by jedberg »

toyg wrote: post #209
jedberg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AT&T artificially slows down upload speeds Do you have a source on this? I believe you I just want to know more. It explains a lot. I have a gigabit link. I can download torrents at almost line speed. But I can barely get uploads past 5K/s. I spent hours at one point trying to tweak every possible setting and eliminate every bottleneck, and still couldn't get past 5K/s.

> I just want to know more. There is little to know, it's largely a commercial preference (that has, over the years, driven technological research; see ADSL for example, the first A is for Asymmetric). Average consumers are precisely that, consumers : they rarely upload anything, but they download tons of content (from webpages to streamed media). So it makes sense for residential ISPs to maximize downstream bandwidt…

I already have a symmetric line. I can upload at full line speed to other things. It's only torrents that seem to have a problem.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#225

Post by pessimizer »

oblio wrote: post #110
CyberDildonics wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that if something once took up 50% of all traffic on the internet it never found a practical application?

> proportionate to the attendant hype From the original comment. Also, just because it was 50% at some point, it doesn't really matter today. Paraphrasing, a technology is only as good as it's latest match result. Perl was once powering the web, nowadays you have to look at the web with an electronic microscope to find it...

This is silly. Are you actually saying that bittorrent was hyped so much that constituting half the internet was a letdown? And that Perl didn't live up to its hype because it's only common today, and not as universal as it once was?

Re: BitTorrent v2

#226

Post by jjakque »

vermilingua wrote: post #121
PossiblyKyle wrote: post #103

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

uTorrent 2.2.1, which unfortunately seems like it won’t be viable going forward if v2 adoption picks up.

I'm still using uTorrent 1.8.4 inside WinXP VM. It's what I use for past 10 or so years because it works and still works.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#227

Post by sedatk »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #216
sedatk wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor problems? Isn't this a security issue? Somebody can modify a binary and still have it return the same hash and distribute it to people who think that they are receiving an authentic file. Is it even an option to keep going with SHA1? Even Git, which this is less of an issue, has a plan for migrating to SHA2. https://git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition/

This isn't really true, sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent, which if you are, you can just make the binary malicious to begin with.

> sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent

Huh, why?

Re: BitTorrent v2

#229

Post by easymovet »

dchuk wrote: post #208
cercatrova wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a tool that doesn't pitch that it's a P2P tool - it doesn't try to convince you with sob stories in how using P2P helps fight against the big bad evil web. Instead, you use it because it's genuinely the best at what it does: it being P2P is not a selling point, it's just how it happens to work, and that is exactly what it should be. This should be something that every creator who markets or sells products shou…

This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give…

UX has been a main focus of Bitcoin ever since Lightning made scaling possible. Checkout out the Strike app for seamless bitcoin (lightning) payments https://strike.zaphq.io/

Who cares? Anyone who feels like their purchasing power isn't where it should be is either underpaid, or a victim of central banks diluting their dollars with printing.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#230

Post by throwaway2048 »

sedatk wrote: post #227
throwaway2048 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true, sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent, which if you are, you can just make the binary malicious to begin with.

> sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent Huh, why?

because you can create two hashes that match, but you cannot create a hash that matches an arbitrary hash you do not control.

That is a much more serious weakness called a "second pre-image attack"

Post reply on HN