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

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

#71

Post by r3trohack3r »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #68
sshine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accidentally read this as "Let it R.I.P." I totally agree, unroll it! While the file sharing is distributed, the centralised web-based indexing is still a game of whack-a-mole.

how is what OP made not basically going to be the p1rat3 bay 2.0?

It already exists. BTDigg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTDigg

And sibling comments show there is a community of folks doing this.

People also do it to Tor’s DHT too for discovering hidden services: https://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/

You can’t really stop open source tech like this from existing by choosing to not open source your implementation. You just end up staying out of the conversation yourself. The community will still build it if there is a desire for it.

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

#72

Post by haswell »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #68
sshine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accidentally read this as "Let it R.I.P." I totally agree, unroll it! While the file sharing is distributed, the centralised web-based indexing is still a game of whack-a-mole.

how is what OP made not basically going to be the p1rat3 bay 2.0?

One is a repository of code that you or I can run on our own machines.

The other is a publicly accessible website that got a kit of public attention because it could easily be used by anyone including novices to pirate content.

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

#73

Post by Klaster_1 »

sascha_sl wrote: post #13

I mean, it already exists. [1] Always fun to see what my neighbors behind the same NAT download. [1]: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

It gives quite fascinating results for me. Surprisingly, among dozens of torrents only a couple are porn. Most of my neighbors using BitTorrent are Russians and Ukrainians (I'm in Cyprus), judging by files names and seeder distribution, a couple of English-speaking people (probably brits) and a single person seeding content in Greek. At least half of Russian-speaking neighbors seed IT, engineering and English learning materials. And I seed more than everyone together on the same subnet Wish I could message them.

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

#74

Post by tcmb »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #65

You should absolutely open source this. Working with the DHT is a lot of fun, and a great learning exercise. I adapted my local “torrent roulette” application to an electron app that can be shared. My local version downloads the files, but the one I share only fetches the torrents metadata (easy to adapt it back to my roulette approach). I call it Taboo: https://github.com/retrohacker/taboo The amount of “evil” on th…

If I may suggest, it would be helpful to have a section in the README about how to build/run the application. If I'm not familiar with Electron, the repository isn't very helpful, even though I might be interested in trying it out.

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

#75

Post by mdaniel »

keroro wrote: post #62

torrent-paradise [0] is a go project which seems to do the same as your project and has existed since 2019. It’s since gone down but remains up on IPFS [1] but its index hasn’t updated since January. [0] https://github.com/urbanguacamole/torrent-paradise [1] https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmQjsKamNFZRvCMXDvZXQmRYjsm...

> remains up on IPFS [1] but its index hasn’t updated since January.

But only the "about" page remains up, right? Because both https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/torrent-paradise.ml and https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipns/12D3KooWB3GY1u6zMLqnf3MJ8zh... show a command-line(!) error

If my mental model of IPFS is correct, it means no one is seeding the underlying IPFS ... CIDs? ... that those links point to

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

#76

Post by rahimnathwani »

the8472 wrote: post #27

Having seen other indexers before I suspect your implementation isn't spec-compliant or well-behaved (perhaps spoofing node-IDs? causing more traffic than necessary?) If you want to build an indexer you should write a normal implementation and then use http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0051.html

Related comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14022107

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

#77

Post by tcmb »

tcmb wrote: post #74
r3trohack3r wrote: post #65

You should absolutely open source this. Working with the DHT is a lot of fun, and a great learning exercise. I adapted my local “torrent roulette” application to an electron app that can be shared. My local version downloads the files, but the one I share only fetches the torrents metadata (easy to adapt it back to my roulette approach). I call it Taboo: https://github.com/retrohacker/taboo The amount of “evil” on th…

If I may suggest, it would be helpful to have a section in the README about how to build/run the application. If I'm not familiar with Electron, the repository isn't very helpful, even though I might be interested in trying it out.

I managed to build and run it, filed an issue for a problem I ran into. Hope it's valid, thanks for making this app!

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

#78

Post by r3trohack3r »

tcmb wrote: post #77
tcmb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I may suggest, it would be helpful to have a section in the README about how to build/run the application. If I'm not familiar with Electron, the repository isn't very helpful, even though I might be interested in trying it out.

I managed to build and run it, filed an issue for a problem I ran into. Hope it's valid, thanks for making this app!

Hey, thanks! Let me know what you think of it after using. It was a fun project to work on.

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

#79

Post by encryptluks2 »

steinuil wrote: post #55
encryptluks2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btdig is awesome. If this is like an open source version in Go then that is a huge contribution.

Isn't btdig also open source? I see a "fork me" button on the front page and it leads to a repo: https://github.com/btdigg-org/dhtcrawler2

It is 9 years old and in Erlang.

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

#80

Post by imhoguy »

sascha_sl wrote: post #13

I mean, it already exists. [1] Always fun to see what my neighbors behind the same NAT download. [1]: https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

Checked it for my Transmission host static IP which doesn't download anything for a while and it has some completely random stuff I never downloaded or searched for. Even shows items from today which for sure I haven't requested. Could be some DHT spoofing or my Transmission is relaying some DHT requests?
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