Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#1

Post by dgellow » Sun, Jun 21, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]
usenix.org

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#2

Post by hackingonempty » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

(2010)

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#3

Post by hdgr » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

Bitmagnet -https://bitmagnet.io/ - does exactly that. I left it running for a few weeks and then stopped the crawler. Didn't expect much, but still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in.

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#4

Post by NegativeLatency » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

hdgr wrote: post #3

Bitmagnet - https://bitmagnet.io/ - does exactly that. I left it running for a few weeks and then stopped the crawler. Didn't expect much, but still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#5

Post by drdexebtjl » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:37 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

hdgr wrote: post #3

Bitmagnet - https://bitmagnet.io/ - does exactly that. I left it running for a few weeks and then stopped the crawler. Didn't expect much, but still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

I disabled mine because it was constantly writing to my SSD.

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#6

Post by qingcharles » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

hdgr wrote: post #3

Bitmagnet - https://bitmagnet.io/ - does exactly that. I left it running for a few weeks and then stopped the crawler. Didn't expect much, but still somewhat disappointed by the garbage it reeled in.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

Are you running it at home?

I built one with a nice TUI to run on a VPS so I can try and find rare magazine torrents, but Hetzner were upset about it. I need to find it a new home. It was a very good citizen, but it still raised too many flags.

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#7

Post by k4rli » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #6

NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

Are you running it at home? I built one with a nice TUI to run on a VPS so I can try and find rare magazine torrents, but Hetzner were upset about it. I need to find it a new home. It was a very good citizen, but it still raised too many flags.

Runs fine at home. I've indexed 20M+ torrents in last few months running it during the day. With Prowlarr (or similar) it could easily replace other indexers.

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#8

Post by felooboolooomba » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

drdexebtjl wrote: post #5

NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

I disabled mine because it was constantly writing to my SSD.

I solved it by storing the data on /dev/null

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#9

Post by gritzko » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

2010. I remember those times. I was doing these things for science in 2008. Performance-wise, PEX was much faster than DHT. At least, in my setting.

This year, I was giving it as an assignment to students. Does not take much time with LLMs.

Re: Crawling BitTorrent DHTs for Fun and Profit [pdf]

#10

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #6

NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had one running for over a year now, it's replaced my usage of regular torrent sites completely, there is a lot of junk, and it gets stale, but it's still a better experience than most of the public trackers out there IMO

Are you running it at home? I built one with a nice TUI to run on a VPS so I can try and find rare magazine torrents, but Hetzner were upset about it. I need to find it a new home. It was a very good citizen, but it still raised too many flags.

Which magazines?