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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

kianbradley.com

81–90 of 217 posts

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#81

In other words, you can DDoS any ip for the cost of registering a domain and publishing a specific DNS record.

Is it really going to be all that bad?

The BitTorrent clients I’ve used all seemed pretty polite, backing off for like 60s at least for each tracker they can’t connect to.

If you buy one of the dead tracker domains and point it at an IP of someone else, but their services aren’t even listening on the port client wants to connect to (and don’t speak BitTorrent even if the port happened to coincide), I can’t imagine that even with a million BitTorrent clients wanting to connect it would really be all that much of a problem.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#82
post #69
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't download within minutes of each other ... should I be worried?

Stop using DHT and/or public trackers and you will be safe. They scan public trackers and the DHT network.

Use a VPN? Like a public one. Mullvad recommended.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#83
post #27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the police understand this nuance? Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement? They'll just see tracker and assume it's illegal.

> Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement? Copyright infinging materials dont go "though" trackers. Trackers only keep torrent hashes and lists of peers.

So do torrent websites like the pirate bay. That doesn't protect pirates from getting sued to hell and back or even receiving prison sentences from the court.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#84
post #13

IANAL, but my understanding is that running a content-neutral tracker is legal in the US. In other jurisdictions it most certainly is not, and the VPS maybe in a different jurisdiction and the .si TLD definitely is.

Googling, there's been at least one tracker shut down by US law enforcement, EliteTorrents [2005] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-may-26-fi-torre... I think there have probably been more. There are definitely more that had civil suits with MPAA etc suing for damages. It may be somewhat harder to make the case in the US, but a tracker where a great majority of what's listed is copyrighted, I'm pretty sure…

Was that the actual tracker and tracker only, or was there a web front end that hosted all the torrent files and forums and so forth? Because the latter will make you a big target.

God I miss rarbg. And KAT.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#85
post #69
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't download within minutes of each other ... should I be worried?

Stop using DHT and/or public trackers and you will be safe. They scan public trackers and the DHT network.

>Stop using DHT and/or public trackers a

Public trackers are the only trackers most of us can reasonably use. He should get a VPN.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#87

In other words, you can DDoS any ip for the cost of registering a domain and publishing a specific DNS record.

Is it really going to be all that bad? The BitTorrent clients I’ve used all seemed pretty polite, backing off for like 60s at least for each tracker they can’t connect to. If you buy one of the dead tracker domains and point it at an IP of someone else, but their services aren’t even listening on the port client wants to connect to (and don’t speak BitTorrent even if the port happened to coincide), I can’t imagine th…

[deleted]

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#88
post #27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the police understand this nuance? Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement? They'll just see tracker and assume it's illegal.

> Especially since most of the traffic that will go through there is probably copyright infringement? Copyright infinging materials dont go "though" trackers. Trackers only keep torrent hashes and lists of peers.

I'm well aware of how trackers and torrents work. But again, do you think law enforcement understands the nuance of that?

Also the government and private companies have argued in the past that the hashes and lists of peers is inducement and enablement for copyright infringement.

Re: Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers

#89

Now I'm wondering: with the wide range of bittorrent clients out there, and the fact that many are written in unsafe languages, could it be possible for some of them to be exploited through a malicious tracker? It would not surprise me if some of these clients misbehave if fed malformed data from a tracker.

Most torrent clients that people use (though not all) are actually wrappers around libtorrent, which is very well tested and has even been audited.
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