Anyone Can Play Big Brother With BitTorrent 436
An anonymous reader writes "I was at the 3rd USENIX Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats yesterday, and there were people from the French Institute for Computer Science who have continuously spied on most BitTorrent users on the Internet for 100 days, from a single machine. They've also identified 70% of all content providers; yes, those guys that insert the new contents into BitTorrent. As a BitTorrent user, I was shocked that anyone with a box connected to the Internet can spy on what everyone is downloading on BitTorrent."
Re:UNISEX? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Copyright laws. (Score:1, Interesting)
interesting yet saddening to see someone actually admit that they only give a fuck about privacy because they don't want to get in trouble for all the shit they steal.
Really? (Score:1, Interesting)
As a BitTorrent user, I was shocked that anyone with a box connected to the Internet can spy on what everyone is downloading on BitTorrent.
Really? I guess you never looked at the protocol. I can't find a reference, but I remember a news article from a few years ago in which Bram Cohen responding to a reporter who asked if he felt responsible for the piracy enabled by BitTorrent. Bram pointed out that BitTorent is a terrible protocol to use for piracy, because anyone can see who is doing the pirating.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, despite the credulousness of the summary poster, if you click through to the abstract you also get this bit:
Perhaps I'm exposing my own ignorance (because I've never felt the need to use Tor myself) but that strikes me as surprising if it's true. And something that even savvy internet users might not think about.
Re:Shocked. Shocked! (Score:5, Interesting)
you forgot the real part.
You then have to download the entire thing to find out if those blocks are part of IronMan2.avi are actually part of ironman2 movie or some dumb students project on feeding excessive iron to a man.
what percentage of the RIAA music takedowns where not actually infringing music but someone's project with a similar name? I know of at least 3 separate incidents where they made a school take down a professors own notes because of a file name.
They cracked Tor? (Score:2, Interesting)
That you can view peers on a BT network is not shocking. What deserves more attention is the fact that they were able to identify IP's of even those users who used Tor. Of course, BT and Tor should never be mixed (to protect the network of those who need privacy for something other than piracy). This just proves it.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, things like Javascript can expose the originating IP over Tor to the receiver, so it's probably not a large leap to assume that you can look at torrrent traffic and find the originating IP at the application level.
That said, its a "problem" with the originating application, not Tor specifically. As said on the Tor website "Tor does not automatically make all your communications secure."
If you think that's fun... (Score:4, Interesting)
2. Eavesdrop on traffic
3. Post results [wired.com]
4. Profit!
I'm sure the traffic coming out of TOR is far more interesting than BitTorrent traffic (unless you're a media company).
Re:Copyright laws. (Score:3, Interesting)
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
-- H. L. Mencken
Re:Copyright laws. (Score:3, Interesting)
Clearly most road traffic is, too. Aren't all those trucks and cars full of copyrighted material?
Re:An Opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
You do realize that they can track it down to the boarders AP and will know with reasonable accuracy (within 100 meters or so) where the downloader must live, right?
High-gain antennas increase that range number quite a bit. I've personally connected to APs with a high-gain antenna on one side of the connection from more than a mile away. Others have done it from further out.
unless you catch wind of what is going on and remove all traces of spoofing from your machine.
Or use encryption.....
Re:An Opportunity (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An Opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a situation where a kid was using Skype to make bomb threat phone calls to the middle school my son attended. The kid had a history of the same behavior and could make a reasonable guess that it was the kids voice on the phone. There was also a phone call that reported a gun fight at my house. I was working in the garage when the police showed up with handguns and rifles locked and loaded.
There wasn't enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant to get the call records from Skype. And that was for an actual bomb threat that shut down a school and a call that had police speeding through town and brandishing loaded weapons.
I'm sure the RIAA can by themselves some search warrants, but they're likely to go broke if they do more than make some example arrests.
Re:Copyright laws. (Score:3, Interesting)
A friend of mine has a house that backs onto a small nature preserve. On the other side of that woodland area is an ampitheatre, at which a great many concerts are held. He can sit out back and hear the concerts from his patio, or he can pack a picnic basket and take his wife and kids on a short walk through the woodland to a point directly overlooking the ampitheatre and hear it much better - in fact at that range the volume level is just perfect. They can take binoculars and see the concert as well, almost as if they were in the front row, without suffering from hearing loss and without paying for (very expensive) tickets.
Do you think he is stealing too?