Re: The pirate bay, torrent and TOR

[Arrakis <arrakistor@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kyle

Can you get uTorrent to work if you change the tld of address
to .something ? How is the filtering taking place?

Steve

Kyle Williams wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Teddy Smith <teddks@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 12:33 -0600, Kasimir Gabert wrote:
>>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Teddy Smith <teddks@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 20:18 +0200, Noiano wrote:
>>>>> Hello everybody,
>>>>> as you may know The Pirate Bay is being blocked in Italy for legal
>>>>> issues. It's just a matter of time before all connection to all the
>> TPB
>>>>> servers will be blocked. Many people are suggesting to use tor+vidalia
>>>>> in order to bypass the block. It's a good suggestion but, IMHO, people
>>>>> care very little about just surfing thepiratebay.org. They want to
>>>>> access the tracker and download ;-) .
>>>>> Since I do not know the torrent protocol I wander: is it possible to
>> use
>>>>> tor as a "proxy" to access the tracker and get the data connections
>> not
>>>>> passing through tor? This would be possible if the request a client
>>>>> makes to a tracker contains the non-tor ip of the client, I guess.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any idea is welcome.
>>>>>
>>>>> Noiano (from italy :-P  )
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> IIRC, a few months ago someone set up a tracker as a hidden service,
>>>> specifically for this kind of thing. I didn't test it myself, but some
>>>> people reported success.
>>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I think what is being talked about is something far simpler: accessing
>>> TPB through Tor, but have the P2P connections not being blocked.  This
>>> is actually the recommended way of using Tor with P2P, and is easily
>>> possible in most clients.  I only know about deluge, seeing that is
>>> what I use on my Ubuntu box, and all I had to do was check "Tracker
>>> Proxy" in the settings, and type in my Tor SOCKS proxy.
>>>
>>> Let me know if this helps, and good luck!
>>> Kasimir
>>>
>>>
>> Sorry, I meant to imply that it was possible to have a torified or even
>> hidden tracker, answering the OP's question of "is it possible". Thanks
>> for the Deluge tip, it's my client too and as usual, it's incredibly
>> simple to configure!
>>
>> I do see a possible risk here, though: How easy would it be for the
>> MAFIAA to run hostile exits that killed connections to trackers? They
>> (or their proxies, e.g., Media Defender and the like) seem exactly the
>> type to do this, and they definitely have the resources. So if Tor was
>> to be used as a method of bypassing tracker censorship, the trackers
>> should probably be advised to run their own nodes.
>>
> 
> I've modified a torrent tracker to work exclusively with .onion addresses.
> It will not work with regular IP addresses.
> The tracker is bound only to localhost, and sits behind two firewalls to
> block it from regular IP addresses.
> I've found only one torrent client (Azureus) that allows you to use a .onion
> address for a tracker and peers.
> I wish uTorrent would behave the same way Azureus does, but it doesn't.
> This system is in testing right now.  This is running on a separate Tor
> network.
> Let me repeat that last part.  This is NOT the normal Tor network.  This is
> a SEPARATE Tor network.
> This has been worked here and there for about a year now.  Working out the
> bugs is time consuming.
> So far, it works well with 7 users.
> However, scalability issues are going to be inevitable and will probably be
> the cause for failure down the road.
> 
> If anyone would like to be a alpha/beta tester, e-mail me directly.
>