Researchers To Release an Anonymous BitTorrent Client(torrentfreak.com)
torrentfreak.com
Researchers To Release an Anonymous BitTorrent Client
http://torrentfreak.com/researchers-anonymous-bittorrent-client-120601/
5 comments
While I admittedly don't know too much about Tor, I've recently been reviewing Tarzan[0] which seems like a good candidate for anonymous proxying.
If Wikipedia is to be believed Tor mainly uses Onion Routing with a set of servers as the core of the system.[1] The Tarzan paper mentions why this might be problematic and suggests instead a decentralized P2P system, using a mix network with (what you might call) onion routing and cover traffic.
The authors claim this eliminates the "single point of failure" and the effectiveness of even network-wide analysis. And since Tarzan should be ideal as a drop-in middle-layer, I'd think this would fit an application like BitTorrent.
Unfortunately we never got to use Tarzan in our project, so I of course only have the paper to go by.
[0] ftp://163.25.117.117/gyliao/iSmart/1-P2P/2-Anonymity%2BIdentity%20Management/Tarzan-A%20Peer-to-Peer%20Anonymizing%20Network%20Layer.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
If Wikipedia is to be believed Tor mainly uses Onion Routing with a set of servers as the core of the system.[1] The Tarzan paper mentions why this might be problematic and suggests instead a decentralized P2P system, using a mix network with (what you might call) onion routing and cover traffic.
The authors claim this eliminates the "single point of failure" and the effectiveness of even network-wide analysis. And since Tarzan should be ideal as a drop-in middle-layer, I'd think this would fit an application like BitTorrent.
Unfortunately we never got to use Tarzan in our project, so I of course only have the paper to go by.
[0] ftp://163.25.117.117/gyliao/iSmart/1-P2P/2-Anonymity%2BIdentity%20Management/Tarzan-A%20Peer-to-Peer%20Anonymizing%20Network%20Layer.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
The Tribler people have been working on some kind of incentive system so that you can download faster if you run a proxy. It's not clear whether that can compensate for the factor of N inefficiency that proxies create. BitTorrent only won because it was faster, so if a new system is N times slower than BitTorrent it's unlikely to succeed.
There's also OneSwarm which has been out for a while: http://www.oneswarm.org/
There's also OneSwarm which has been out for a while: http://www.oneswarm.org/
> People stay on BitTorrent the same reason they stay on Facebook: everybody's there.
This is true in general, but there are some major players who could just as easily move people to adopt. i.e. if one day TPB decides that magnet links doesn't solve as many problems as this, people would certainly follow. If anything, at the beginning people probably wouldn't mind having a different protocol or client just to run TPB seeds.
This is true in general, but there are some major players who could just as easily move people to adopt. i.e. if one day TPB decides that magnet links doesn't solve as many problems as this, people would certainly follow. If anything, at the beginning people probably wouldn't mind having a different protocol or client just to run TPB seeds.
I think you underestimate the cost there is to switch. Suddenly you have to 1) install new software (unless an uTorrent update supports the new protocol), 2) lose all the content TPB had so far.
I could be wrong, but that seems like a big showstopper.
I could be wrong, but that seems like a big showstopper.
I don't mean to say that it's an easy task to turn over all the content, but places like TPB have muscles to flex and as far as I can see, if they did it then others would follow. It wouldn't surprise me at all if uTorrent or other clients scrambled to push an update for it in that event...
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This was already posted 16 hours earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056325
It's beginning to annoy me how HN rejects double postings in general, but includes the fragment identifier again allowing unlimited reposting.
It's beginning to annoy me how HN rejects double postings in general, but includes the fragment identifier again allowing unlimited reposting.
Any URL can be reposted by adding a unique fragment ID. On the brigth side it means people can repost links that never got proper attention.
You can use torrents anonymously in I2P today. And I think this is the much better solution. I2P lets you do much more than just torrenting. And every user benefits from eachother's actions/traffic since the more traffic there is, the more peers there are, the more anonymous it gets.
You can also use E2DK or Gnutella in I2P. Or plain HTTP. Or mails. Or IRC. Much nicer than being limited to just Bittorrent.
As for speed, if you get a nice swarm and your I2P peer is well integrated, 100Kilobytes/s are possible.
You can also use E2DK or Gnutella in I2P. Or plain HTTP. Or mails. Or IRC. Much nicer than being limited to just Bittorrent.
As for speed, if you get a nice swarm and your I2P peer is well integrated, 100Kilobytes/s are possible.
EU actually funds the project: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7259339.stm and http://www.tribler.org/trac/wiki/whatIsTribler#Moreinformati...
I was part of a team who have attempted to solve this problem before: http://anomos.info
It is a very, very hard challenge, and I wish them luck.
It is a very, very hard challenge, and I wish them luck.
Right now, it's hard to tell. I like that their current protocol is published as an IETF draft [1], but it doesn't include anything about their 'proxy layer' which is touted in the TF article.
From the details in this article, it seems to work a bit like Tor, which raises a few questions: who is going to run the ProxyNodes: is that their business model: making people pay a subscription to access their vast network of ProxyNodes? (Will they claim innocence because "they don't inspect the content passing through", even though it'll be mostly pirate content).
PPSP (the IETF version) looks like a more modern and lightweight BitTorrent that runs on UDP. I like that, but as every network, we'll have to see the adoption rate. People stay on BitTorrent the same reason they stay on Facebook: everybody's there.
The Tribler guys are not the only one to want to do P2P on top of UDP though: uTorrent came out much sooner (and with reasonably good adoption) with μTP [2].
[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ppsp-peer-protoc...
[2] http://blog.bittorrent.com/2009/10/05/changing-the-game-with...