The pirate bay, torrent and TOR

[Kyle Williams]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Teddy Smith <teddks at gmail.com> 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 at gmail.com> 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.
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