General diving articles

Why torrent trackers are a thing of the past and what will happen next

milaeryomina

The fight against piracy on the Internet has taken on the largest scale in history. This year, the owner of the largest torrent search engine KickassTorrents was arrested and dozens of smaller resources were shut down. Copyright holders have begun to actively drown pirates, and the latter are finding more and more sophisticated ways to stay afloat. What is unique about the new round of this eternal confrontation between the shield and the sword?

Pirates ancient and modern
Software piracy came along with the first programs that could be run on other computers. This may sound paradoxical, but it was thanks to piracy in the Soviet and then post-perestroika times that a modern generation of domestic IT specialists of a wide profile appeared. Both in Russia and in the former Soviet republics, it was possible to get any conceivable software for free or almost for nothing. How much it cost was absolutely irrelevant. New operating systems, office suites, professional development tools, drawing and design programs - all of this was on file echoes in FidoNet, transmitted on floppy disks and sold on disks, and later appeared on the Internet.

Thanks to piracy, we got a tremendous advantage, because from childhood we could learn any program without any investment. Some of them in the West were only owned by employees of large companies - after all, professional software was estimated at hundreds and even thousands of dollars per license! Even things like compilers were worth money. It was easy for us to experiment with CorelDraw, ArchiCAD or Visual Studio. No forced development of unloved programs. Entire collections of software cost a little more than the disc on which they were recorded. In "civilized countries" users have to be content with what they bought with their hard-earned money - what then, what now.

The fight against piracy in Russia has always been formal. From time to time, show trials and public flogging were held to maintain the illusion of establishing order. Then foreign partners will deal with us, and foreign investments will continue to flow into the market of a developing country. Opening their offices in Russia, international companies were well aware of all the risks. However, they tried to work for the future, at the same time knocking out large government contracts not in the most honest way. At first, they treated us patronizingly - like re-educated savages who lost the Cold War. Over the years, they had to adapt to Russian reality or move to other regions.

Meanwhile, piracy developed and rose to a new level, which was greatly facilitated by warez sites and especially file-sharing networks. Along with the new technical level, a qualitative transition took place: piracy has ceased to be an ideology and small business, having turned into a major source of shadow income. Piracy was no longer just a national feature and could not exist apart from other illegal forms of profit making. The interests of many criminal groups were very closely intertwined, and the largest pirates gradually began to legalize.

From about the end of the nineties, by order of some pirates, raids on others - who did not have an influential cover - began to be regularly organized. Sophisticated monetization schemes have emerged. For example, Trojans began to be added to the “pills for greed” with the aim of forming botnets and stealing data. By that time, everyone had become accustomed to antivirus detections on utilities for alternative registration of programs. Writing the usual warning "Disable antivirus, firewall, run from the admin and take position # 92" has become redundant. Users already performed this ritual of self-infection.

Soon, key generators and cracks were no longer free hobbyists. The main part began to be regularly written by whole groups, stealing ways to hack new programs from each other. They even began to sell them with payment via SMS, virtual currency, or at least receiving money for forced display of ads on file-sharing hosting. Some of the links on warez resources became phishing, and dubious advertising appeared in the distributions themselves. In short, pirate romance ended long ago, and a tough competition began.

How advertising became pirated
For a long time, a pirated copy was the only way to watch a movie without ads. It will not only be shown on TV without fail, but will also be forced to watch it in the cinema or on a purchased disc. The advertisement will run for several minutes at a deafening volume without the possibility of rewinding by regular means. Therefore, the cleaned rip was even better than the original. Now pirates have mastered this niche as well.

“There are inserts of voice and text ads” - such an inscription can be seen on many new distributions. In practice, this means that at the most unexpected moment, you will see (and hear) a laudatory ode to the address of some online casino, which now has a different address again. The former was blocked by a court order. For users, this disgrace is explained as a forced necessity. Amateur movie translation, creation and design of distributions take time, and tracker work takes money. In fact, this suggests that shadow business forms are merging with each other. Even pirates want their jobs to be paid, and not at the minimum wage rate.

Napster и Gnutella
The history of the development of the first file-sharing networks is indicative. Legally, Napster was ruined by official activities, and technically - by the centralized management of lists. A single server contained a complete list of both all distributed files and hosts storing them. This made it easy for Metallica to pressure the founders of Napster into bankruptcy. Of course, it was not closed with a single lawsuit, but a high-profile trial with a well-known group led to large losses. Later, at the bankruptcy auction, Napster was bought out for an impressive amount of almost two and a half million dollars and turned into a popular paid resource. It was not about copyright protection at all, but about the struggle for sources of income. It's business as usual, with Metallica being a way to get rid of the competition.

The Gnutella file-sharing network became an indirect descendant of Napster. It was created by Nullsoft programmers who later left the company. Gnutella, unlike Napster, was originally decentralized. To search for files, the general Purpose Location Protocol (gPulp) was developed. Its actual implementation took place in different ways - up to searching for files with requests via IRC. The release of the open source client application of the same name did not take place, however, by reverse engineering, the code was still obtained, and then two dozen forks were produced for different operating systems.

Each had its own interesting features, but most of Gnutella's customers are now discontinued. Active development continues for only three forks:  gtk-gnu tella ,  Sha reaza  and  Wir eShare , formerly known as LPE (LimeWire Pirate Edition).

Although gtk-gnutella is not considered a popular program, many of its developers' ideas have been implemented in other file-sharing network clients. Shareaza is interesting for its omnivorous nature. It allows you to download from several P2P networks at once using different protocols, including not only the original Gnutella, but also Gnutella2, eDonkey and BitTorrent. WireShare also remains one of the most advanced P2P clients. It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. In fact, this is a reworked version of LimeWire, from which ads, toolbars and backdoors have been completely removed. WireShare is open source. With this client, you can download torrents, view files on available hosts, create private distributions "for your own" and even communicate in parallel.

Kingdom of blocked mirrors
In fact, BitTorrent is just one of the file-sharing network protocols, but due to some peculiarities, it quickly became the most popular. BitTorrent immediately had something that united warez sites and P2P networks - these are torrent directories, separate sites with a list of distributions and a convenient design. Compared to the dump in DC hubs and difficult attempts to tame the eDonkey donkey, everything looks as familiar to the user on torrent directories. You type in the site address, look for what you need, and press "Download". The difference is that such sites have statistics, reviews and a rating system.

The availability of what was found in torrents is immediately visible, since in parallel with the catalog, one or several trackers work, connecting clients with each other. They form lists of nodes, monitor data on the number of downloaded parts, used by clients and their settings for all file sharing participants. Instead of a dead link to the next file sharing service, the tracker transmits a .torrent file containing data for downloading the desired external program from all available nodes. With a large number of distributors, the download is as fast as possible, "without ads and SMS." However, advertising began to be embedded in the client applications themselves.

Directories and trackers have contributed to the success of BitTorrent, but at the same time have become its most vulnerable part. Because of them, the principle of decentralization was violated, and quite definite targets appeared for copyright holders: sites that could be blocked and their owners who could be arrested.

The creators of torrent catalogs tried to combat blocking: they managed to partially legalize themselves by introducing forms for complaints from copyright holders. However, not all of them were satisfied with the deletion of hands on demand. Many only needed a pretext for a lawsuit. Therefore, another countermeasure was the mirroring of sites, one way or another involved in file sharing. When a site was blocked in one domain by a court order, its clone continued to work in others.

This survival tactic helped, but only partially. The largest torrent search engine - KAT (KickassTorrents) at the request of the US Department of Justice this summer lost seven domains at once. It was blocked not only by providers from different countries, but even by Whois, Google, Twitter and Steam chat. Many resources have removed links to KAT at the request of the authorities.

When they cannot close a resource, close its owner

The second most popular torrent resource, The Pirate Bay (TPB), was the largest in terms of the number of mirrors across different domains. However, even his domain hydra on the eve of 2016  Neg killed  just eight goals. In the course of this operation, the registrars created a unique precedent: the delegation of domains was suspended for an indefinite period. In fact, nothing can be done with such domains. They are neither deleted nor active - a kind of half-dead Schrödinger's domains.

While  TPB Started melts  more or less stable only in the domain  .org. This is not the merit of the registrars in this domain - it’s just the current situation. Another well-known torrent directory, rutor.org, was blocked. Now it works at new addresses in the .info and .is domains.


Interestingly, for the domestic blocking system, the entire range of IPv6 addresses turns out to be something like GrayNet. These are not yet deep underground like Tor and I2P, but also not so easily controlled classics. Roskomnadzor got the hang of banning only using IPv4, while the addresses seem  http://[2001:67c:28f8:7b:42df:833:9648:5d6d] to open quietly without any tunnels and proxies. Of course, if you yourself have IPv6 support enabled.

Thus, the old methods of keeping torrent resources afloat are no longer effective. Therefore, now two asymmetric responses are actively developing at once: going to the darknet and abandoning trackers altogether.

Tor for torrent directories
The Pirate Bay has a Tor address long ago  . This example was followed by other trackers, but a new problem arose - the specifics of addresses. An ordinary browser (and an ordinary user) does not understand links like * .onion. Therefore, for the bulk of inexperienced content consumers, they came up with additional  ate pointers . Another problem is that the name itself is an unmemorable set of characters. It can't even be verified for authenticity, and instead of a verified directory, it's easy to get to a phishing site - there are a lot of them on the darknet.

Torrents on the Tor network

Tor's anonymity also leaves much to be desired, and you can reveal yourself with one careless move. Therefore, when KickassTorrents failed to block once again, the US Department of Justice went to extreme measures and ... blocked the owner of KAT. Artem Vaulin was detained in Warsaw on charges of multiple copyright infringement and money laundering. The total damage is estimated at $ 1 billion. Part of this damage is considered to be caused to copyright holders from the United States, since formally the actions took place (including) in the state of Illinois. The number of such “illicitly distributed copyrighted works” is listed as “more than ten,” and their total retail value is estimated to be “more than $ 2,500.”

Extract from the decision in the Vaulin case

It is clear that Artyom personally did not steal anything. There were no counterfeit copies on his website at all, as on any other torrent directory. This theater of legal absurdity was needed only so that Vaulin could be imputed for violation of US federal law and demand his extradition.

Vaulin's accusation of money laundering through cryptocurrency

As a result, a Ukrainian citizen was arrested in Poland for violating American law. International interaction? No, the usual double standards against the backdrop of the legality game. It is hard to imagine that a US citizen would be arrested in a foreign country for violating, for example, Ukrainian law. The amount of damage is also assessed using an interesting method. This is the number of all copies downloaded, multiplied by the cost of the original releases if purchased at the publisher's price. For example, you downloaded Core Impact Pro and VxWorks. The cost of these two distributions alone is $ 240,000. I highly doubt you would buy them. Most likely, without a pirated copy, you would not have known about them. Torrent directories are just right to bill for ads and distributed repository services.

Tor is not for file sharing, or why there is too much anonymity
Moving torrent sites and search engines to the darknet is not the same as sending BitTorrent traffic itself to Tor and I2P. It's one thing to find an underground distribution and pull it through the regular Internet, and quite another to try to do file sharing over an encrypted channel. To put it mildly, this cannot be done quickly, and the rest of the network participants will not be happy with such an avalanche of traffic. Therefore, unlike search, anonymous downloading and distribution of torrents should be used only as a last resort.

Many torrent trackers and torrent directories help their visitors by describing methods to bypass blocking, advertising VPN services with a free trial period, and showing the current connection parameters. For example, the home page  extratorrent.cc automatically checks the visitor's current IP address.

ExtraTorrent checks the anonymity of the connection

In search of more reliable protection, file-sharing resources are moving to I2P - an anonymous decentralized overlay network with end-to-end traffic encryption. It is anonymous because I2P does not have the usual IP addresses. Each node is identified within the network by the public encryption key it uses. It is decentralized due to the lack of root servers and trusted nodes. Overlay - because it works on top of the existing Internet infrastructure without its own physical channels (similar to Tor or VPN). End-to-end encryption completely hides the contents of transmitted packets.

DifTracker in I2P

Detailed features of I2P already versed in  e nother article . I will also note here that recently, sites have been moving in I2P to support all kinds of P2P networks, including trackers and torrent directories. For example, there is an iMule I2P client for eD2k network and Kademlia distributed hash table lookup. Of the popular trackers on the darknet, RuTr acker ,  DifTrack er  and  Post man can be distinguished   as having a solid catalog and convenient search.

How to connect to I2P: a quick guide
Install  Java Runtim e Environment  - without Amazon Asstitant and other crapware.
Installing  support for I2P . If you install in Windows and want to autorun the I2P service in the background, then check the Windows Service checkbox.
Reboot your computer.
We use the Start I2P shortcut. For the first time, it is better to choose the launch option with the creation of a window - this way it is easier to see errors. For example, I had to manually create a directory  %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\i2p\ - otherwise the service could not start maintaining a log file.
We get into the console of the I2P software router, where we see detailed Russian-language help.
We make all further settings according to the manual and use the "invisible Internet".
Getting started with I2P

I2P also has its own torrent clients. One of them (I2PSnark) is built into the software router. It has a minimalistic design, but allows you to perform the entire set of basic actions with torrents.

Torrents without trackers ... and without directories
If directories and trackers are blocked first of all, is it possible to do without them? Technically, you can. Directories can replace IRC, Twitter, GitHub, public clouds and anything else - it would be possible to pass a link and find it later.
After the tracker is closed, all torrents downloaded from it continue to be downloaded and distributed until the seeds change their IP addresses or connection settings. Unless another tracker takes over the function of connecting peers. Fortunately, most of the distributions are duplicated simultaneously on many resources. The probability that they will be closed all at once is rather small.

The function of the tracker is being successfully replaced by the distributed hash table DHT and the function of direct exchange between peers PEX. Both technologies are supported by modern torrent clients, helping seeds and lychers not to lose each other after blocking the tracker. If the first seed (the author of the distribution) has a static external IP address, then using DHT, the distribution can generally be made trackerless.

The problem is that tracker owners themselves are opposed to such decentralization. With trackerless giveaways, they lose visitors and ad revenue. Therefore, a mechanism to force DHT and PEX to be disabled in torrent clients was proposed as a compromise. It happens whenever a private key equal to one is found inside the torrent file. Because of this, it is forbidden to use clients on many trackers that do not support processing of private keys, for example, old versions.

In addition to technical ways of maintaining file-sharing resources, new legal methods are also being sought. On  TheTo rrent.org  done quite cleverly creating hranilku Torrent search. De jure, there is nothing to close the site for, since it does not distribute counterfeit products. It is impossible to find any evidence there (at least - to the prosecution side and in the usual ways). There are not even names of distributions. But you can always copy the info hash from the desired torrent and download the file from the link of the form  TheTorrent.org/.torrent. The torrent hash is usually published in the upload descriptions and can be found in the file properties.

Hash as a tricky link

Another site can hardly be called a directory or tracker, since there are no giveaways, and the number of seeds is always displayed as zero. Tor rents-Pro  only updates links to other trackers. With its help, you can create a kind of download chain: find the desired distribution on it and select from the list  thetorrent.org. A direct link to the torrent with the hash value already filled in will open on a new page.

When the storm is over
The storm raised by the copyright holders also reached the pirate bay, and in Russia only those file-sharing resources that they did not have time to notice or behind which someone from the government is standing are not drowning. For example, the presidential advisor on the internet turned out to be German Klimenko  Vlad dace  torrent tracker torrnado.ru. I believe that in the rest of the world there is a similar (perhaps less obvious) scheme of competition with the use of power resources.

Presidential Advisor Approved Tracker

In the wake of blockings and arrests, more and more file-sharing resources go to the hidden part of the Internet. It seems that this suits all participants in the confrontation. The US Department of Justice, Roskomnadzor and other control bodies will be able to report on the successful cleaning of the Network from pirates. To crush them seriously now means to deprive the people of their last joys. An angry man in the street who has nothing to lose is not the most loyal voter to the authorities. After an exemplary cleanup, copyright holders will in any case reduce losses from the distribution of counterfeit - for many, it will be unavailable. The pirates will stay afloat, but they won't show off yet. For some time, the number of visitors will drop dozens of times, since not everyone will master the configuration of Tor, I2P, hash search and other wisdom. On the other hand, the increased entry threshold will leave behind everyone who does not know how to dive, but only learns to surf.