[HN Gopher] Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M p...
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Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3M peers
Author : k-ian
Score : 624 points
Date : 2025-06-17 17:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kianbradley.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kianbradley.com)
| diggan wrote:
| > Is this legal?
|
| Why wouldn't it be? You're not actually hosting a tracker in this
| case, only looking at incoming connections. And even if you do
| run a tracker, hard to make the case that the tracker itself is
| illega. Hosting something like opentrackr is like hosting a
| search engine, how they respond to legal takedown requests is
| where the crux is at, and whatever infra sits around the tracker,
| so police and courts can see/assume the intent. But trackers are
| pretty stupid coordination server software, would be crazy if
| they became illegal.
| jekwoooooe wrote:
| Is this legal isn't a useful question. The better question is
| how likely are you to get sued? With civil lawsuits it doesn't
| matter if it's legal you can be sued and harassed by lawyers if
| you get on their radar.
| legohead wrote:
| No need to sue. Send a cease and desist and your average
| hacker like OP will take it down in a hurry...
| daneel_w wrote:
| In this case not even a cease-and-desist was needed. Just
| seeing 1.7M peers crying out in the void for company was
| enough. Living in a country overly friendly with Hollywood
| and its money, I do understand him.
| account42 wrote:
| Yes, prime example of a chilling effect where the fear of
| a lawsuit stops people from engaging in perfectly legal
| activities. It's unfortunate that copyright law does not
| concern itself with collateral damage like this.
| Suzuran wrote:
| This is not collateral damage, this is the intended
| effect - decreasing their competition, legal or
| otherwise.
| account42 wrote:
| I think the point is that you can't count on that and need
| to assume that you are going to attract actual lawsuits.
| DMCA provides easier take down options for copyright owners
| but AFAIK does not compel them to make use of those options
| before going to court.
| GTP wrote:
| I think companies will try with a strongly worded letter
| first, as this would save them money over straight going
| to court. But I get that the risk may not be worth it for
| many people, I myself would be very scared if I received
| a letter threatening a lawsuit for a ridiculous amount of
| money, even knowing that they are exaggerating the scale
| of damages just to scare me.
| driverdan wrote:
| Unfortunately what they will do is file a DMCA with the
| hosting provider. Most will immediately shut you down, none
| of them defend their customers.
| autoexec wrote:
| Considering the obscene fines courts have granted the
| media industry who claim losses with zero basis in
| reality it's only to be expected. Would you be
| willing/able to defend your customers when faced with
| billions in fines and a court system that has been
| aggressively favoring your opponent?
| bilekas wrote:
| I'm not sure if that's true actually, you might get a
| takedown notice, but to sue, and maybe I'm wrong but you have
| to claim damages, all op has to do is not announce out?
|
| IE he can see the peer pool but they don't announce the peer
| list.
| dymk wrote:
| The RIAA doesn't have to sue to make OP's life miserable.
| They have enough lawyers on the payroll to drown him in
| perfectly legal demand letters. Go one step further and
| assume the demand letters are harassment - what's OP going
| to do, sue the RIAA?
| Retric wrote:
| Nahh, for a bunch of annoying letters take them to small
| claims court. Cheap for you, expensive for them, and you
| win if they don't show up.
| dymk wrote:
| haha, no, this is not their first rodeo
| Retric wrote:
| Sure, but that's why they avoid this kind of harassment
| in the first place.
|
| You made a hypothetical assuming they would do something
| they wouldn't because it puts them at risk.
| account42 wrote:
| This is a cool feel good theory but can you show an
| example of this working?
| Retric wrote:
| It's not the kind of thing that generally makes the news.
| One example that was is a guy who was making good money
| doing this to spam callers. His case was bolstered by
| asking to be put on their no call list and then them
| ignoring that, but the point is the vast majority of
| people don't do it even if in theory they could.
|
| However the important bit isn't winning in a harassment
| case but having documentation to get them to stop in the
| future.
| jekwoooooe wrote:
| Suing isn't just going to court it means subpoenas,
| depositions, motions, letters, etc. all this stuff costs a
| ton of money without you even stepping foot in a court. The
| system is so broken
| account42 wrote:
| Exactly, you _might_ just get a takedown notice. Or you
| might not if someone decides they want to burn you in
| court. This is how chilling effects from copyright laws can
| suppress perfectly legal speech.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > Is this legal isn't a useful question
|
| Why do you say that?
|
| I think even seemingly "useless" questions can lead to
| valuable discussions and insights... and it might also be
| possible that your perspective is not the only valid one.
|
| What's useful (or not) to one person is not always the same
| for others.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| You may want to adjust your LLM settings. Your post
| seemingly dropped everything but the first sentence from
| the context window and then wrote vapid fluff that makes no
| sense in context.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I do not use any LLM, thanks
| chaboud wrote:
| This is definitely the right pragmatic take. A lawyer friend
| of mine once laid it out for me: "in litigation, if you go to
| court, even if you win, you lose". The reality is that court
| sucks, and getting sued sucks for all but the ultra-wealthy
| (who can absorb the cost). For those of us with less than
| $100MM, court is a universe to be avoided.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> A lawyer friend of mine once laid it out for me: "in
| litigation, if you go to court, even if you win, you lose"_
|
| In my country we have a phrase for this exact scenario:
| "the punishment is the process".
|
| When the government or a powerful person wants to fuck with
| you, all they have to do is drag you endlessly through the
| court system, even knowing they'll loose. Because the
| experience will be 100x more painful for you to win than it
| is for them to loose.
|
| It's what the UK government did to the postal workers in
| the Fujitsu scandal.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Is there a limit how many concurrent lawsuits can be
| thrown at one person?
| tristor wrote:
| No, not technically, however in the US there are the
| SLAPP statutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_l
| awsuit_against_publ...
| busterarm wrote:
| Don't underestimate this.
|
| My family members sued each other over a small inheritance.
| 5 kids fighting over a couple million dollars. Case has
| dragged out across almost 4 decades. Lawyer fees dwarfed
| the size of what was being fought over several times over.
| Some family spent time in jail for contempt of court...
| Family members then put up all their personal assets to
| keep fighting. Then they lost and were faced with a
| judgment that left them destitute well into their
| retirement years with no way to earn new money. Some family
| members are still appealing and fighting adjacent court
| battles (property seizure, etc). This process has consumed
| the last decades of their lives and everything they worked
| their whole lives for.
|
| Not only would I say never end up in court, I'll extend you
| one further. Never get the government involved in your
| personal relationships.
| thmsths wrote:
| Which is why, ideally your access to the court system
| should NOT be dependent on your wealth.
| gruez wrote:
| Access to it isn't. You can theoretically sue in federal
| court with a few hundred dollars in filing fees. It's not
| cheap, but not exorbitantly expensive either. It's
| representation that's expensive.
| jedberg wrote:
| Do you think the police understand this nuance? Especially
| since most of the traffic that will go through there is
| probably copyright infringement?
|
| They'll just see tracker and assume it's illegal.
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| Do you think the police are actually policing the internet?
|
| Even if you didn't mean your local police, and meant a
| national body like the FBI, the truth is they focus on other
| crimes (eg. child abuse), and even then they are woefully
| unable to handle even most of those crimes.
|
| The vast, vast majority of copyright enforcement comes from
| copyright holders ... not the internet copyright police.
| jedberg wrote:
| Of course not. But first a copyright holder tells the
| police, and then the police enforce it.
|
| The police rarely find crimes on their own -- they are
| almost always acting on a request from someone else.
| swat535 wrote:
| Nitpick but police follow the courts, not the copyright
| holders.
| SXX wrote:
| > Especially since most of the traffic that will go through
| there is probably copyright infringement?
|
| Copyright infinging materials dont go "though" trackers.
| Trackers only keep torrent hashes and lists of peers.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| So do torrent websites like the pirate bay. That doesn't
| protect pirates from getting sued to hell and back or even
| receiving prison sentences from the court.
| dahrkael wrote:
| I would argue the pirate bay was an index apart from a
| tracker, and indexes is what gets you in trouble mostly
| geon wrote:
| Torrent sites also keep metadata. Often detailed, telling
| exactly what media is getting its copyright infringed.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm well aware of how trackers and torrents work. But
| again, do you think law enforcement understands the nuance
| of that?
|
| Also the government and private companies have argued in
| the past that the hashes and lists of peers is inducement
| and enablement for copyright infringement.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Tell them it's for training a corporate AI model, then.
| bmacho wrote:
| It's okay to watch pirated movies if you sell fanart based
| on them later
| vintermann wrote:
| Traffic doesn't "go through there", that's the whole point of
| P2P. All a tracker does is let people find each other.
| jedberg wrote:
| Traffic still goes through it. A seeder attaches and says
| "I am here and have these hashes". The a leecher connects
| and says "who has these hashes".
|
| So yes, data "goes through it". Do you think law
| enforcement understands the nuance of metadata vs actual
| data?
| gpm wrote:
| Because knowingly helping people commit crimes generally counts
| the same as committing the crime yourself. I.e. federally in
| the U.S. under 18 USC 2a
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2 The software
| you're running being "simple" isn't a defence for doing illegal
| things with it - like aiding others commit crimes.
|
| There are a few internet/copyright safe harbor provisions (in
| the US) that might maybe (probably not) make it not a crime, I
| don't know, I'm not a lawyer. But your general thought when you
| hear "helping someone else commit a crime" ought to be "that's
| probably a crime itself".
| rockskon wrote:
| Wouldn't particular knowledge be required? I'm sure Google
| devs know in the abstract that Google search is used by
| criminals to help them in committing crimes, but that clearly
| is not illegal in and of itself.
| rvnx wrote:
| Well Google has knowledge about it, but once you reach a
| certain scale you become safe (e.g. OpenAI with copyright
| infringment)
| justinclift wrote:
| And Facebook/Meta, for the same.
| gpm wrote:
| There's definitely a mens rea requirement here, that you
| know that a crime is being committed and that you intend to
| facilitate it. I doubt it requires particularized knowledge
| that "this specific request" is for a crime... I'm still
| not a lawyer.
|
| Running a service primarily for legal purposes that some
| criminals can take advantage of is pretty different with
| regards to intent than reviving an old domain name that you
| know is primarily used by old illegal torrents as a
| tracker.
|
| I spent a few minutes googling, and it seems like that at
| least as of a decade ago the exact bounds here weren't well
| defined: https://www.scotusblog.com/2014/03/opinion-
| analysis-justice-...
|
| > Finally, the possible liability for an "incidental
| facilitator" - such as a firearms dealer who knows that
| some customers will use their purchases for crime - is
| noted but not resolved. Thus, thankfully, there is still
| some fertile ground for hypotheticals with which we
| practicing law professors can bedevil our students.
| drob518 wrote:
| IANAL, but I would think you'd also have to have specific
| mens rea. That is, it's not illegal to use a torrent or
| facilitate a torrent, because it's just a protocol that
| can be used for good or bad. If you were hosting movies
| and songs, whatever the protocol, that's when you're
| specifically engaging in piracy. It's sort of like
| driving a car isn't illegal, but being the getaway driver
| for a bank robbery is, even if you never enter the bank.
| The car isn't the problem, it's what you are using it
| for. It's also not illegal to sell a car to a bank
| robber, even if that's a possibility, unless you
| reasonably believe that the particular person you were
| selling it to is a bank robber and will be using it to
| commit a crime. The mere fact that somebody could use
| your tracker for piracy doesn't loop you into the
| conspiracy unless you specifically know that they are
| committing piracy. This is why the telecom companies all
| have carve outs for this sort of thing. Carrying packets
| or voice traffic of someone planning a crime doesn't loop
| the telecom company into the conspiracy.
| gpm wrote:
| I'm not saying it's illegal to "run a torrent tracker".
| When Blizzard use to (pre 2015) update Starcraft via
| torrent I assume they ran their own tracker for that, and
| that was totally legal. Even if there was some way for a
| pirate to take advantage of the Blizzard tracker.
|
| Here it's not the "mere fact that somebody could use your
| tracker for piracy". It's that you're literally observing
| that a bunch of old mostly-piracy torrents are pointing
| at this domain, and then deciding to turn this domain
| back into a service which assists in that piracy.
| KomoD wrote:
| > It's that you're literally observing that a bunch of
| old mostly-piracy torrents are pointing at this domain,
| and then deciding to turn this domain back into a service
| which assists in that piracy.
|
| He doesn't know if they're mostly piracy or not, all he
| sees is a hash and the peers.
| drob518 wrote:
| Exactly.
| gpm wrote:
| He did not choose the domain name by chance. He chose it
| because he observed it was previously in use as a tracker
| for copyright infringing torrents.
|
| The police/courts/jury is not obliged to put blinders on
| just because you would prefer if they did.
|
| The mere fact that the domain name was previously used
| for this is almost certainly probable cause to get search
| warrants that will almost certainly provide the requisite
| proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he has in fact
| intentionally both committed himself, and aided others in
| committing (because he knew what the domain name was, or
| at least recognized it as similar to demonoid and could
| guess), copyright infringement. And that's without the
| blog post... (which I assume in the hypothetical where he
| chose to keep running this he would not have posted).
| necovek wrote:
| They explicitly used it to download "Linux isos", which
| are highly likely not copyright infringing (they are
| usually free to distribute).
|
| Eg. Canonical distributes Ubuntu via BitTorrent too:
| https://ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads
|
| Edit: I missed the "uh," in the OP: I stand corrected.
| notpushkin wrote:
| They explicitly used it to "download 'Linux isos'",
| indeed!
|
| But yeah, I don't think Canonical would use
| open.demonii.si as a tracker for their torrents.
| immibis wrote:
| They wrote "download Linux ISO"s" yet they're using an
| old piracy tracker domain, which Linux ISOs don't use.
| The court is not stupid.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| For the purposes of a criminal case, yes, they are
| intentionally stupid... it's up to the prosecution to
| prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that something they did
| was illegal _and_ that they knew it and chose to do it
| anyway. What a judge /jury thinks about this person, or
| "linux ISOs", is irrelevant... their job is only to
| interpret the information given to them.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| IANAL, but I would think that Google's customers are
| overwhelmingly using the service for "legitimate"
| activities, and Google makes attempts to limit use of their
| tools in the commission of a crime.
|
| It's kind of like Kim Dotcom's defence of his systems where
| he was saying that he was making attempts to remove content
| from his systems in compliance with DCMA requests. That is,
| the claim is his systems were legal because even though
| people were using them for illegitimate purposes, he was
| actively working to prevent that from happening.
| immibis wrote:
| It's based on how much money you have. Google can hire
| expensive lawyers, so it's fine.
| diggan wrote:
| > knowingly helping people commit crimes generally
|
| Right, that makes sense. Is running a tracker "knowingly
| helping people commit crimes"? I feel like that's a huge
| jump, there is a wide range of content coordinated by
| trackers and the DHT.
| gpm wrote:
| It's not like he just started a random new torrent
| tracker... he took over an old domain that was previously
| in use by people pirating stuff after observing that
| torrents were still pointing to the tracker and ran a
| tracker on that domain. That's a pretty direct line to "he
| knew this would be used for copyright infringement".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| What kind of threshold do courts tend to put on that, for
| the percentage of illegal activity? Because pretty much
| any service that connects lots of people together is
| guaranteed to have _some_.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I've read most of these comments and I think it's clear
| most people have no idea how criminal court cases work.
|
| For one, a judge/jury does not infer things they are
| "supposed to know", such as whether torrents are mostly
| used for piracy or not... they only operate based on the
| evidence presented.
|
| There is a very large burden of proof in criminal cases,
| requiring that their intent to facilitate a crime be
| proven "beyond a reasonable doubt".
|
| Trying to say "everyone knows linux ISOs is code for
| piracy" or claim that "a judge would see right through
| that" is simply not how things work... decisions cannot
| be made based on any type of prior knowledge like that.
|
| The entire point of a criminal court case (as a
| prosecutor) is to _convince_ a judge /jury that the
| defendant is guilty using evidence and testimony, which
| means they must prove that there was clear intent to
| commit/facilitate a crime, i.e. they knew it was illegal
| and did it anyway.
|
| Simply running a torrent tracker in and of itself doesn't
| prove any of that.
| senko wrote:
| But the OP states he was using the tracker for lawful
| purposes:
|
| > So I was, uh, downloading some linux isos, like usual.
|
| Nothing to see here, move along.
|
| Seriously though, the OP makes the same argument and
| concludes that:
|
| > I was spooked. [...] I shut down the VPS and deleted the
| domain quickly after confirming it works.
|
| IANAL but this clearly shows the OP didn't intend to
| facilitate crime and shut it down after seeing that was what
| may have been happening.
| gpm wrote:
| I, and I think OP, were both addressing the hypothetical in
| which he continued to run the service, not the reality
| where he quickly shut it down.
|
| > But the OP states he was using the tracker for lawful
| purposes:
|
| That quote is a confession that he was committing copyright
| infringement. Courts and juries and not obliged to ignore
| the ", uh," part.
|
| Probably (in the very unlikely event where he is charged)
| the best defence would be "this was a joke" not "I didn't
| literally confess to committing copyright infringement".
| Even then I'm pretty sure this quote would weigh against
| him substantially in just about any jury's mind.
| senko wrote:
| > That quote is a confession that he was committing
| copyright infringement.
|
| I know, "linux ISOs" has always been a joke "rationale"
| :)
|
| I do think we're in agreement.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Because knowingly helping people commit crimes generally
| counts the same as committing the crime yourself.
|
| Oh boy, are the crypto bros in trouble.
| hoseja wrote:
| Why did people just accept this is a crime at all? You don't
| appear to be a zoomer.
| leijurv wrote:
| OP did actually host a tracker.
|
| "I then started the tracker. After about an hour, it peaked at
| about 1.7 million distinct torrents across 3.1 million peers!"
| numpad0 wrote:
| Because music & movie industries hate P2P in general? That
| basically killed P2P dead in 2000s as it was becoming the next
| generation of decentralized Web.
|
| Maybe it's about time to revisit it? It's just the matter of
| how to enforce DRM. They shouldn't care in this day and age
| with plenty ways to get licensing sorted out.
| geon wrote:
| Dead? It is as alive as ever.
| KomoD wrote:
| (IANAL) It can be both legal and illegal
|
| If you don't respond to takedowns, that's probably leaning
| towards being illegal*
|
| If you respond to takedowns and blacklist the hashes, you're
| most likely fine*
|
| *obviously depends on the jurisdiction and on whether matching
| hashes to IP:PORT is considered
| distribution/facilitation/whatever (take TPB's case as an
| example)
|
| I know someone who ran a pretty large tracker for years, when
| he received a takedown he just blacklisted the hashes and he's
| been fine so far.
| anilakar wrote:
| Yeah. There are trackers (hosts used for coordination between
| bittorrent peers) and there are "trackers" (sites used for
| hosting .torrent files and magnet: URIs). Takedowns have been
| targeted exclusively at the latter.
| eli wrote:
| The Anti-Circumvention Clause in the DMCA says "No person shall
| manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise
| traffic in any technology [...] is primarily designed or
| produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological
| measure that effectively controls access to a work protected
| under this title [or] has only limited commercially significant
| purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure
| that effectively controls access to a work protected under this
| title"
| myrmidon wrote:
| It seems difficult to argue that this would apply, because
| what would the "technological measure to control access" be
| that a bittorrent client (or tracker) is circumventing?
|
| I also don't know of any precedent where bittorrent
| software/client itself was ruled illegal (but am not a
| lawyer).
| lacoolj wrote:
| The technological measure to control access is probably a
| crawler looking for standard download links for lawyers to
| send out C/D letters.
|
| Good question though, would love to know what specific tech
| is in use (or if it's just "finding it on search engines
| organically")
| eli wrote:
| https://www.oyez.org/cases/2004/04-480
| jedberg wrote:
| This is like when cloudflare picked up the IP address 1.1.1.1.
| They saw a ton of traffic to it as soon as it went hot, because a
| bunch of people had scripts pointing at it.
| waymon wrote:
| How did they get that address?
| jedberg wrote:
| " APNIC's research group held the IP addresses 1.1.1.1 and
| 1.0.0.1. While the addresses were valid, so many people had
| entered them into various random systems that they were
| continuously overwhelmed by a flood of garbage traffic. APNIC
| wanted to study this garbage traffic but any time they'd
| tried to announce the IPs, the flood would overwhelm any
| conventional network."
|
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/
| udev4096 wrote:
| On a separate note, why was cloudflare given the ownership
| of 1.1.1.1?
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| It is explained in that blogpost from Cloudflare
|
| 'We offered Cloudflare's network to receive and study the
| garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS
| resolver on the memorable IPs'
| fine_tune wrote:
| You bought a house that had a murder X years ago and are
| wondering if your guilty for the murder, probably not - aslong as
| you don't do more murder in it.
|
| I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who
| picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was
| picked up after Defcon if memory serves.
|
| Ironically your probably at more risk from the GDPR for leaking
| those IP addresses that connected to the box via your blog post.
|
| I'm not a lawyer/solicitor though, don't take my advise.
| zht wrote:
| I think it's more like you buy an abandoned house where people
| used to go buy drugs
|
| you buy the house and people are still coming knocking on your
| door asking you if you have any drugs to sell
|
| you're not doing anything wrong, but if the police notice
| people constantly coming to your house to buy drugs they may do
| something about it
| rvnx wrote:
| Other perspective: It's more like you reopen a public place
| where people were known to publicly harm copyright owners and
| you provide technical help so they can do it again.
| gpm wrote:
| This guy didn't just buy the haunted house that previously had
| signs directing serial killers to where the victims are, he
| also reinstalled the signs and opened it back up to the public
| knowing that the serial killers were still around and reading
| the signs.
|
| I mean, it's a bit absurd to compare copyright infringement to
| murder, but that's where your analogy started. He didn't just
| by the domain and do something innocent, he actually started
| running the software that helps people pirate things strongly
| suspecting that pirates would use it to help them pirate
| things... and then when he observed that was reality he
| (smartly IMO) shut it down.
| markasoftware wrote:
| the guy (marcus hutchins) wasn't arrested for registering that
| domain, he was arrested for allegedly creating an unrelated
| piece of malware.
| KomoD wrote:
| > I suppose real life is more interesting though, the guy who
| picked up the domain to stop the global ransomware crisis was
| picked up after Defcon if memory serves
|
| That dude developed and sold banking malware, that's why he got
| arrested.
| lucascacho wrote:
| Seems like the perfect opportunity for a FBI honeypot
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Isn't that one of the first things they do when they identify +
| take down a site hosting CSAM?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IANAL, but my understanding is that running a content-neutral
| tracker is legal in the US.
|
| In other jurisdictions it most certainly is not, and the VPS
| maybe in a different jurisdiction and the .si TLD definitely is.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| VPS is from https://cockbox.org/ (as referenced in the
| article), which says it is based in Moldova?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Googling, there's been at least one tracker shut down by US law
| enforcement, EliteTorrents [2005]
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-may-26-fi-torre...
|
| I think there have probably been more. There are definitely
| more that had _civil_ suits with MPAA etc suing for damages.
|
| It may be somewhat harder to make the case in the US, but a
| tracker where a great majority of what's listed is copyrighted,
| I'm pretty sure it can be shut down in the US.
| lossolo wrote:
| I remember the day they shut down ET. It was because they
| released some major blockbuster movie before its premiere.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Was that the actual tracker and tracker only, or was there a
| web front end that hosted all the torrent files and forums
| and so forth? Because the latter will make you a big target.
|
| God I miss rarbg. And KAT.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I'm curious the nature of the US laws that would make the
| web front end illegal (or subject to civil penalties?) but
| not the tracker?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A tracker is ostensibly a content-neutral middleman. Your
| ISP isn't illegal (and until recently was not thought to
| be subject to civil penalties; now there is at least one
| ongoing case) either.
|
| A lot of these websites were "come here and pirate lots
| of shit," often had tools to make it easier to
| specifically search for infringing content, and would
| remove torrents that were not tagged correctly. In many
| cases some of the people running the sites were also
| seeding.
|
| That makes it hard to argue "we're just passing packets"
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > God I miss rarbg. And KAT.
|
| I miss shit being worth torrenting. Maybe things have
| changed, maybe I grew up, but:
|
| 1. Most utility software you need is free, save for a few
| programs you can easily find on Russian torrents.
|
| 2. Most games and other media are slop.
|
| Torrents didn't die because US law enforcement made them
| die. Torrents died because most companies realized that
| providing slop with ads and lootboxes for free is a much
| better business model than trying to get people to pay for
| something of quality.
|
| Imagine trying to tell someone in year 2000 that Windows
| will natively display ads, EA will lose lawsuits related to
| FIFA being actual old-fashioned gambling, and music
| industry will push for AI-generated content. Yet somehow we
| accept this as completely normal in 2025. No wonder nobody
| ain't torrenting shit.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Torrents died because you can basically just download
| anything off file hosting sites now, or bootleg
| OneDrives/Google Drives.
|
| There is still plenty of quality stuff in 2025, and a lot
| of slop, just how it was 40 years ago.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Well, I myself consider many of today's TV shows slop and
| not worth the need to watch them through a torrent
| source. Low quality content en mass for streaming
| services is a thing now. But that's a personal view.
| komali2 wrote:
| A lot of the best torrents are now on private trackers in
| my experience. I'm not clear why, but observing the
| communities involved, members seem to take great pride in
| e.g. well formatted e-books, well organized audiobook
| files, creating different resolutions and compression rate
| variations of a movie or tv show, and I suppose want to
| keep those in the community?
| trinix912 wrote:
| There used to be a large public tracker running on .si, used
| widely in Slovenia where .si is from. Almost everyone who's
| been online in the last 20 years in Slovenia knows of or has
| used it. It also didn't disappear because of legal notices.
| xyst wrote:
| Not illegal. But most people without resources to fight off the
| thinly veiled, strongly worded legal letters would probably fold
| under this light pressure.
|
| Interesting, but I suppose it's not surprising to see clients
| still holding references to old/defunct trackers. Those peers
| this person discovered once the tracker was resurrected are more
| than likely to be seed boxes. Maybe a few real clients if they
| found an old .torrent link and have left it open.
|
| Thanks to DHT (trackerless peering), trackers have become mostly
| defunct.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Can you do this to create a database of torrents for a torrent
| search engine?
| sweeter wrote:
| You don't even have to go that far, you can just use torsniff.
| But be aware there is a lot of nsfw material and potentially
| illegal material for all I know.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| There are existing services like btdig that do this via DHT, I
| believe.
| zaik wrote:
| I wonder how many anti-torrent groups are doing this covertly.
| sweeter wrote:
| Definitely a few. Media companies often send out infringement
| notices to ISPs to be forwarded to the user and I would guess
| this is how they get those IPs
| mdaniel wrote:
| My understanding is that mere swarm membership is sufficient,
| no need to host anything
|
| That's _my understanding_ of why private trackers ban folks
| who upload private .torrent files to public trackers because
| the infohash is a rendezvous point of private and public
| consumers via DHT
| accrual wrote:
| It's kind of like walking into a room of people with full
| or partial copies of a copyrighted pie, but there's one
| person in the corner (the copyright holder or someone on
| their behalf) taking notes of everyone who comes and asks
| for a slice.
| neckro23 wrote:
| No tracker necessary, you can just use DHT:
| https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/
| edude03 wrote:
| huh, weirdly it has stuff I did download and stuff I didn't
| download within minutes of each other ... should I be
| worried?
| lossolo wrote:
| Stop using DHT and/or public trackers and you will be
| safe. They scan public trackers and the DHT network.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Use a VPN? Like a public one. Mullvad recommended.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Stop using DHT and/or public trackers a
|
| Public trackers are the only trackers most of us can
| reasonably use. He should get a VPN.
| edm0nd wrote:
| private trackers and warez groups are the plentiful
| (IPTorrents, Speed, etc) if you are a good seeder and can
| maintain good ratios. anyone using a public tracker in
| 2025 deserves anything their ISP catches them doing imo.
|
| public trackers and torrent sites are also just 90%
| malware and RATs.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > anyone using a public tracker in 2025 deserves anything
| their ISP catches them doing imo.
|
| Or you could just use a VPN, which you probably should
| for private trackers too anyway.
| dahrkael wrote:
| it is my understanding that some private trackers dont
| allow you to use VPNs or risk a ban
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >private trackers and warez groups are the plentiful (
|
| Sure. It combines all the fun of pledge week with a
| fraternity with the wrong-headed attitudes that became
| part of the culture when ftp servers were the height of
| technology. And you just have to schedule an interview
| and learn the secret knock/handshake. Don't ever invite
| anyone, because if they're the wrong type, you get banned
| for their behavior too.
|
| >public trackers and torrent sites are also just 90%
| malware and RATs.
|
| It's an mkv file. Don't double click exes.
| edude03 wrote:
| Sorry, should have been more specific - I don't care if
| people know what I downloaded - I just wonder how stuff I
| definitely didn't download is attributed to my IP
| address. Can't be that my dynamic IP address changed,
| because of the small time between stuff I did download
| and stuff I didn't. So then, is the scanner wrong, or do
| I have rouge device(s) on my network?
| _factor wrote:
| Many trackers will add dummy data to prevent profiling.
| There is no validation to claims. It's nice to look at,
| but not reliable.
| alex_duf wrote:
| Interestingly they put the infohash of the show in the URL.
| So one can use that website to pick which show to download
| just by using the hash + DHT
|
| Edit: Nope I'm wrong, different type of hash it seems...
| komali2 wrote:
| When I moved out of my apartment I needed to transfer the
| Comcast account to my roommate. In the process of logging
| into their web dashboard for the first time since I'd started
| the service, I found out I had an @comcast.com type email
| address, apparently registered for me. The webmail UI
| indicated I had thousands of unread emails. I was curious
| what kind of spam gets sent to an email address that's so far
| as I'm aware never out on the internet anywhere, so popped it
| open.
|
| Thousands of DMCA requests. Full filenames. Over the course
| of a year they had apparently notified Comcast of thousands
| of alleged violations, and nothing more than an email ever
| came of it.
|
| Impossible to know which roommate was allegedly torrenting
| files of course. Or perhaps people visiting using our wifi.
| Who knows!
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I think some commenters here missed the point.
|
| Of course hosting a tracker is legal, but what about "hijacking"
| inactive resource?
| ascendantlogic wrote:
| The word "hijacking" in this scenario would only be applicable
| if the domain was still registered and active and he forcefully
| took the domain away. That is not the case. The fact OP was
| able to register it quickly and easily indicates it was unused
| and to call this "hijhacking" would imply permanent ownership
| of domains even after previous owners knowingly let the
| registration lapse.
|
| The legality of hosting a tracker isn't obvious, and as pointed
| out elsewhere the nuance is less about concrete legality and
| more about having the resources to deal with lawyers harassing
| you with lawsuits.
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| I would at least mask those IP addresses from the blog post...
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I actually ran a very-short-lived private use tracker briefly,
| for some exploration doing p2p watch partying. But it was a toy,
| never got serious enough to look deeper at how the tracker worked
| (was using the rust Aquatic tracker, which kindly added
| webtorrent support on request! https://github.com/greatest-
| ape/aquatic )
|
| Does the tracker know what it's tracking? Is there any attempt to
| make the tracker unaware of what peer rendezvous it's doing?
|
| My gut is that it seems some kind of hash/magnet that folks are
| asking to peers on. And that the magnet itself is sufficient, and
| doesn't _have_ to include anything identifying (although I
| believe many magnet links included some human readable
| description). The tracker could likely try to download this hash
| from the peer itself, to get the torrent info, but wouldn 't
| really know what the torrent is or what's in it without doing the
| download itself.
|
| Does that check out? How much of the magnet link is key to
| rendezvous? Could a tracker ignore human friendly fields, block
| them at ingress, to shield it's eyes?
| qingcharles wrote:
| The tracker knows what it is tracking. I used to run a TV show
| tracker. It would keep track of all the users upload/download
| ratios.
| aeyes wrote:
| The blog post is about a public tracker. What you describe is
| a private tracker which embeds a client identifier into the
| announce URL of the torrent.
|
| On a public tracker the only way to identify a user is the IP
| address and that's not reliable.
| daneel_w wrote:
| The trackers only deal with torrents' info hash. No names, no
| descriptions, no list of contents, no nothing. _opentracker_ ,
| to use OP's chosen software as example, can run in both white-
| and blacklist mode (or whatever equivalent terminology it uses
| today). The former is self-explanatory, and the latter allows
| _all hashes_ except the blacklisted ones. All open trackers,
| such as torrent.eu and opentrackr.org to name a couple, always
| operate in a blacklist fashion in order to openly accommodate
| any users to congregate for (almost) any content.
| prettyblocks wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but I think _intent_ is a big part of legality and
| I hope that doing something like this for research purposes
| should be relatively safe.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| If done in good faith[1], this is allowed.
|
| [1]https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/press-
| release/file/1507...
| nneonneo wrote:
| Now I'm wondering: with the wide range of bittorrent clients out
| there, and the fact that many are written in unsafe languages,
| could it be possible for some of them to be exploited through a
| malicious tracker? It would not surprise me if some of these
| clients misbehave if fed malformed data from a tracker.
| asa400 wrote:
| I've written hobby-quality clients and I think the answer is
| yes. First, you're dealing with input from a server you don't
| control, and second, you're doing quite a bit of interaction
| with the filesystem. It's hard enough to write a functional
| client in a memory safe language, getting it correct in C or
| C++ is bound to be pretty tough.
| fshafique wrote:
| That's what I was hoping the author would explore.
| treyd wrote:
| Most torrent clients that people use (though not all) are
| actually wrappers around libtorrent, which is very well tested
| and has even been audited.
| dafugg wrote:
| Libtorrent even has fuzzers specifically for communications
| with trackers and DHT peers. Obviously this isn't perfect but
| it gives me much more confidence than other implementations
| do.
| delusional wrote:
| It's worth noting that there are at least 3 variants calling
| themselves "libtorrent" and to my knowledge they don't have a
| lot in common implementation wise.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| Think about how many other programs are written in not-rust.
| You're worrying over nothing (or, alternatively, you should be
| worried about just about everything)
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Transmission had a remote code execution vulnerability
| (CVE-2018-5702) through DNS rebinding that allowed attackers to
| execute arbitrary commands - tracker exploitation is definitely
| a real attack vector.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Using a container sandbox such as gvisor would definitely
| help. Or even using firejail for normal systemd processes
| userbinator wrote:
| Possible but unlikely. The protocol is relatively simple, and
| what clients are out there have already been subjected to tons
| of untrusted input.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Data is encoded via bencode so it's a byte wise format. Known
| malicious trackers usually inject stuff in the sense that e.g.
| there is a payload to all known PDF files appended with a
| payload that targets the clients' OS.
|
| The announcement related APIs are fairly easy to implement, but
| I wouldn't bet on it being implemented in a fuzzed testing
| environment. Transmission, for example, had multiple
| vulnerabilities over the years. Not sure about the other client
| implementations.
| Sophira wrote:
| Don't torrents have a checksum hash, though? Or is it one of
| the broken hashing algorithms like MD5?
| cookiengineer wrote:
| That's correct. Most clients revalidate stuff after the
| download has been completed. Depending on how well they can
| redownload chunks (e.g. web seeds sometimes don't allow
| that if the web server does not support 206 Partial Content
| headers) you might have to redownload the file completely
| afterwards.
|
| I had different experiences with different clients, so I
| guess it's work in progress on what a client does when the
| cache was poisoned.
|
| Hashing algos are mostly SHA based ones that are used. No
| idea if someone managed to inject stuff and found
| collisions for SHA1 yet though. I know that there has been
| PoCs in the past for hash collisions of PDF files.
|
| Context: [1] https://shattered.io/
| haunter wrote:
| There is a tracker masterlist here updated daily so you can find
| another dead ones probably
| https://github.com/ngosang/trackerslist
| ck45 wrote:
| My first thought is, how many BitTorrent clients have vulnerable
| parsing code? Could a malicious actor register the domain and
| infect clients?
| SSLy wrote:
| utorrent v2.1 is still widely used by too many people, and it
| certainly is exploitable.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm thinking of the Jon Evans novel "Invisible Armies" and the
| "bug" / backdoor in the P2P software that it's author users to
| pwm machines.
| CactusRocket wrote:
| I don't really think so. The tracker is just a tiny part of the
| whole Bittorrent setup, and it's only really used by clients to
| get a list of peers. It's basically just an HTTP call to the
| tracker, returning a response. The only thing that I can
| quickly think of is returning some malformed bencode which
| could cause a memory exhaustion a client written by a novice.
|
| The peer protocol (and variants, like uTP) are much more
| interesting to attack, and you don't need to host a tracker for
| that, you can just get peer IPs from trackers or DHT, connect,
| and do your magic.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Some history on the original tracker:
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/demonii-torrent-tracker-shuts-down-...
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-we-shut-down-ytsyify-and-popco...
| jmyeet wrote:
| I have a theory that BitTorrent is used as a command and control
| mechanism for botnets.
|
| We've seen various methods of botnet and malware control like
| rotating domain names that were successfully reverse engineered
| and used to trigger a kill switch for WannaCry, famously [1].
|
| BitTorrent is known to be resilient, particularly if you use
| multiple trackers, proxies, etc that are all built into the
| infrastructure.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/accidental-kill-switch-
| slowed-...
| waynesonfire wrote:
| wow, brilliant.
| jldugger wrote:
| In other words, you can DDoS any ip for the cost of registering a
| domain and publishing a specific DNS record.
| 57473m3n7Fur7h3 wrote:
| Is it really going to be all that bad?
|
| The BitTorrent clients I've used all seemed pretty polite,
| backing off for like 60s at least for each tracker they can't
| connect to.
|
| If you buy one of the dead tracker domains and point it at an
| IP of someone else, but their services aren't even listening on
| the port client wants to connect to (and don't speak BitTorrent
| even if the port happened to coincide), I can't imagine that
| even with a million BitTorrent clients wanting to connect it
| would really be all that much of a problem.
| jldugger wrote:
| It can be: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/01/chinese-
| bittorrent-the-gift...
| globular-toast wrote:
| Careful. This guy doesn't like HN and you'll get a picture
| of a testicle if you click.
| mouse_ wrote:
| what a guy
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Better than goatse
| graealex wrote:
| I do like the commitment of registering a whole domain
| for no other purpose as to be able to spam a single
| picture, though.
| jldugger wrote:
| Whoops, i thought i tested that and it didnt do that for
| me anymore. must have been a cached response
| immibis wrote:
| So that's one request per 60 seconds - times 3,000,000 or so
| clients. See the problem? That's 50,000 requests per second.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Common clients' announce interval is pretty long (usually 30
| minutes). Then again, 3M peers makes for some volume...
| udev4096 wrote:
| You mean redirect all the traffic to any IP the author intends
| to theoretically DDoS? Never thought of it, definitely scary
| with 3M peers
| ircop wrote:
| More harming I think is that you can redirect all the DMCA
| complaints that come from aggressive intellectual property
| holders at a residential IP address. ISPs will just cancel your
| account, despite how legal running a tracker may be.
| jensenbox wrote:
| As far as I am aware, there are legitimate uses for this
| technology.
| layer8 wrote:
| > So... the domain is available now.
|
| Not really? OP seems to want to sell it for $10000:
| https://www.dynadot.com/market/user-listings/demonii.si
| k-ian wrote:
| yeah turns out Dynadot enforces a 7 day wait on deleting the
| domain and it's only been 6 days. should be free for
| registration on June 18 (i assume in 3 hrs if they mean UTC)
| iaaan wrote:
| I wonder if there are any known vulnerabilities in various
| torrent clients' handling of tracker responses, e.g. buffer
| overflows. One could potentially amass a pretty large botnet.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Bittorrent is such a beautiful technology, solves a real problem
| easily, and helps many many people. It's a shame it's been
| stifled so much by lawyers.
| udev4096 wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Bittorent will live on as long as humans
| exist. It definitely helped a lot in creating extremely
| important p2p and decentralized software such as ipfs, bitcoin,
| etc
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Why didn't they use a protocol like Gnutella to serve as a non-
| centralized tracker? Or did they?
| mystraline wrote:
| That's easy. Register the domain in Russia, China, Iran, or
| similar country. Run the website in Alibaba.
|
| Let them attempt to send legal toilet paper to Russia or China.
| I'm sure that will end well.
| graealex wrote:
| Yes - the solution to run any illegal activity on the internet:
| just register the domain in "Russia, China, Iran, or similar
| country".
|
| You should tell the TOR folks about your findings, they can
| finally shutdown the darknet and just move their stuff to
| China.
| nektro wrote:
| why did you shut it down?
| almosthere wrote:
| Dead Internet theory
| abigail95 wrote:
| interesting choice of hosting provider...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Is there a chance if someone bought suprnova's domain (if
| available), which closed in 2004, someone could finish their
| download if a seed were still active? Does it matter if this was
| pre-DHT, or does DHT go historical to cover old stuff?
| parliament32 wrote:
| Yes DHT is "historical", in the sense that it doesn't care
| about when your torrent was created, just the infohash.
|
| However, most torrents created for private trackers have the
| "private" flag enabled, which excludes them from DHT and PEX
| and a few other things. You can remove this flag yourself, but
| you're depending on a seeder doing the same for DHT to work.
| nneonneo wrote:
| DHT works as long as the client is configured to use it, so if
| that old seed upgraded their client they might end up
| automatically sharing the metadata over DHT.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yes, this should work, in theory.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| You can pay for seed boxes with Monero
|
| Lawsuits are civil and wont have all the power to find you in all
| way, compared to a criminal suit or intelligence agency
|
| So the privacy vectors necessary are more limited
| whalesalad wrote:
| Replace that Dynadot link with your referral code! I interface
| with a lot of domain registrars and they are one of the good
| ones.
| avidiax wrote:
| Why not forward to another open tracker? Then you host nothing,
| and any legal letter you receive you can just tell them to talk
| to the open tracker.
| sneak wrote:
| From the outside it's indistinguishable, and you get sued
| anyway.
| udev4096 wrote:
| Could this be used to exploit peers if they connect to an
| intentional malicious tracker?
| Noelia- wrote:
| I used to think those old trackers were long dead, but it's wild
| to see them still pulling in millions of peers. P2P may have
| faded from the spotlight, but the infrastructure never really
| went away.
| noobermin wrote:
| I guess...the question is...who? Surely people have to pay to
| keep these peers just running. 3.1 million is how many millions
| of dollars in infra per month? I guess it's distributed amongst
| millions or thousands of people, sure, or may be most of them
| are bots.
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| It only takes 17000 bittorrent users with 100-200 old
| torrents each in their clients to get here:
|
| > it peaked at about 1.7 million distinct torrents across 3.1
| million peers
|
| Most people don't regularly prune their torrent library.
| ByteDrifter wrote:
| Kind of amazing how many clients kept pinging a tracker that had
| been offline for years. It shows how some parts of the internet
| just keep going in the background long after we stop noticing.
| There's something oddly persistent about that.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, I can imagine there's loads of people that set up a
| seedbox somewhere and just... forgot about it, or never
| bothered to tidy it up.
| dspillett wrote:
| Many torrents are on multiple trackers and, via the almost
| ubiquitously supported announce-list extension, have multiple
| trackers listed in the torrent file itself. So those 3M clients
| are unlikely to have been sat doing nothing because this
| tracker had vanished, they would be participating in the swarms
| around the other trackers listed in the metadata for each
| torrent.
| everyone wrote:
| Imo one the tragedies of filesharing is though the legal bullshit
| from MAFIAA didnt make a dent in big public trackers like TPB
| serving Marvel movies and other popular shit, it _did_ manage to
| kill off many of the smaller specialised trackers serving
| exquisitely collected and curated torrents of stuff you cannot
| buy anywhere anymore.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Or maybe those just got better at hiding?
| __alexs wrote:
| Could you point the DNS at a different tracker?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| This reminds me of the time I ran an NTP pool server, then
| withdrew it. The IP address kept getting NTP requests for
| _months_. It was no big deal, NTP is a lightweight protocol, but
| it was a reminder that IP addresses keep reputations for a very
| long time. Same thing with domain names, I guess.
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