Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3 million peers (kianbradley.com)
from fantawurstwasser@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:10
https://feddit.org/post/14376166

#technology

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Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 07:33 next collapse

Funny how the author immediately decided to shut everything down when he realized the number of peer/torrents still sending requests to the domain.

evidences@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 08:28 collapse

Orphaned domains like this are interesting, there was a defcon talk, I think, where the presenter bought a bunch of blacklisted orphaned domains just to see if anything would try and connect to them. They got hit with so many botnet clients trying to phone home.

Maestro@fedia.io on 18 Jun 10:17 next collapse

Orphaned IPs as well. If you have an IPv4 from your cloud provider and you want to retire it, you should thoroughly scrub your DNS and all other configs before doing so. Otherwise it's trivial for someone else to spin up a machine on that IP address and abuse your domain.

dil@lemmy.zip on 20 Jun 01:03 collapse

Basically, when you stop paying for hosting, also remove records from your domain, or itll link to the new person with your old hosting ips website and show that on your domain. I always forget when I swap hosting on my personal sites and haven’t updated the records, see some random dropshipping or local (not to me) business website on my domain lol

MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:45 next collapse

Yeah those orphaned domains are a goldmine for security researchers, there was a similar talk at blackhat where they showed how expired domains from major companies still recieved auth tokens and sensitive data for months after expiry.

LettyWhiterock@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 16:29 collapse

Please post a link if you’re able, that sounds like a very interesting watch.

subignition@fedia.io on 18 Jun 09:21 next collapse

That's terrifying.

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 11:37 collapse

Why?

Laser@feddit.org on 18 Jun 12:12 next collapse

Because necromancy is a forbidden art

jayandp@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 17:07 collapse

From a security standpoint, it means tons of people are requesting unencrypted info from random domains that are possibly no longer controlled by the original owners.

This is just random speculation on possibilities, but somebody could maybe figure out the IP of a suspected pirate for example, setup a dummy tracker, wait for that IP to show up, and then compare any requested hashes against a database of known torrents. How legal and useful in court this could be would depend on the country, but it is a weak point.

At the other end of the spectrum, somebody might find some kind of security vulnerability in a popular client’s tracker interface, and exploit that for malware purposes by setting up a fake tracker, but that’s a bit more of a stretch.

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 21:33 next collapse

I’d recommend always assuming the worst when connecting to torrent trackers. I’m not sure that most of us feel that the trackers we are connecting to are highly trusted providers.

emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Jun 03:21 collapse

I mean they could also just download a million torrents and record the ips of anyone who connects to them to leech, which is what they already do. This is why you use a VPN while torrenting, because you never know who you’re connecting to.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 09:51 next collapse

paying in crypto is nice partly for this reason

But a lot of uneducated people will spam “crypto is a scam”

glimse@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 11:00 next collapse

What reason are you referring to?

JasonDJ@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 12:22 next collapse

I imagine the part in the article where OPP destroyed the vps and cancelled the domain because he realized he paid for the vps with his credit card?

orclev@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 12:35 collapse

Crypto is not anonymous, the entire concept of how it works is to be the worlds most public and distributed transaction ledger. It is more difficult to track than credit card transactions, but that’s a very big difference from being impossible to track. There have been multiple papers published at this point on how you can de-anonymize any crypto purchase.

People really need to get over this idea that using crypto to buy things makes you anonymous.

surewhynotlem@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 12:43 next collapse

Exactly. That’s why you had to fill out all the KYC paperwork when you create your Bitcoin wallet.

Oh, you didn’t?

Crypto is not hidden, but it can be anonymous. You can’t hide that you got money from X account and spent it at Y account. But there’s no name tied to the transaction.

Passerby6497@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 13:21 next collapse

Where did the coin come from? Unless you mined it yourself, you’ve left a trail that may eventually lead to you. Even using crypto ATMs, you’re still on surveillance and hoping the tapes/drives roll over before someone comes knocking (which is a very likely bet to win), and even then, you still have a real world location to tie the wallet to because of where the transaction originated.

Anything that interacts with the real world can anchor your identity to your wallet. Travelling out of state can help obfuscate that to an extent, but a high level adversary will be able to correlate travel with that transaction as well.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 14:01 collapse

Ever heard of BTC/any-> XMR -> BTC/any?

If you know your thing, you can churn, buy the initial crypto with gift cards, use VPNs or Tor… yea GL for finding me

Mubelotix@jlai.lu on 18 Jun 13:21 next collapse

You can hide it using coinjoin transactions. It’s like a mixer but native. It’s not perfect but it’s nice to have

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 14:05 collapse

that’s pseudonymous, but if you remove all links with your original identity, you can even use non-privacy coins and not be known

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 13:08 next collapse

It’s not anonymous, it in fact exchanges everything else from real currencies’ good properties to be hard to control.

Allero@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 13:10 next collapse

Some crypto, like Monero, is anonymous. Bitcoin/Ethereum is not.

In any case, if you use anonymous crypto, make sure to first sent it to a wallet (preferably with a subaddress in case of Monero), and then send it elsewhere.

kaidezee@lemmy.ml on 18 Jun 13:34 next collapse

You know, except for Monero. Really sucks that real private anonymous internet money is getting pushed out of all places possible, while crap like Bitcoin freely exists.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 14:06 collapse

This

No worries, we can still swap conventional coins to XMR. Many smaller countries are not interested in reguling it, and we already know a few exchanges that don’t give a fuck

FaceDeer@fedia.io on 18 Jun 13:21 next collapse

Crypto can be anonymous, if you use the right cryptocurrency and do things correctly. "Crypto" is a very broad term. Different cryptocurrencies have different functions and purposes.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 14:02 collapse

People really need to get over this idea that using crypto to buy things makes you anonymous.

And people should also know that there are privacy coins and mixers

conorab@lemmy.conorab.com on 19 Jun 02:54 collapse

I might be mistaken, but isn’t using a mixer considered money laundering in the US?

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 19 Jun 05:59 collapse

USA also claimed they owned all BTC that went through dark net markets. I don’t care what they think about X or Y thing

But yea that would be considered ML in many countries because you’re hiding the links and making it seem like normal money, which it should be imo

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 14:03 collapse

Anonymous / private payments

glimse@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 15:13 collapse

The whole point of the blockchain is it for it to be traceable, though. There’s only the illusion of anonymity with crypto

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 16:05 collapse

That’s complete misinformation.

The point of blockchain is not to be traceable but not alterable or tamperable with unauthorized or false data. A distributed database that can’t easily be faked.

Some cryptocurrencies, like Monero, achieve high anonymity. While not perfect, good opsec will fix its flaws. Just like anything. That’s not the case with the majority of cryptocurrencies though, but saying anonymity is but an illusion is just false.

Buske@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 15:36 next collapse

Too bad the rich control it now.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 16:07 collapse

If you mean through regulation, yes, partly

If you mean they hold most of it and thus have a total decision power, then I must disagree

kipo@lemm.ee on 18 Jun 16:39 next collapse

Crypto is a scam.

texasmonthly.com/…/ben-mckenzie-crypto-documentar…

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 16:49 next collapse

Breaking news! Criminals (but not only) use crypto, and people get scammed. This happens as well with fiat, so that must surely mean fiat is a scam!

Flawless logic, really. You people impress me with your thinking.

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 17:33 next collapse

if you sell something for $1 at 10am your $1 still buys $1 at 10pm.

in crypto, it’s easily manipulated, and that’s by design. it’s a scam because the only people who have that control are the wealthy.

If I sell 1BT worth of something at 10am, it could be worth 2BT at 10pm, but it could also be worth .1BT equally.

the purpose of a Fiat currency is economic supremacy that is backed by the governing body and the economy that uses it.

tell me, what governing body or economy is crypto backed by?

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 20:51 next collapse

None of that is “by design” its just the result of an unstable system. Crypto sucks for a long list of different reasons.

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 21:32 collapse

it is by design for a lot of them.

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 19 Jun 00:57 collapse

The instability?

You’re giving it too much credit, especially the altcoins that didn’t look beyond “existing”. I know, I made one like 7 years ago or so and I ain’t proud of it.

The instability of the worth of these crypto coins is just inherent to the instability of it, and actually not that different from currency fluctuations. You don’t think the entire world works with US dollars, no?

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 19 Jun 06:48 next collapse

if you sell something for $1 at 10am your $1 still buys $1 at 10pm.

This is untrue for pretty much everything, even fiat. Everything is a market. A good example of this: stocks.

in crypto, it’s easily manipulated, and that’s by design.

Now this is just false. You’re just inventing fake facts here. You clearly know nothing of the history of crypto.

If I sell 1BT worth of something at 10am, it could be worth 2BT at 10pm, but it could also be worth .1BT equally.

Uhh no? 1 BTC will always be 1 BTC. Its value compared to other assets will change though. And in that case it would have less value indeed. You’re just allergic to high variations and high risks assets. Stocks is exactly the same. Some assets vary more than others. Let me assure you the value of BTC will never do a +/-10x in a day

tell me, what governing body or economy is crypto backed by?

Emission (POW, POS…) (or total stock), demand and offer and perceived value, just like everything on earth?

greyfox@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 23:24 collapse

Your $1 has absolutely changed in value by 10pm. What do you think inflation is? It might not be enough change for the store to bother changing prices but the value changes constantly.

Watch the foreign exchange markets, your $1 is changing in value compared to every other currency constantly.

The only difference between fiat and crypto is that changing the prices in the store is difficult, and the volume of trade is high enough to reduce volatility in the value of your $. There are plenty of cases of hyperinflation in history where stores have to change prices on a daily basis, meaning that fiat is not immune to volatility.

To prevent that volatility we just have things like the federal reserve, debt limits, federal regulations, etc that are designed to keep you the investor (money holders) happy with keeping that money in dollars instead of assets. The value is somewhat stable as long as the government is solvent.

Crypto doesn’t have those external controls, instead it has internal controls, i.e. mining difficulty. Which from a user perspective is better because it can’t be printed at will by the government.

Long story short fiat is no different than crypto, there is no real tangible value, so value is what people think it is. Unfortunately crypto’s value is driven more by speculative “investors” than by actual trade demand which means it is more volatile. If enough of the world changed to crypto it would just as stable as your $.

Not saying crypto is a good thing just saying that it isn’t any better or worse. It needs daily usage for real trade by a large portion of the population to reduce the volatility, instead of just being used to gamble against the dollar.

Our governments would likely never let that happen though, they can’t give up their ability to print money. It’s far easier to keep getting elected when you print the cash to operate the government, than it is to raise taxes to pay for the things they need.

The absolutely worthless meme coin scams/forks/etc are just scammers and gamblers trying to rip each other off. They just make any sort of useful critical mass of trade less and less plausible because it gives all crypto a bad name. Not that Bitcoin/Ethereum started out any different but now that enough people are using them splitting your user base is just self defeating

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 21 Jun 21:33 collapse
Psythik@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 02:31 collapse

Don’t even bother. You’ll never get through to these drones.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 19 Jun 05:30 collapse

Wtf are you talking about

Psythik@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 06:43 collapse

You won’t convince anyone one here that crypto isn’t a scam. These people are set in their ways.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 19 Jun 07:11 collapse

And stubbornly entitled

Their uncle must’ve been rug pulled when buying a shitcoin or something and now they believe crypto is nothing but a scam

But yea there’s nothing to do. If you can’t educate them then let them stay in their ignorance if they like it. I just don’t feel that letting them spread their misinformation is a good thing

Psythik@lemm.ee on 19 Jun 02:31 collapse

Your existence is a scam.

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 18 Jun 20:50 next collapse

Crypto is not a scam, it’s just plain stupid.

The entire idea behind it is what a third grader might come up with and think it’s a great idea. It’s not.

It literally requires every connected wallet to process the same transactions as everyone else. Can you imagine doing billions of transactions per day this way? It is extremely inefficient and yes, this is one of the reasons why even the relatively low amount of transactions that Bitcoin processes costs more electricity than a small modern country.

It’s in a way comparable to a cpu doing 6+7 in a single CPU cycle whilst AI needs to burn down a forest to answer the same question

Crypto is stupid.

I get what its trying to replace and i agree that the current system sucks as well for a long list of reasons, but crypto is NOT the solution. A fundamentally different system must be designed to be able to solve the issues that crypto is trying to solve

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 19 Jun 02:03 next collapse

It literally requires every connected wallet to process the same transactions as everyone else.

wat?

wallets don’t process any transactions other than yours. and eve then, wallets do the easy work.

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 19 Jun 05:56 collapse

You don’t understand how crypto works it seems

It literally requires every connected wallet to process the same transactions as everyone else

That’s misleading. Your wallet scans blocks for transactions that goes to your wallet, but this is super fast for many cryptocurrencies. Wallets usually sync in seconds.

this is one of the reasons why even the relatively low amount of transactions that Bitcoin processes costs more electricity than a small modern country.

No. The main reason is block size and block emission period. Also, you’re completely forgetting the fact that non Proof Of Work cryptocurrencies exist, and have close to 0 electricity cost

The entire idea behind it is what a third grader might come up with and think it’s a great idea. It’s not.

If they do they’re pretty much a fucking genius for their age

miridius@lemmy.world on 20 Jun 19:49 collapse

Yes, doing illegal things secretly is a valid use case for crypto. So far, it’s also the only one

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 21 Jun 00:56 collapse

What about donating money to people online without giving away your name and privacy? What about avoiding scams for P2P transactions? What about boycotting the banking system? What about avoiding international payment fees?

These all seem valid use cases to me

miridius@lemmy.world on 25 Jun 13:28 collapse

donating online

Yeah i suppose any form of payment that you have to keep secret for some reason is a reason to use crypto, though I struggle to imagine needing that if you’re not doing something dodgy

avoiding scams for p2p transactions

Wat. Crypto is not good at solving that, it’s in fact much much worse than traditional payment methods. There’s a reason scammers always want to be paid in crypto

boycotting the banking system

What specifically are you boycotting? The money that backs your crypto (i.e. that you bought it with) still sits in a bank account somewhere and continues to support the banks. All you’re boycotting then are payments, but those are usually free for consumers (many banks lose money on them) so you’re not exactly “sticking it to the man” by not using them. Evem if you were somehow hurting banks by using crypto, if you think the people that benefit from you using crypto (crypto exchange owners and billionaires that own crypto etc.) are less evil than goverment regulated banks, you’re deluded.

What about avoiding international payment fees?

You’ll spend more money using crypto for that, not less

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 09 Jul 06:38 collapse

Yeah i suppose any form of payment that you have to keep secret for some reason is a reason to use crypto, though I struggle to imagine needing that if you’re not doing something dodgy

imagine you’re a YouTuber and want to accept donations: that will force you to give out your name to them, which they could use to get your address and phone number. There’s always someone that hates you, and I rather not have them knowing my personal info

Wat. Crypto is not good at solving that, it’s in fact much much worse than traditional payment methods. There’s a reason scammers always want to be paid in crypto

if you’re the seller then it’s a lot better. With the traditional banking system, with enough knowledge you can cheat both sides: stolen cards, abusive chargebacks, bank accounts in other countries under fake name/fake ID…

Crypto simplifies scamming when the seller, and pretty much makes it impossible for buyers

What specifically are you boycotting?

Card payments, international tranfers, national transfers taking days to complete, money being seizable at all times

many banks lose money on them

Their plans are basically all focused on the card you get. Pretty sure they make money with it, else many wouldn’t offer cash back (selling infos and getting a fee from card payments?)

if you think the people that benefit from you using crypto (crypto exchange owners and billionaires that own crypto etc.) are less evil than goverment regulated banks, you’re deluded.

Banks are evil anyways, does it really change anything? The difference is that it technically helps everyone using crypto, not only the rich.

Plus P2P exchanges are a thing

You’ll spend more money using crypto for that, not less

That’s just factually false. Do you know the price of a swift transfer? Now compare it to crypto tx fees, with many being under $0.01

ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr on 18 Jun 09:53 next collapse

That’s the kind of thing that would be cool to do actually, but I’m not server savy enough to make a server that won’t die easily under attacks

cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone on 18 Jun 10:11 next collapse

well pls resurrect the struck by lightning torrent because its taking forever to download :(

Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com on 18 Jun 10:33 collapse

If you have access to real debrid, sometimes they have insanely old torrents in cache. I’ve resurrected quite a few decades old bangers from the pirate bay that way.

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 15:32 collapse

And if there is. Please seed that.

Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com on 18 Jun 18:50 collapse

I usually do, but in general they’re dead for lack of demand

[deleted] on 18 Jun 21:42 next collapse

.

LovableSidekick@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 06:22 collapse

I’m a developer but have utterly no experience with torrent architecture, or for that matter anything outside of standard web services and the kinds of things companies do. But I’ve been wondering if BitTorrent technology would be usable for federating content for things such as Lemmy. After reading that somebody was begging for money to offset the $5k/month they were spending to run an instance (I mean, that shows true dedicaton but holy crap dude), it seems like a distributed architecture would make a lot more sense than somebody having to foot the bill for a big-ass server. I just personally wouldn’t know where to begin on a project like that, but maybe if somebody with the right combo of skills and experience gave it some thought…

douglasg14b@lemmy.world on 19 Jun 07:19 collapse

2 years ago I talked about the core problem with federated services was the abismal scale ability.

I essentially got ridiculed.

And here we are, with incredibly predictable scaling problems.

If we refuse to acknowledge problems till they become critical, we will never grow past a blip on the corner of the internet. Protocol development is HARD and expensive.

dil@lemmy.zip on 20 Jun 01:00 collapse

Yeah, volunteer moderation is also an issue, any decent ppl doing it get burnt out if they get an influx of ppl and quit also like lemm.ee

squaresinger@lemmy.world on 20 Jun 19:48 collapse

Lemmy also doesn’t make that easy, since it’s not like e.g. Reddit or the phpBB forums of old, where everyone moderates on their own turf only, but each instance has to essentially moderate all other communities on all other instances too.