The Hydra Project: An Anti-Piracy Proof BitTorrent Tracker

[Bolt_Gundam510]

by Ernesto

The Hydra Project is a new script for private BitTorrent trackers designed to resist any attack or raid, and to guarantee the privacy and anonymity of its users. It’s truly hydra compatible, which is much needed quality in these turbulent times.

The Hydra Project, THP for short, is developed with privacy, anonymity and survivability in mind. One of innovative features of the project is to make an OpenID for users of private BitTorrent sites so their login information and upload/download ratios can be shared across different websites.

The torrents can also be shared among different trackers. This ensures that user ratios and uploaded torrents will not be lost if for some reason one of the BitTorrent trackers ceases to exist.

Shanti Braford, the developer of the project explained to TorrentFreak: “The idea is that a group of admins can get together and form a sort of distributed set of private BitTorrent trackers. bacon.org, eggs.com, ham.net and sausage.fm can all get together, share user databases, torrents, upload/download ratios, etcetera.

If eggs.com gets raided, the rest of the sites are still alive and the torrents people have downloaded will still work because they’ll be associated with multiple tracker URLs.”

THP will be one of the most private and anonymous BitTorrent trackers, something that most users will absolutely appreciate. For example, no email addresses will be collected, the IPs will not be stored (only memcached) and .torrent files will not be connected to users.

There is even an option for the administrator to delete all data via a memcached shutdown in case the server loses its connection to the network, which will happen if there’s a raid.

The tracker script is developed in Ruby on Rails. “The code is about 90% there,” Shanti told us “I’ve kept it very simple and rudimentary, but functional. If any PHP coders are interested perhaps it could be ported over.” I would encourage all developers who are interested in the project to take at the project page and THP’s Sync API wiki.

If THP lives up to its expectations the Hydra will be more flexible and stronger than ever.

Source: Torrent Freak

[Atasas]

Yep! good luck to them!

...hmmm just tryed it... seems to be few month are needed to mature...

[voodoohippie]

Warning!!! Please do not put this off as a Joke!!!

My best friend (who I'm not going to publish) just received a phone call from the cable company in which told this person we're talking about that their ISP was shutting down their Internet connection until a pirated video game in which was shared from the Bittorrent site btjunkie was taken off their computer. Of course my friend was not too computer bright and when they were asked if they had a router they answered "what is a router?" The ISP said with a laughing voice that it wasn't a big deal but to delete the file and call them back when the file was deleted and their service will be turned back on.

I've heard of the ISP turning off the service, but not saying "call us back when the file is deleted." I think this could have been some sort of raid on BT junkie and that a group of anti piracy hackers must have gotten this person’s IP address when this person Downloaded the torrent to the video game in question. And instead of making legal threats told the person in question that if this person in question deleted the file basically that nothing would happen. I will say that it was in Michigan and within 15 miles from MSU. So was this a call from the BSA or was it something else? Maybe a call from the makers of the software who knows. I do know that this person I'm talking about in question is a good source and would not lie about this. I told this person to use a laptop computer with wifi and to war drive for an internet connection and to use the connection the person found to share using utorrent. I think in order to be truly safe you should do the following and p2p developers need do the following:

1. More development needs to be made for tracker less bittorrent networks. This way there will be less ability for an anti piracy group of any kind to set up a honey pot type system in order to catch file sharers. In the case of my friend I believe while the organization may have tracked this person's uploads using a hacked version of the bit torrent client, it is still possible that BTjunkie was stolen only to catch users trading illegal files.

2. Anonymous p2p networks using proxies especially in China since China seems to be on a screw you USA policy when it came to banning the inport of US movies. I am sure China will be less likely to cooperate with any federal ruling based in the USA. I'm not suggesting to only use anonymous proxies that are only based in china. However we need to look at countries that have had it up to here with the US government. Maybe if all offshore trackers blocked the US it would then at least force users to use an anonymous proxy server just to Download the torrent in the first place. If only forcing a user to use proxies could be used to access BT at all it would mean safer p2p.

3. Encrypted p2p and maybe have the network send out bursts from all over the place so that maybe every 1000th of a second random bursts that have nothing to do with the file itself is sent from the network. This would make it virtually impossible to track since no one will know which burst is part of the file and which burst is the scrambling burst to detour the anti piracy groups.

4. All hash algorithms should have at least a 128 bit based encryption itself on top the the actual encrypted file.

5. I believe we need to develop anonymous gnutilla, Ares and make the interface very simple. If there are say 4,000,000 users per day using a scrambling p2p network it would mean strength in numbers. 4,000,000 users spoofing 4,000,000 IP’s every 1,000th of a second would send any organization into a tizzy. Anyone who says its impossible most likely works for the RIAA, BSA, MPAA. These organizations truly fear anonymous p2p and want to quash any idea of development of such a network.

6. An auto IP blacklisted that blocks known ip’s for any anti piracy organization. If they can’t infiltrate the network, then there will be less fake files.

7. This network needs to be able to use UPNP technology to make it simple for the novice to use so that everyone is safe and secure.

8. The protocol needs to change at random to make it impossible for any software to block. Maybe if the protocol was close to the SSL encryption of Paypal, users all over the world would be able to keep their activities on the net anonymous.

Drastic times have caused us to use drastic measures to keep all of our friends safe and warm at night lol.

[dock98]

i think if everyone affected shit canned cable and went to dsl or adsl they would not have this. problem