MUTE: Simple, Private File Sharing

oohp writes "MUTE is a new file sharing network that provides easy search and download functionality while protecting your privacy. It does this by routing all messages through a network of neighbour connections, using virtual addresses and encrypting all the traffic (using RSA for public/private keys and AES for the actual encryption). MUTE's routing mechanism is inspired by ant behaviour. The program is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X."

Comments

Pretty clean code, too...

[tcopeland]

...although CPD was able to find a few duplicate chunks.

Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[corebreech]

...with the same strengths (privacy) and weaknesses (slow).

My asymmetrical DSL connection just won't work well with a system like this. I don't have the bandwidth to act as a node that relays data for the sake of maintaining your anonymity. If we all had T3 connections in our home this would be great, but we don't.

An A for effort though. Implementations on most of the major platforms, with source code, and a neat analogy to how ants work to make it all understandable to the lay audience. Nifty.

(interesting that this story gets posted the day the federal appeals court forbids exactly the tactic by the RIAA this software attempts to work around.)

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[Adolph_Hitler]

actually Ian Clarke in his first paper stated he was inspired by ants.

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[BrookHarty]

With a HASH being calculated for each file, they need to allow multi-part downloads. This would speed up like bittorrent. Freenet doesnt have search results, you need an external freenet search engine.

MUTE returns search results. The only protection is Virtual Address that is randomly generated on startup.

The only weakness I noticed, is the "Hints" on which nodes to use, over time, keep a list of "Hints", you could in theory, do packet tracing to the hosts. You could spider, and try to map Virtual addresses. You could limit or block noisy hosts, that might be a simple solution.

The RIAA would have to go after the high bandwidth NODES, or hosts that site directly next to you. Simple port scan for a MUTE response would validate the user. They would assume you are guilty just for using the program. People need to use legtimate files to make seperate it from piracy only p2p networks. Maybe torrent style downloads with hash checking would do the trick.

Also, nice to see multiple clients and opensource, and GPL license.

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[Doomdark]

This means that for every file delivered, more than one node is labored with the uploading of this file, and given that, for most people, upstream bandwidth is a rather limited resource, the ultimate consequence will be that the system will be slow as compared to one where the files are sent directly, e.g., FastTrack or gnutella.

Not necessarily, in theory (in practice, probably). If routing is done in a way similar to wireless ad hoc routing is supposed to be done, it could just mean that routing decisions are not done end-to-end, but by independent routing (and encrypting) nodes. Thus, there need not necessarily be additional unnecessary nodes; theoretically it could even reach better routing decisions, since it's not (just) your ISPs router trying to optimize based on financial reasons ("we have deal with MCI and thus we'll go from NY to LA and then back to Boston, instead of using direct route"). Your other point (asymmetric connections) is still valid though...

In practice it is likely that optimal behaviour won't be achieved, esp. in cases where endpoints are reasonably close to each other (in which case guaranteeing anonymity prevents best shortcuts). However, it really comes down to how well implementation works, not that specification dictates bad performance; and also in your usage patterns. If you want to swap files with your neighbour, this would be pretty suboptimal; but that's probably not very common use case. Inter-continental transfer, on the other hand, may not be much less efficient than "direct" connections.

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[cavemanf16]

The "ant analogy" that MUTE is referring to is actually a rather well-known AI programming algorithm technique known as the ANT Algorithm. So although Freenet may be routing stuff through everyone, I don't think it's doing any optimization of the routing, thereby slowing the "travel time" to a crawl over long distances (i.e. lots of nodes). Although I think it would be possible for MUTE to be circumvented, at this time that would be a really difficult task given the following two benefits of MUTE:

1) randomized initialization of the 'virtual IP' as they call it. This will effectively KILL current companies tracking abilities who are in league with the RIAA.

2) RSA encryption of the traffic in and out of each node. I wouldn't be surprised if John Ashcroft finds out about this one and really gets pissed, because a native file transfer encryption scheme over a real-time random path through constantly changing nodes makes it REAL hard to track traffic.

Mind you, I haven't tried MUTE out yet, but I will be this weekend for SURE!!! This tech looks like a real gold-mine for finally moving files around the internet much more securely than current P2P systems. And using an AI optimization system for the file transfers. Nice!

Strike II

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

This is a much better approach than Legal or Court based ones. You can always count a crazy judge to screw things up. But good hard encryption and hidden internet paths are a much larger stumbling block to the likes of the RIAA, which is on the whole, technically incompetant.

Even IF they win the court battle with ISP's (they just took a hard knock in the last court case) there won't me much left for them to do if their ability to track is lost.

Re:how many file sharing systems are there now?

[nate nice]

I know what you mean and you shouldn't be modded as flamebait (well, it's debatable) but heres the thing: File sharing networks and a new(er) concept in the way we are implementing them now days. There is a lot of research at places such as MIT (and other up-and-coming, less known campuses) into P2P networks and such. It's a rather exciting field to be involved in right now with new ideas coming up all the time.

I haven't used MUTE but it sounds like they use onion routing or some derivation of it. To me, that's interesting. Perhaps they are doing something Freenet is not? Then again, perhaps not.

Anyways, if you're interested in networks, graph theory and have some creative energy then P2P network research may be for you. ALthough most systems we see today are not very practical, they seem to all be trying to head to a certain goal: anonymous, encrypted file sharing. We are seeing the bandwidth costs these have but I digress.

So, even though we may not practically need another file sharing protocol, it's important people keep working on ideas and implementations so we can move the state of the art forward. I think many of these pioneer systems are laying the groundwork for a whole field of study within computer science as one day we will all have many networked devices that need to share information and the pure client-server approach will just not do it.

How does this compare to Waste?

[Argyle]

I've played Waste the encrypted private network tool started by Justin Frankel.

MUTE sounds similar. Has anyone tried both? How do they compare?

Re: Bandwdth

[doublebackslash]

One user mentioned a bandwidth concern, I would like a adress it.
I was working on a project like this, and am now looking into contributing to GNUNet, a similar project. My framework had peers moving data in a similar way as these ants. The way I looked at it was that most of the time I select some files, let them download, and come back later. I'm sure the downloading takes only ten or twentey minues, but I'm at work or busy otherwise. Once I'm done downlaoding my computer just sits there folding. The bandwidth is going un-used!
There is plenty of bandwith sitting idle out there, so long as the ants are clever enough to avoid busy relays noone will really notice the drop in their performance. I think that they would have a similar approach (it seems it would work this way as a concequene of their ant design).
I sincerely hope that one of these true P2P private networks takes off in a big way, till then I will support them in every way I can.

A plea for responsible advocacy.

[i_r_sensitive]

But, this is the wrong (expletive deleted) approach.

More importantly, I can't believe how many people seem to think this is a valid approach to the problem.

First of all, anyone who writes FOSS should not be involved in developing these projects. Quite simply, this project is aimed at abrogating the rights of the copyright holder. If you develop FOSS, you too rely on copyright to protect your rights to distribute your code as you see fit. Why are you helping people to obviate the rights of other copyright holders? Doesn't this seem just a little antithetical?

Now, before the argument about how developers aren't responsible for how their software is used, well to a point I agree. But, I don't think that you can hide behind this with a clear conscience. Joe Sixpack can't write this software on his own, so if you aren't legally an accomplice, you are ethically and morally. As for the software being used for legal mechanisms, well and good, but that doesn't mean that you could not have built in safeguards to prevent it from being used for unlawful purposes...

Next, this is not the way to make the point to RIAA. For Joe Sixpack, the complaint is generally about the cost of music and so on and so forth. Well if Sears charges too much for _insert product here_ you buy it somewhere else. You don't go into Sears and steal it. Apparently this is simply because to do so means running a high risk of getting caught. So because the chance of getting caught is lower, that somehow justifies theft? Because that is what it is in the end. Rather than steal from RIAA, deprive them of income by lawful means, spend your money elsewhere. With all the artists in the world, I guarantee you can find some what create music you like, without having to resort to theft.

RIAA has proven that they will resort to the courts and legislation as their first considered reaction. Since most folk seem to abhor the legislation RIAA has had there hand in to date, why are you fueling that fire? Do you really think RIAA is going to relent? As long as you continue to abbrogate their rights, they will continue to lobby for more and more legislation. If you choose other alternatives, RIAA does not have a leg to stand on, what are they going to do, get Congress to pass a law forcing you to buy music only from their members? Not likely. If you vote with your dollar instead of voting by compromising your morals, perhaps some of those member organizations will reconsider their membership. But as long as people circumvent their rights, and deprive them of revenues thereby they will continue as they have to this point. If people vote to deprive them of income by exercising their other options, RIAA members will have little recourse but to reconsider their policies, which is what you all purport to desire.

Lastly, I _KNOW_ why I dislike RIAA, and why I won't conduct business with their members. My problems stem more from being a creator as opposed to being a consumer. For those of you who are only consumers, when you choose options that give RIAA grounds to complain, you are quite succinctly stating that you make your choices based on greed, just like RIAA does. It all comes down to the old adage, two wrongs do not make right.

P.S. Doesn't anyone realize that SCO can point to these software projects as anecdotal "proof" that FOSS developers seek to undermine copy and property rights? Why give them more ammunition in their FUD campaign?

Re:A plea for responsible advocacy.

[WNight]

Do you really think the RIAA would change, even if all unauthorized copying stopped overnight?

DVD region codes were added to protect a business model, not to stop piracy. (I know that's the MPAA not the RIAA.) They didn't pay for laws like the DMCA to stop people copying, that was already actionable. They paid for these laws to force people to watch commercials at the beginning of disks, and keep from importing movies from North America to other regions before the theatrical release. In other words, they wanted the government to pass laws protecting their lazy business models. "We don't want to spend to money to make the product available in a timely fashion - please prevent anyone from filling this niche before we get to it."

The RIAA is just as scuzzy in different ways. They pay the radio stations to play their music, but they also provide extra incentives for stations that only play RIAA content. They're actively involved in shutting out any competition, they complain about how expensive their business is and how they can't afford to pay artists much, yet the music industry is fantastically profitable - they complain when the industry doesn't keep growing at the expected rate. They use accounting tricks to make it appear that they lost money, yet if you believe their figures they should be billions in the hole, not incredibly rich.

That's why I don't feel sorry for the effects of this - they could have played fair and they'd have gotten much more respect and cooperation for everyone.

As to why I feel it's fair to use a copyright (the GPL for instance) to protect code designed to break copyright it two-fold.

First, we must be free to break the law, or uphold it, or we have no freedoms. Many times, the actions seen as 'right' in a historical context have been illegal. The Boston tea party, the American revolution, the underground railroad, the underground railroad in Nazi Germany, the French Revolution. Some of these were undertaken for no more than financial concerns - the American revolution for example, but it ended up allowing a nation to self-govern.

The point is that freedom requires the freedom to do the wrong thing, and that that wrong thing may end up being right in retrospect. We can't allow a circumstance where people aren't allowed to tinker with their belongings, as is currently the case with DVDs. To tolerate this is to tolerate much greater future injustice.

Second, while I respect the stated intention of copyrights, "to encourage creators to create by providing a financial incentive", I see that this isn't free to society. Providing an unnatural monopoly (Unnatural in that it's natural to see what someone is doing or saying and incorporate those actions or words into your own. Ideas flow naturally.) costs society. We're intended to get "paid" for this by the new works being created which will eventually enter into the public domain.

Copyright law as it stands today is untrue to those stated goals and unfair to one half of the equation - the citizens who pay for these protections and yet see absolutely no benefit. Current copyrights last so long that nobody who is alive today's children will be alive when the copyright on this post expires. How is this supposed to "give back" when you could be slapped down in court for quoting more than a line, even in direct response to me? The protections are too long, the punishments for violation are unreasonble, and the agreement is getting even more lop-sided.

For these reasons I fight against the modern view of copyright as the divine right of big corporations to borrow any pre-existing content, yet forbid everyone from even thinking of basing anything on their content.

I'm not anti-copyright, nor are most people, but we are anti-overboard-american-copyright-and-dmca.

I'm not rich, so my voice on this issue is worthless in Hollywood and in government. I'm one person, and one vote (unless I get a job at Diebold), so nobody cares what I have to say. I have to act, and if that req

MUTE, konspire2b, and Jason Rohrer

[henrypijames]

This is interesting. MUTE is created and coded by Jason Rohrer, the same Jason Rohrer who created and coded konspire2b. Now what is the relationship of these two programs, particularly from the view of their common author? Is he "dumping" k2b in favor of this all-new MUTE?

konspire2b came with a very intersting idea, but the implementation was less impressive. Especially the inability to deal with a "passive" Internet connection (behind NAT and/or firewall) is the reason that it hasn't gained a user base as large as it promised. It is simply a fact that many (if not most) private Internet users are using a passive Internet connection nowaday, and the procentage is even growing.

Now MUTE comes again with a very intersting idea, but as we know, problems of technical details can kill good ideas quite often. Obviously, the concept is in some points similar to Freenet. One of Freenet's biggest problem is, just like k2b, it's inability to deal with pass internet connection. I think this issue may be the corner stone for MUTE, too.

I am negatively biased against Jason, mainly because the "failure" of his k2b, and especially because of the document he published comparing his own k2b to BitTorrent, which earned quite some protests because many factual "findings" in the comparison seem wrong. To be fair, I must admit that since I am a member of the BitTorrent dev team, my opinion in this matter is biased from the start, although it has not prevent me to try out k2b, and will certainly not prevent me from trying out MUTE now.

Re:Perhaps one should ask why it is asymmetric

[Anonymous Coward]

So why can I get a 1500 down/ 768 up line for a reasonable amount, but a 768 up / 768 down line costs me more, not less, money?
It's obviously not a problem with physical allocation of the DSL line bandwidth.