Encrypted Torrents Growing Fast In the UK

angryphase writes "The British Phonographic Institute (the UK's RIAA) has noticed a significant increase in the amount of encrypted torrents — from 4% of torrent traffic a year ago to 40% today. Whether it follows a trend for hiding suspicious activities or an increased awareness of personal privacy is up for (weak) debate. Either way, this change of attitude is catching the eye of ISPs, music industry officials, and enforcement agencies. Matt Phillips, spokesman for the UK record industry trade association explains, 'Our internet investigations team, internet service providers and the police are well aware of encryption technology: it's been around for a long time and is commonplace in other areas of internet crime. It should come as no surprise that if people think they can hide illegal activity they will attempt to.'"

Comments

Won't Work

[ratboy666]

The ISP can still do "man in the middle". The ISP can afford to purchase a crypto key that the typical browser will accept without question. In turn, the ISP can talk to the site (using HTTPS), and then (re)encrypt to the user browser.

Or... the ISP can offer HTTP access to HTTPS sites: as a service. HTTPS only really works if the user is vigilant. This, of course, has been proven to be wrong (witness the proliferation of trojan software).

The fundamental model of "Give me this arbitrary page" and having it delivered without hassle is the issue. The easiest defense against "man in the middle" (ssh saying "the ip has changed, you may be subject to attack") confuses even some programmers I know. End Users? Forget about it.

Re:Won't Work

[phoenix321]

Thank you for using the cluebat, although I think you could've whacked a little more.

Anyway, one question remains: is a regular ISP without evil root certificates installed able to read the URLs your browser is requesting? These can be quite destructive to anyone's privacy. In the textbook case of a totalitarian government it's certainly unhealthy to have the state-owned ISP knowing what you searched on Google or read on Wikipedia...

Any possibility of snooping in this manner?

Re:TorrentFS?

[ichigo 2.0]

And now that I read your responses to the other commenters, I see that you already thought of the problems I mentioned in my other post. Such a FS would be interesting, maybe you should start working on it? :)

Re:Maybe...

[Mister Whirly]

In Kennesaw, GA (a.k.a. "Gun City USA") in 1982 they passed a law REQUIRING all heads of households to own and maintain a firearm. and in the 25 years since then, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting - as a victim, attacker or defender. The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288

Funny how the direct correlation in this town seemed to be - More Guns = Less Crime - the exact opposite of your theory. Compare that to the town of Morton Grove, IL - a town that banned handguns the same year. The city's crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent.