BitTorrent Devs Introduce Comcast-Proof Encryption

Dean Garfield writes "An article at TorrentFreak notes that several BitTorrent developers have proposed a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. 'This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again. The goal of this new type of encryption (or obfuscation) is to prevent ISPs from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections that span between the receiver of a tracker response and any peer IP-port appearing in that tracker response, according to the proposal.'"

Comments

Do arms races ever work?

[pembo13]

Unless one side suddenly blows away the other, I don't see this ending. It may breed innovation, but said innovation only seems useful for this one problem.

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[webmaster404]

Well, its not an "end-all" solution however it solves the immediate problem. However chances are in 10-15 years we won't even be using Torrents we will have moved on to another form of P2P.

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[moderatorrater]

Do arms races ever work? Depends on your objective. Generally, arms races preserve the status quo, which, in this instance, is exactly what they're trying to do.

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[rale, the]

Comcast's bittorrent filtering has almost certainly cost them money in the form of hardware and software to implement it. If continual updates to the protocol make it more difficult and expensive to filter, then theres always the chance that ISPs could decide it's actually a better investment in the long run to upgrade their networks, rather than upgrade their filtering. That could just be wishful thinking, tho...

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[azgard]

Depends on your objective. Generally, arms races preserve the status quo, which, in this instance, is exactly what they're trying to do. The question is, what is the status quo? Is it the filtered or the unfiltered internet?

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[madsenj37]

1. Evolution is an arms race. Viruses and bacteria attack us and we adapt, so they adapt, creating a cycle.

2. Free markets are an arms race. When one business evolves, the other must to survive or perish.

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[Zebra_X]

"Or they could just do the sensible thing, cut out all the bullshit "unlimited" advertising and start selling customers a set block of gigabytes."

I can assure you, you don't want this. You assume that the ISP's are going to give you a "reasonable" block of data to transfer on a monthly basis and a reasonable price - they are not. They will use this pricing scheme to "extract value" from their customer base in the form of quotas that are properly tiered so as to be just below the common usage tier. The result will be many customers need to go a step higher, and are charged more, for considerably less than they had access to before. Do you really want to worry about whether the next movie you get off of iTunes is going to pop your quota? Or the next stream you setup?

Honestly, bandwidth in the US is what is causing a great deal of innovation at the moment - look at iTunes and Netflix now offering entire movies as either downloads or streaming. Caps will only stifle the adoption and innvoation of this type of technolgy. Customers will think twice about the double cost of streaming a video - the cost to their cap, and the cost of the service. There are I'm sure other bandwith based applications out there that we have not even thought of.

The answer is just in disclaiming that running certain types of services like bittorrent coupled with excessive transfer on a connection can lead to service degredation, not termination. They just need to put a process in place to handle this situation. Time warner claims that "5% of their customers use 50% of their bandwidth" - well - that seems pretty damn easy to fix doesn't it? Exceed a certain monthly transfer rate, send out a warning via e-mail - usage continues - put a cap that is far lower than their original amount.

In addition they don't really say that they are running out of bandwidth, so I'm not sure I see where the problem is.

Re:Do arms races ever work?

[Just Some Guy]

Remember that Comcast was throttling bandwidth to cut costs on network upgrades so why would they spend exponentially more on new specialized crypto hardware and software to MITM the handshakes on bittorent sessions if they are too cheap to even upgrade their network?

That's a very important point. Comcast is going to have to spend $X to make their network tolerable, either by buying blocking P2P and other bandwidth-hungry application, or by expanding capacity. The first method gets them a nice, controlled, slow network and the hatred of all their potential customers. The second gives them a wild-and-woolly, fast network their customers love (and therefore more customers). So, again, given $X: do you invest it to lose business or gain business? That's really the choice here.

Given Comcast, they'll probably use it to put ultrasonic speakers on their modems so that teens don't want to use them, then five years lateer ask Congress for a bailout because they're uncompetitive.

Another volley herd in The Pirate Bay

[corsec67]

Too bad we even have to fight this forgery by Comcast, but a technical option has its advantages, since a legislative option might get watered down by lobbyists and congress.

Encryption is always a good thing. The more people that use encryption, the less eavesdropping there will be.

How about, "if you have nothing to hide, hide it anyways"?

Re:Another volley herd in The Pirate Bay

[webmaster404]

How about, "if you have nothing to hide, hide it anyways"?

How about, if you have nothing to hide, someone either the government, your boss, Etc. will twist it to either sell your info or make you look like a criminal, so hide it.

Re:Traffic Analysis

[Azh Nazg]

That's nice, except that blocking encrypted protocols blocks quite a bit more than BitTorrent. . . Secure banking over SSL, SSH, VPNs, and a whole plethora of other protocols. Unless an ISP is willing to go from Internet Service Provider to Web Browsing Service Provider, it would be foolish to block encrypted protocols.

doesn't work

[nguy]

Comcast will now probably simply impose soft traffic caps and soft caps on the number of connections users can make.

Re:doesn't work

[Wildclaw]

Actually they are doing it because they have an outdated badly scaling last mile network and don't want to spend the nescessary capital to improve it.

There is a reason that it only is cable companies talking about bandwidth caps, and not the dsl companies.

Re:I wonder...

[Kadin2048]

Well currently the state of the art is in favor of encryption, rather than cryptanalysis, so I don't think that the advantage is automatically Comcast's. They could probably do some fairly sophisticated traffic analysis, but at the end of the day, they're not actually going to break the encryption and get at the contents, and they can't block all encrypted traffic because it's too critical for other purposes.

They can force the BitTorrent devs to produce a new version every few months, but in the long run I think they're on the losing end of the war -- if they want to stay in the data-transportation business, and assuming there aren't any major breakthroughs in cryptanalysis that render modern public-key technologies useless.

Re:Traffic Analysis

[budgenator]

that's what the cableco's really want, they can easily oversubscribe the system when all you can do is browse the web and Email.

Re:Traffic Analysis

[jonwil]

Banks dont use consumer grade internet connections to talk to each other.

Re:Holy crap, a CCIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one find anyone flaunting certification X to be an annoying twat

Re:Traffic Analysis

[Not_Wiggins]

I think you may have missed the point of the GP post.
The point wasn't to block encrypted traffic just because it is encrypted. It would be to do traffic shaping, so that a connection generating dozens or hundreds of simultaneous encrypted connections to different destination IP's might be targeted; it is a traffic pattern would most likely be generated by a P2P program and not by normal internet use by a family.

First Blood?

[EdIII]

I'm surprised it took this long for the Bittorrent Devs to respond. Encryption is not a complete solution, as I have stated before, but it is a beginning. That is for certain .

It's going to get a lot more interesting from here on out. In the end, it will only benefit the consumers since they will receive technology that allows them to communicate a little more privately, and perhaps with a little luck, more anonymously too. One could only hope that TOR/Freenet technologies become as ubiquitous in their use as email. Perhaps a hybrid system with elements of Freenet, TOR, and Bittorrent all wrapped up into one would do the trick. I certainly think so.

I think, actually I know, that Comcast has fired the first shot in a losing battle.

I also just can't help pointing out the similarities to the Drug War. A million or so people in prison, and yet there are still plenty of users and suppliers. I would almost say it has effectively made no difference in the amount of people using drugs, or selling them. Especially, since the amount of drugs being sold and used in prisons is even higher then on the street.

So what is the point? If history has taught us anything, it is that governments (corporations even more so) will consistently fail at their attempts to limit/eliminate popular behavior. The elements may change from time to time, but the end result is always the same. The people will find a way to continue their behavior .

"Greetings, Professor Falken. Strange game. The only winning move is not to play."