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?

[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?

[fyrewulff]

Yes. Once they actually do make disc based media that can actually take a fall, we'll be using the FDTP (Flying Disc Transfer Protocol) method.

However, the packet drop in windy places would be too much.

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?

[MightyMartian]

Or they could just do the sensible thing, cut out all the bullshit "unlimited" advertising (which should be against the law anyways) and start selling customers a set block of gigabytes, with an over-limit charge per gig, just like the dialup ISPs did with time online in the olden days. That's what I did at the small ISP I worked for. I wrote and maintained the billing software, and just sucked in usage stats off our Radius servers once an hour. The system was even set up to send out an email when a user was close to his gigabyte limit letting him know that the meter was going to start running and what the charge per gig was.

We tried shaping P2P traffic, and it just annoyed customers, and annoying customers is not exactly a long-term strategy for success.

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.

Traffic Analysis

[gaika]

Most blocking systems use traffic analysis to block encrypted protocols, even the ones pretending to be something else. There's no way you can confuse p2p sharing with normal browsing if you look at the pattern of data flows.

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.

Re:Traffic Analysis

[gaika]

Nobody is going to block all encrypted protocols, that's stupid. They identify the application that is using encryption by looking at the shape of the traffic flows. p2p apps open tons of connections, exchange about equal amount of data both ways, and have a distinct negotiation phase.

Re:Traffic Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, IPSec will prevent the ISP from being able to reset the flow. If a packet comes in that is not signed/encrypted (depending on the mode) with the credentials of the other end-point, it is discarded as an attack. It's a pain to set up IPSec security associations in many conditions, but IKEv2 has made it somewhat better.

The fact that you are buying service from the attacker doesn't make them not an attacker. The counter measures developed to fight attackers may have limits, but they are there and are useful in this context.

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

[Sir_Lewk]

How about, "Since I have nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind not reading it"

Holy crap, a CCIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am just a measly CCNA.

I am not worthy.

m(_ _)m

Re:Holy crap, a CCIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

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