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BitHammer, the BitTorrent Banhammer
michaelcole writes: Its name is BitHammer. It searches out and bans BitTorrent users on your local sub-net.
I'm a digital nomad. That means I travel and work, often using shared Wi-Fi. Over the last year, I've been plagued by rogue BitTorrent users who've crept onto these public hostpots either with a stolen/cracked password, or who lie right to my face (and the Wi-Fi owners) about it.
These users clog up the residential routers' connection tables, and make it impossible to use tools like SSH, or sometimes even web browsing. Stuck for a day, bullied from the Wi-Fi, I wrote BitHammer as a research project. It worked rather well. It's my first Python program. I hope you find it useful.
I'm a digital nomad. That means I travel and work, often using shared Wi-Fi. Over the last year, I've been plagued by rogue BitTorrent users who've crept onto these public hostpots either with a stolen/cracked password, or who lie right to my face (and the Wi-Fi owners) about it.
These users clog up the residential routers' connection tables, and make it impossible to use tools like SSH, or sometimes even web browsing. Stuck for a day, bullied from the Wi-Fi, I wrote BitHammer as a research project. It worked rather well. It's my first Python program. I hope you find it useful.
It's hard being an editor, sure, but put some effort in lads. What the heck is going on here?
but, so help me God, if Comcast blocks bittorrent traffic, I'm going to call for heads to roll!
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Heh, just the thing every business and school should run all the time :-)
Oh sure, some student can argue he's downloading history references that he can only reach through bittorrent .. good luck with that :-)
Maybe he should be more angry at the business owners for using cheap routers and/or not implementing traffic shaping, etc. With a proper traffic shaping implementation, you can absolutely SLAM a connection with Bittorrent usage, even torrents with thousands of seeds and peers, and casual web-browsing remains essentially unaffected. I've download torrents that are several hundred gigabytes, pegging my connection the whole time. Thanks to my PFsense traffic shaper, it doesn't even so much as impact my pings when I play videogames.
Vigilante beats up on people in order to get public wifi access that he believes is rightfully his
That's what it amounts to. He can't get the access he wants, so he just pushes his way in and takes it.
If access is so important to your work, why aren't you/they paying for it?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Somebody call the wahhhhhambulance...
Why do you cripple legitimate uses when you could just limit per user download & upload bandwith?
You're using a free public network and selectively booting the users who don't fit into your specified profile.
Why not just buy your own connection and stop being such a fucking Nazi?
Wait, you're upset about other people using Bittorrent over networks that you don't administer, so you're going to screw around, spoofing some messages to redirect traffic between their computer and the network to you so you can nullify it?
Don't do that.
Other people are using a *public* wifi connection you're connected to, using some of the bandwidth you feel you're entitled to, so you attack them with a cache poisoning exploit?
Hopefully you do this to someone who can hit back. Or just get arrested.
After talking with the frustrated non-technical people who owned/managed them, I wrote this program to help network users and owners.
In theory, BitHammer should work outside Linux, but I don't care to test it.
Suggestion: If they are non-technical, you should probably test that. Odds are they are using Windows or OSX.
n/t
...wtf? If you want to advertise your so-so project, at least write a coherent abstract. And for the love of god, don't just say 'Oh, I don't care' on your Github page. If you don't care, don't advertise and get lost.
This basically boils down to: "My use is more important than your use, under a flimsy excuse that your use could potentially interfere with my use, I will deliberately abuse the network in order to wilfully interfere with your use."
The computer abuse act and FCC guidelines about wilful interference comes to mind....
Right, so someone comes in, gets an IP address via DHCP, turns on BitTorrent and gets banned 'as long as the program [BitHammer] is running'. Rinse, lather, repeat: now you have no traffic on your network, because all IP addresses in your subnet are on the banlist. Niiiiice.
I don't like your announcing on WWE programming, and I don't like Bittorrent BanHammer. Please leave Slashdot.
Over the last year, I've been plagued by rogue BitTorrent users who've crept onto these public hostpots either with a stolen/cracked password, or who lie right to my face (and the Wi-Fi owners) about it.
Huh? They lie right to your face about it? Wait a minute. Who the hell are you anyway and what do you have to say about it? If it bothers you, buy yourself a mobile hotspot and STFU. At least maybe they are actually buying food/coffee/whatever and aren't just using the cafe as their personal office. What's the next complaint? That their conversations are too loud and you can't hear your conference calls?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I read the summary and imagined Soulskill hunched over his/her keyboard rubbing his hands together as he let out an evil giggle just before he hit return to publish michaelcole's submission. Knowing what hell was about to be unleashed on this poor soul.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The wifi owners are lying to you and you want to block them, so you want to block them from their own network ? Not how it works...Y,ou will be end up banned from their wifi for blocking traffic. If your that worried about it, buy your own hotspot.
Routers are supposed to prioritize all connections based on their applications, ports and behaviors, and handling tens of thousands of connections shouldn't be a problem. It's 2014 not 1984!
Throw away junk routers, or subscribe 4G yourself.
The issue is that cheap access points/firewalls run out of resources trying to manage (and possibly do connection-tracking) on all the different connections. If a bittorrent user suddenly opens up a few thousand additional connections (regardless of actual bandwidth) then that ends up knocking everyone else off that firewall.
The bittorrent users could prevent the problem by limiting how many connections are allowed per torrent, but it sounds like they're not doing that.
Rather than forcing bittorrent users off the network entirely, it would be better if the access point itself limited the number of connections per MAC address to something reasonable. This would prevent the symptom from occurring.
I'm shocked by some of the replies so far. Some of you are furious because this guy is trying to limit the people who abuse the system?
Imagine you are at a buffet. It's all-you-can-eat but with no instructions or limits on the way to do it. Now imagine there's a few people at the front of the line and they're putting all the food available into buckets, leaving nothing but scraps for everyone else. Would you be pissed at those people or at the one who would stand up and yell "Hey, leave some for the others"?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I've met several people who have their bittorrent client running in the background without even realizing it.
They have no idea what "seeding" means, so they will frequently be unknowingly seeding hundreds of movies etc.
It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the majority of all seeds on bittorrent have no idea that they are still distributing files. Ironically, "stupid" people are probably required to keep bittorrent working as well as it does. "Smart" people usually hit and run, saving their bandwidth.
If they got a proper enterprise router the router would not get overloaded -- and you could restrict a single logons connections to the point that they don't swamp everyone else. Both you and the other one should be banned for abuse of the network.
I hope you enjoy your freedom while it lasts. Everyone else who agrees that this guy is a fucking moron should submit a tip here.
CAPTCHA: beacon
It would be nice if router logs showed suspicious ARP packets and/or declined to forward them except for specially privileged connections (e.g. via a flag in the access list). The router knows the addresses of users connected over WiFi, and it's extremely unlikely those WiFi users will be routes for other devices. This seems like a good measure in general to make MITM harder.
The BitHammer relies on Local Peer Disocovery which gives priority to peers that are close to the bit torrent client. This is good for ISPs because it tries to keep the bit torrent traffic inside their own network instead of hammering peering connections. This also makes connections faster for the bit torrent client.
If you want to get around BitHammer you just need to turn off Local Peer Discovery, if BitHammer can't find you it can't block you. But now the ISPs are going to get screwed because Local Peer Discovery is turned off. This will also make the torrents slower for the client.
Sounds like a loose/loose situation to me.
....every problem tends to look like a nail.
If you read poster's GitHub page, he even admits there are better ways to do this than using his program. This program is not an elegant solution. It is the equivalent of using duct tape and plastic wrap to replace a broken car window. Sure, it solves the problem, but it's not a good longterm solution. Best usage case: solve the problem of BitTorrent users hogging the connection until proper QoS is set up.
Did you read the same synopsis I did? He is not talking about the owners, he is talking about other users coming in and grabbing all the bandwidth in public hotspots.
That would be an extremely useful tool in Germany, the hotspot owner is liable if someone is caught file-sharing over his/her access point. I can see owners wanting to run this, it would have to run under Windows though.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I made a jammer to block mobile phone conversations that I don't want clogging public spectrum. Of course, it doesn't block my conversations.
How does using bittorent on public wifi clog up "residential" routers. Do the residential ones see the corporate coffee shop ones under heavy stress and get "sympathy congestion?"
Also, over half of all public wifi I've seen cuts any client off for 24 hours if they use X amount of bandwidth, usually 1GB. If they don't implement something like that, or really good QOS, or port-blocking then their network is misconfigured and they brought it on themselves. The proper way to fix that is to offer to fix it, not boot people off with some stupid hack.
Something written to disrupt BitTorrent is that you RIAA or MPAA? A little early for Halloween costumes isn't it ?
This is not your Internet. If a public hotspot is being overloaded by any client, not just someone's porn torrent, then that's between the user and the network admin. It's not your job or your right to be The Internet Police. Running a BT client on a public net is a dickish thing to do, but I can imagine scenarios when I might need to do it myself: "oh crap, my root drive is horked and I desperately need to download a Debian USB image. Good thing there's a Starbucks around the block!"
A sane policy would be for the net admins to limit the number of open connections or UDP sessions from a single machine. An insane policy is to think that "my technodick is bigger than yours and I'm going to knock you offline" is less than sociopathic.
Guess what, OP: I don't like your SSH sessions interfering with my Skype. Check out my new SSHWACK Banhammer that frees open networks from latency-hogging assholes like you. Are you sure you want to start this game?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Perhaps we can get APK to devise a better solution for us.
It usually goes hand in hand. Someone describing himself as a "digital nomad" is usually on par in assholeness as the average "carbon neutral" person or anyone else who turns what people simply do into their lifestyle.
I can't help it, "digital nomad" always sounds to me like the internet version of the guy who keeps bumping from one friend to the next and camping on their couch 'til they get tossed out 'cause they're too cheap to buy or rent an apartment themselves.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Regardless of what the other person is doing interfering with network connectivity is illegal.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You mooch internet from some public hotspot and complain about someone abusing "your" bandwidth for torrenting, so you kick him off an access point that is neither yours nor one that you have the right to policy?
Uh... yeah. Smart idea. Really. Uhhuh. Me slowly walking backwards has nothing to do with me trying to get as much space between you and me as I possibly can before someone might get the idea that we're in any way connected, not at all...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
File "./bithammer", line 57
print "Finding network gateway
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'
So it won't work anyway.
Doh.
To be clear because it seems this point is being missed in conversations here - This is being used against users who are torrenting on public wifi, that he's approached himself and apparently so has the staff and they deny they're doing it because they know they'd lose the access.
If they suddenly lose the ability to torrent, they're really losing the ability to do something they had been asked by the establishment not to do.
I'm sure that's not the only case he's using it in and that's a problem, but as a last resort I don't see a problem really. If anything getting rid of the hogs assures there's enough of the commons (in this case bandwidth) left for everyone else.
So, they have stolen/hacked the passwords for... public hotspots? In any case, interfering with other people's connections/data could land you in a heap of trouble. You're not being a hero. Your software will not detect whether someone got permission to use bittorrent on that network. This is a job for the owners of the router, so the proper person can do the banning. And if the owner is OK with bittorrent being used on the network, then you have to deal with it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It relies on Local Peer Discovery which is disabled by default on my torrent clients. Enabling this feature broadcasts which torrents you are downloading to the network. It's a huge privacy problem for the very small possibility that somebody happens to be downloading the same thing at the same time. Thus it is usually disabled by default.
Anyone who calls themself a digital nomad is someone who takes over an entire table with papers and folders, hogs the power sockets, has loud conversations over the phone, and generally treats a public space as if it's their own private office.
So I've written TwatHammer, it's a utility which bans Office and PowerPoint users on your wifi network.
But in this case the broken window is at a place which advertises their customers can come and break the windows.
You write a utility that scans network traffic (strike 1) so you can find traffic *you* don't agree with (strike 2). Then, you engage in a DOS attack to stop it? (Strike 3). You are out; at least you should be.
What on earth entitles you to do such nonsense on a network you don't own? The business owner can do what he wants and allow what he wants. If you want to offer to run your little hack, after explaining what it does and getting their permission have fun, but you have ZERO right to just march in and start making a mess of somebody's ARP cache because you don't like what's going on. Morally, You need permission to do this kind of thing on a network you don't own or legally control, so until you have permission BUTT OUT!
You probably yell at your neighborhood kids for riding their bikes in the street or not crossing at the corners after the full "Stop, Look, and Listen" routine too.... If it's not your network, keep your packet sniffing and ARP poisoning attacks to yourself. You don't know if the BitTorrent traffic isn't the owner's laptop downloading CentOS in the back room or some guy working for the MPAA who hacked in from 2 miles away, and it's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I am pretty sure that running this would be illegal on a public network. If you get prosecuted, "automatic ARP poisoning" is not a safe sounding term to tell the jury.
I was in a similar situation multiple times too. You come to a hotel, connect to internet and it's really bad to a point of impossible to use and stay connected to a remote host.
If he found that stopping torrents fixes the issue, and it's not users simply streaming too many videos, then technically, he is offering a good solution since it makes the internet better for everyone using it at an expense of very few who hog thousands of connections without even realizing it.
Yeah I was more on the side of "What a jerk, that's a DOS tool!" but after reading further it looks like his intention is not to just randomly deploy it on his own whenever he wants. He wrote it to help show business owners what was happening on their networks and how these same owners could use the tool to stop the most egregious offenders.
Not saying someone else couldn't come along and use it maliciously but that's true of a lot of (most?) software.
His intentions seem good and if it helps a few small business owners get a few less complaints about their network from legitimate users then more power to him...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
https://github.com/MichaelJCole/bithammer/issues/2
So you wrote a program that knocks users on public wifi off if they're being hogs?
What if I'm using that connection to download something legal for MY work, asshole?
Being a digital nomad, you should be more than competent enough to pay for your own hotspot and secure it yourself instead of being an asshole to everyone else around you. If you rely upon being connected while mobile THAT MUCH, it's common fucking sense (which you seem to lack in spades.)
Instead you write a program that will invariably get used on and affect legitimate users.
Fuck off and think before you write code, next time.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Can't the routers split the traffic more evenly?
Some years ago I had a wired router that did what the summary describes: if one computer ran bittorrent, nobody else could do anything. I assumed that the router split the traffic by demand, or by number of total connections. This makes sense up to a point. I assumed routers have gotten better since then because I haven't had the problem in a while. It seems like a more fair algorithm should be implemented.
You write a utility that scans network traffic (strike 1) so you can find traffic *you* don't agree with (strike 2). Then, you engage in a DOS attack to stop it? (Strike 3). You are out; at least you should be.
Strike 2 is, you find users which DOS the router. Strike 3 is, you counter-DOS the individuals, so they stop DOSin everybody else.
But yeah.
> NOTE: BitHammer is FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. Get permission from a network's owner before using it. You assume all responsibility for it's use.
its
It would be nice if this could get translated down into something that could run out of busybox on a WRT54G. I've got the latest Shibby Tomato with bandwidth limiting, and this would be a nice add-on.
No, it's much worse than the carbon neutral people. They don't take resources from others. Digital nomads roam free wi-fi spots, setting up a small office and staying at that location for hours. They pay less than normal customers, take up more space for longer periods of time, demand others around them be quiet because they're busy working, talk loudly on their phone to drown out background noise or use a speaker phone so they can 'work' while they talk. These people are leeches, too self-entitled to pay for what they need like everyone does.
On a side note, the developer committed all his .pyc files...
He should alter the program so it specifically won't work on Windows. If someone wants to use it to keep hogs off their access point (which they own and/or manage), they should switch to Linux. If you use Windows, you should just stick to commercial software that costs an arm and a leg and doesn't work very well, or just plain isn't available for what you want to do.
You wanna limit bittorrent on your network? You go right ahead. You do ti in whatever way pleases you and works well. You want to limit bittorrent on MY network? Fuck you. If I wanna run a network where I let BT leeches go nuts, that's my prerogative, and you are welcome to go away if you don't like it.
The funny thing is, like most sociopath types, he is being just as selfish and greedy as those he dislikes. He is mad because he wants to get to use free bandwidth belonging to others, and he's not getting to use as much as he wants due to other people. So he feels entitled to push them off so he can have more.
That is the only purpose here. This isn't for your own network, I don't have a problem with BT leeches on it. Why? Because I choose who gets on it.
^Agreed! There are so many legit reasons to utilize torrents, ugh! Being an admin of over a dozen public wifi locations, the largest having nearly 1000 clients a day, with 30 WAPs. I never block bitTorrent only traffic shape to extreme cases (eg some one DL at 100Mbps for over 15mins will be bumped to a 10Mbps speed), and each client is in a /30 subnet to protect users from self righteous people like this.
The tool use ARP Spoofing to send the bit torrent user into the dark void of dev-null. That mean any (bright) BitTorrent user just have to add the router as a static ARP entry and the tool won't be able to do much about it.
But still thanks for making sure the internet is still the most elitist place (as in Elitism) in the universe.
So what will happen is that said bittorrent uses will use a VPN with bittorrent on the network. THEN what will you do?
Why stop with just the bittorrent users, I think I will just be a script kiddie and listen for any other users and mess them up.
It is fun being a youth who loves to do digital vandalism. (Who'd a thunk it!?!)
So I lived real close to a hotel once and was very broke. I used their wifi for my bittorrent. Someone there banned my MAC address.. So I changed my MAC address... (very easy to do). We went back and forth with me getting banned, but some days nothing would happen.. It made me think a live person was involved in banning me.. Anyway I ended up spoofing the MAC address of one of their many access points, they banned it.. It was the last time they banned me...
So from what I read about his banhammer, just change MAC addresses and turn off LPD if you get banned and you are good.
It basically DOSes SSH on any machine connected to the same subnet. Pretty cool and often usefull to piss people off. I love seeing people scream out of frustration at starbucks! :-)
One wrong is greater than another? In this instance, no. Neither own the network, both are abusing it in their own ways. I like hat you did there, with the ripped movies/porn reference. Cause those are the only things people do with bittorrent, right? That's why their wrong is greater, cause they must be stealing from both ends, bandwidth AND content, right?
There are already tools available for network owners to manage their networks with a minimum of fuss, QoS, port blocking and other tools right in the router their IT guy already set up for them. This is a greifer tool, pure and simple. If it can knock a bittorrent user off the network, it can knock anyone off the network.
This uses ARP spoofing as a way to deny service to another legitimate user of the network. The same thing can be used to defend or even fix this issue. This tool will work for maybe a few weeks before torrent clients upgrade to defend against it. Probably by doing the same thing but redirecting ALL local traffic to the bittorrent user instead. Let's face it, a few extra connections form people trying to watch Youtube vids and browse websites and email really aren;t gonna affect the leech much if he's busy downloading gobs of files.
This guy is an idiot anyways, as the people clogging up his local wifi spots are not torrent users, but everyone else around him. The kid watching youtube, the girl watching netflix, the guy downloading sports highlight clips from ESPN's website....video is here and business connections are actually pretty shitty on a small scale like your local coffeehouse or a hotel. Gigabit would help but it ain't here for 99% of America.
This guy has made a hacking tool for small networks. A little tweaking and you own the network instead and can use ALL the bandwidth. Just read his github page, the guy basically admits that its a hacking tool, it won't work at least half the time to "fix" the problem it claims to fix, and the bittorrent use may not even be the problem in the first place.
This shouldn't be on Slashdot in its current context, its an advertisement for a scriptkiddie tool.
Maybe he should be more angry at the business owners for using cheap routers and/or not implementing traffic shaping, etc.
Maybe you should RTFA before you post. The git link clearly states that using traffic shaping/QoS capabilities on the router is a better way to handle this, but since non-technical business owners often don't understand how to manage QoS and are frustrated with their inability to solve the problem of bandwidth hogs, he wrote this tool...
1) ignorant bit torrent user who doesn't know how to configure their software to play nice in public
2) ignorant free wifi supplier who doesn't know how to configure their router for QOS
3) ignorant noob who relies on there being free wifi in order to do his job
There is a reason I've used this sig for years.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
>> is leeching your bandwidth, they aren't paying cu ... eliminated all the legal utility of bit torrent FOR ME
>>
> corporate cocksucker
Let me see if I understand you correctly. Because IKR pays his own bills rather than mooching off his neighbors, and prefers to download legitimate copies rather than malware-infested torrents, he's a corporate cocksucker? Lay off the drugs, dude. And get a job.
FTFY
I'm pretty sure this guy's network ISN'T a common carrier. (read he's on a private network, which requires credentials and is for a specific, likely corporate or campus, purpose)
> A torrent with few seeders isn't very efficient, but one with many hundreds of well-configured peers is hard to beat on overall transfer speed.
From that phrasing, it almost sounds like you're supposing that more speed is more efficient. Faster means less efficient more often than not. For something easy to visualize, a moped going 20 MPH requires several few ounces of fuel per hour. To go several thousand miles per hour, an X-37 must burn around 15,000 pounds of fuel per MINUTE.
Downloading from many sources means taking up many resources. Downloading from one source (the closest one) would be significantly more efficient, and almost as fast.
A better tool would be a properly configured router. This software is a hack for misconfigured networks that treats a symptom (badly) rather than killing the disease.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I think a lot of people are insane. They actually think that a digital nomad who spends most of their time in 3rd world countries is staying in hostels, hotels and using internet in local cafes and restaurants will actually have a "network admin" a "usage policy" or really ANY knowledge of networking or have ANY idea why their internet gets SOOOOO slow to the point of unusable sometimes when some clients arrive. Most of them probably think it is just their local telecom that is shit, and ignore it cause "they'll never fix it anyway".
At least that has been my experience.
This is just like TV Be Gone if it's used by a visitor to a wifi network - a bit cool, a bit controversial. But if it's the wifi network's owner in the coffee shop, fair game!
I can't help it, "digital nomad" always sounds to me like the internet version of the guy who keeps bumping from one friend to the next and camping on their couch 'til they get tossed out 'cause they fucked up the network.
FTFY!
If your job depends on Internet access, buy a MiFi? Unfortunately you don't have any right to stop someone else from using a public hotspot however they like.
nt
So you are blocking a PROTOCOL because it is sometimes used with misconfigured clients?
Are you so happy of everyone using ANYTHING over https then? streaming porn over https is also using a lot of bandwidth, as well as joining a "hangout" of people losing their time. Are you going to look at people screens and break their devices?
With a reasonable limit on tcp connection and bandwidth, bittorrent will work very well, and you are ruining the connection of all users which are just running the client (maybe even with stopped torrents)?
Sorry this is criminal activity. You can better educate users and network owners, or write a client which behaves better than others, and instead you are shooting in the crowd.
I firmly behave that every one blocking protocols instead of looking at low-level technical behaviour (connection limit, bandwidth usage etc) is not doing the right thing.
It's just the cheap, stupid, asshole way.
So you can't "fix" this behaviour? Talk with the owner instead and maybe switch cafè. You were not given the legitimate power to do any other thing.
Now, now... the solution to software is more software.
Someone needs to write a nice little program that checks a network for the presence of BitHammer, and then attacks that host with most known exploits for whatever system it is, downloads child pornography onto it, and notifies the FBI (or appropriate agency in that country) of the horrible child molester that was just uncovered.
See? No problem. Well, unless you don't like being more evil than the evil you're fighting, I suppose.
I think "nomad" ought to be reserved for people who do not live in any one country for more then 3 months and has no fixed address. So a "digital nomad" wouldn't mean "that douchebag who works in starbucks in the USA."
impossible to use tools like SSH, or sometimes even web browsing
TIL an average slashdot user uses SSH more than browsing the web.
Browsing on Lynx?
Hey everybody, thanks for the comments. Most of you probably won't ever see this comment, but I appreciate your interest and feedback about the program. Believe it or not, I thought about alot each of the ethical issues yall brought up. And well, frankly there isn't a good way for strangers to work together anonymously. That's probably a good definition of a stranger. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them here. Anyways thanks again and best wishes! Mike
You seem to be confused regarding who is engaging in the DoS attack.
The script poisons bittorrent traffic in order to *stop* the DoS attack that is *already* in progress, caused by the *torrenter*.
This is not the equivalent of yelling at kids riding their bikes. It's the equivalent of having a bunch of kids forcefully and willfully blocking the driveway of you and every other person's house on your street because they want to play road hockey.
In real life, you'd be calling the police and possibly pressing charges. But that's a lot harder to do with network traffic, hence people going vigilante like this. This is an inevitable consequence when more reasonable measures are not available.
Your strawman arguments are ridiculous. Why the hell would the owner of a coffee shop be in the back room downloading CentOS ISOs? That's horse shit and you know it.
The whole point of a business providing public wifi, is to entice people to come in and use their other services. If I go in there with the expectation that I can peruse slashdot while enjoying a cappuccino, and I can't, then that will directly impact my decision to go there again.
I challenge you to find one single shop owner that wouldn't happily invite measures such as these, so that they are able to provide service to their customers.
Ilsa
https://github.com/MichaelJCol... Copyright (c) 2014 Michael Cole The software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software. Now, these are not licensing terms: this is just a disclaimer.
Many people will likely carry out a military response if something like that were to happen.
Those behind Bithammer will be bringing it down on themselves.
Just an FYI, it states on his github page (which is something I'd figure a commentator would read, but hey, lets talk about things we didn't bother to read) the following: ... So you are completely off-base with your comments.
"After talking with the frustrated non-technical people who owned/managed them, I wrote this program to help network users and owners."
It is the equivalent of using duct tape and plastic wrap to replace a broken car window.
Or the equivalent of using duct tape and plastic wrap to shut up the guy next to you talking too loudly on his phone.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
and
He knows he's using arp cache poisoning on someone else's network - without even thinking too hard, that sounds pretty schiesty to me. Regarding legality - rather than simply not mentioning it, he goes out of his way to document his ignorance of the potential illegality of running this code. Sounds less like a factual lack of knowledge and more like willful ignorance to me.
The ends cannot justify the means. He has a good end in view, but his means are even worse than the situation he's attempting to address. What other packets is he stealing from (presumably innocent) bystanders?
The nature of this software has already called your integrity into question - or did you suppose that "pure" motives would justify poor ethics?
For the love of god.
Packet prioritisation! It's not hard. The prio chain in iptables has been around for ages exactly for this purpose. Please, please please prioritise traffic rather than attempting to ban it.
If you can ban then you should be able to traffic shape.
A blog I run for the wealth
(though I imagine he means to poison ARP, not "apr")
Poisoning the ARP table on the host router isn't exactly a friendly behavior, and a lot of implementations ignore unsolicited ARP replies anyway.
Maybe be a little more targeted and de-authenticate his wifi association like what aircrack does.
I am one of the reasons for BitHammer. I inspired you to code your first Python program. You're welcome, OP!
If someone is bit torrenting and someone is watching netflix or youtube HD, what's the difference?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So without any admin access to the network they are on, or the torrent site, you can ban another random torrent user? How does that work?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Who says the bittorrent users are rogue? Who says they stole a password? You said it was public wifi. Why do you think they are lying to your face? Were you running around asking people? Just leave people alone, you self entitled jerk. Who's to say their file transfer is or is not legit, and who is to say it is more or less important than your work? Now people have to run VPN connections to keep you from interfering with them? I would not only kick you out of my coffee shop, but I would post pictures of you, and list your mac address across the net, so people know when you've entered the room. Your behavior is inexcusable.
This sig intentionally left blank.
With BitTorrent, there's a very good chance that you're downloading from some who are near and also some who are far away. With a CDN, you'd be using the nearest one. There is an unofficial protocol extension to _favor_ closer peers, which _some_ torrent users use.
The great thing about torrents is that the volunteers who run the CentOS project don't have to pay for a CDN, or for high bandwidth. It costs less. That's a great thing. Sometimes, that's very important. Other times, you don't want the cheapest solution, you want the fastest, or the most reliable, etc. When you want the cheapest way to deliver a big file to a lot of techies, BitTorrent is the way to go. It does have disadvantages too.
Read his post again. He said HE doesn't have a reason to use it. He didn't say you're not allowed to.
Your first sentence was a reminder to yourself I suppose.
If I start a torrent, then open this program to stop me from using all my bandwidth... who wins?
Clearly you care more about getting free internet access than saving the planet.
Why didnt you write it in c++? do you not care about:
- Energy usage of your program
- The impact it will have on world energy supply usage
- The extra heat generated to process python on your CPU, impacting the worlds environmental temperature.
But hey, we can all be aholes like you when we use your mentality of thinking.
I'am off to make a program written in Java that keeps my CPU usage at 100%, because noone will let me share their radiator for free..........
you sir is a cheap cunt,buy your own wimax and boot anyone you want from it,if I use a free public wifi for whatever reason and I find out someone ( not owner) kicking me out , I will find out who and you will get a physical beating or police
.... you should _seriously_ consider getting a proper one. The number of concurrent connections should be _far_ higher than what you typically have, and the QoS should make SSH still go through like a charm.
I add, ServerAliveInterval 60, to my $HOME/.ssh/config file just because of appliances that are too dumb to handle long TCP connections.
This is a boring sig
You are trying to run it under Python 3, whereas the program was written for Python 2. In Python 3, "print" is a function, not a built-in statement.
just change the mac.. once you change it often enough, all the ip's from the dhcp pool are banned and then nobody gets to use use the network.
I mean, if you want to bw limit, why not just run limit per user or some other network shaping like that. and does he really expect the public wifi operators to install this?
and furthermore, why the fuck would you need to hack or steal password for a PUBLIC FUCKING WIFI? it's public. deal with it - how about if you're a nomadic hippie worker, you just BUY PROPER NETWORK access when you need it, nomadic worker doesn't need equate to a freebie leecher worker you know. there's for pay hotspots all around most asian countries - or you can buy 3g for rather cheap.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If some filesharing gets successfully banned in enough locations, it will add encryption and concealing of its protocol. iirc there are already approaches for bittorrent there.
I want to bring my can of raid into the restaurant and spray a cloud of it over the head of anyone spraying a cloud of nicotine over my head.
"making other programs useless"
Are you using dial up?
phew, you need to say his name 3 times to make him appear I've heard
This software is inappropriate for USERS to run. Network operators/owners are free to do what they wish with their network. Both are in my original post on this.
You did read MY post right?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You seem to be confused regarding who is engaging in the DoS attack.
The script poisons bittorrent traffic in order to *stop* the DoS attack that is *already* in progress, caused by the *torrenter*.
You missed my point then. Assuming that YOU are entitled to decide what traffic is allowed and what traffic is disrupted in a network which is NOT YOURS is wholly inappropriate and smacks of self importance. Who are you? Who put you in charge? What makes you entitled to decide?
It's like you decided that your neighbor's back yard garden was getting too weedy and didn't have enough flowers, so the next time he invites you over for a BBQ you show up with shovels and herbicides to start "fixing" the problem. In the process, you might be digging up his organic vegetable garden, you don't know.
Stay in YOUR yard and DON'T start trying to administer networks which are NOT yours.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101