Slashdot Mirror
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.
As opposed to the bittorrent user(s) who are pushing everyone else out of the way and preventing their access?
Its one thing to do so with permission from the network owners .. its another thing to wade in and beat up on people just so you can get what you want.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
This is not in the summary, but in his readme on github the submitter states "After talking with the frustrated non-technical people who owned/managed them, I wrote this program to help network users and owners."
The implication is that this tool is written for use by whomever manages the network. Most networks would have a "no bittorrent" rule, if the network owner was savvy enough to know this. The tool is an interesting enforcement mechanism.