Category Archives: BitTorrent Clients

OneSwarm: The Privacy Aware BitTorrent Client

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Developed at the University of Washington, OneSwarm is a BitTorrent client that allows users to share files “anonymously” or with a specific group of friends. These features give users more control over their privacy, while maintaining a decent download speed. The client operates from within an Internet browser and is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Image is Loading....Those who’ve been reading our blog for long enough may remember how the MPAA and RIAA accused a printer at the University of Washington of copyright infringement a few years ago.

With their research, the researchers pointed out that gathering evidence on BitTorrent downloaders is full of pitfalls.

Perhaps not coincidentally the same research group is also behind the “privacy preserving” BitTorrent client OneSwarm, currently developed by Tomas Isdal and Michael Piatek, two PhD students at the University of Washington.

Unlike other regular BitTorrent clients, OneSwarm allows users to share files only with a selected group of friends. While regular and public BitTorrent downloads are also supported, the privacy settings allow users to obscure the source of a transfer by sending it through multiple intermediaries.

“Virtually everyone on the Internet is a content producer, but today we only have one model for sharing: sign over the rights to your work to a website, with the hope that it will respect your privacy,” researcher Michael Piatek told us commenting on the importance of privacy on BitTorrent.

“OneSwarm is an attempt to provide an alternative. Our view is that private data sharing is an essential service in free and open societies,” he added. How the various privacy settings work is explained in detail in the video below, posted by the OneSwarm team.

Although OneSwarm has been in development for a while, the researchers have made its source available on GitHub in an update this week. Binaries and the source code are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X platforms.

We tested OneSwarm, and although the browser interface is something you have to get used to, the download speeds are more than reasonable. This is also confirmed in one of the academic papers published by the OneSwarm team (pdf). In a performance comparison they found that it outperformed other “private” sharing options such as Freenet and BitTorrent over Tor.

Users have to be aware though, that while using the ‘public’ mode transfers are not anonymized.

That said, an Open Source effort to allow more privacy controls for BitTorrent users is something that can only be encouraged. The next step many BitTorrent users are looking forward to is the arrival of a fully anonymized BitTorrent client with decent speeds.

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Where Are uTorrent’s Comments and Ratings Stored?

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Last week uTorrent rolled out the first Beta version of their 3.0 release. Among other things, uTorrent 3.0 allows users to rate and comment on the torrents they’re downloading. It’s a feature that many people have requested, but for the more privacy conscious user, it also begs the question where these comments and ratings are stored.

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With their roll-out of uTorrent 3.0 last week, BitTorrent Inc. introduced a bunch of new features. Users can now stream video files while they’re downloading, and they can also add comments and ratings to torrents.

Interestingly enough, these comments and ratings also work on torrent files that are shared on private trackers. Among some of the more privacy concious BitTorrent users this raised a few questions. Most importantly, where is this data stored and what information is attached to it?

To answer the above we got in touch with the uTorrent engineering team to find out how these comments and ratings are handled by the client.

Right away we were assured that none of the data is stored on a central server, and that the data can never be traced back to its source. Instead, the comments you see appearing in your client are sent as an extra piece of data, similar to how other files are shared with peers.

“µTorrent 3.0 adds an extension message for distributing comments within the swarm. All clients that support this extension message store all comments they have seen, per torrent,” the uTorrent engineering team informed us.

“When peer A joins a swarm, it will send a request for comments to peers that support this message, say peer B. If peer A already has some comments, it passes along a bloom-filter representing the set of all those comments. When peer B responds, it will not send comments that are already present in the bloom filter. This prevents duplicate comments.”

 

uTorrent Comments

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So basically, all comments and ratings associated with a particular file are shared among members of that swarm. If another peer has a comment that you don’t have already, it will send it to you, and vice versa. The messages are sent through the tracker and don’t rely on DHT, this means that they work on private torrent files as well.

The requests for comments are sent every 20 minutes by uTorrent, and this is how they are shared among peers. In the beginning when there is a relatively low percentage of users supporting the extension the comments and ratings will propagate slowly, but when uTorrent 3.0 becomes the stable release these issues will be gone.

The uTorrent engineer team further explained that comments are stored in the resume file for a torrent, which helps keeping comments alive across sessions. But other than on the computers of uTorrent users, the comments are never shared outside the swarm on a central server.

Although it’s good to know that uTorrent’s commenting and rating system is fully decentralized, it also introduces a new feature that may be less welcome. When comments and ratings become a new standard to check the quality of files in the future, there is no doubt that these features will be exploited by spammers to make fake torrents appear more legitimate.

Time will tell whether the ‘costs’ will outfit the benefits, and whether the unmoderated system will be able to handle the potential influx of trolls and spammers. In the meantime it’s a simple affair to paste a hash value into Google – or append it to the URL on sites like Torrentz – in order to double check.

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BitTorrent Inc. Releases Dummy Proof Download Client

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To make BitTorrent appeal to an even wider audience, uTorrent parent company BitTorrent Inc. has released a brand new BitTorrent client today. Codenamed Chrysalis, the new piece of software is aimed at novice BitTorrent users who are generally overwhelmed by the traditional interface of uTorrent and the mainline client. In the months to come Chrysalis will replace BitTorrent’s mainline client.

Image is Loading....Over the years BitTorrent Inc. has acquired a dominant position with their two BitTorrent applications, uTorrent and the Mainline client. The two clients have over 100 million active users a month and this number continues to increase.

There is no doubt that BitTorrent’s user base is impressive, but there is still a lot of untapped potential. Both uTorrent and BitTorrent’s mainline client have a relatively large bounce rate. That is, a large number of new users try the software a few times, but don’t become regular users.

“During 2010 less than a third of new client downloads resulted in a new monthly active user,” BitTorrent’s Simon Morris told us. “Plenty of people download and install the client, but can’t figure out how to use it, and then uninstall it very quickly,” he added.

To change this, BitTorrent Inc. have been working on a new project with the aim of keeping those users on board. Today marks the release of the first Alpha version of this new client – codenamed project Chrysalis.

“The best products out there don’t have any significant educational hurdles – it is just obvious how they work. This is what we’re ultimately aiming for with this new project, although it will take time to get there. The client we’re releasing today is just a starting point,” Morris told us.

Chrysalis Interface

 

Image is Loading....Today’s release is a very early Alpha, but it should give a good indication of where BitTorrent Inc. is going with their new client. By default it is filled with several prominently placed ‘apps’, such as those from TED and VODO, which provide access to downloads. This means that users will see content right away when they start the client

One of the main reasons why some users don’t come back to the client is a perceived lack of content. New users sometimes don’t know where to find content so the current version of Chrysalis should address this issue to some degree. In addition, the simplified user interface should be more welcoming to people who are new to BitTorrent.

Overall the Chrysalis client behaves quite intuitively. Downloads are added by a single click and show only basic information. Once a download is finished media files can be launched in a media player directly from the app. Starting, stopping and removing files can be done with a single click as well.

The client is built on the uTorrent v3.0 codebase but in the future new and unique features will be added as well.

“The first project Chrysalis beta is aiming at cleaning up the overall user experience and transforming a technical and data-rich experience into a cleaner more media-rich experience. This in itself will not be sufficient to solve the attrition problem, but we hope it will establish a new platform on which to build,” Morris said.

Chrysalis Download Interface

 

Image is Loading....Another subtle change compared to the BitTorrent Mainline client is the more prominent placement of the search box. Users can type in search terms here and are, interestingly enough, redirected to a Google search for torrents. A surprising move, since Google just banned the words ‘uTorrent’ and ‘BitTorrent’ from some of its services.

Chrysalis is not intended for the more experienced BitTorrent user, but BitTorrent hopes it will appeal to a wider audience than their other clients do now. If all goes well, the dummy-proof client will completely replace the current Mainline client, which currently is a clone of uTorrent.

Time will tell whether this approach will be effective. Luckily, uTorrent users don’t have to panic as we are assured that their favorite client will always be available and developed separately. The Alpha release of Chrysalis is available for download starting today, currently limited to Windows operating systems.

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