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I've written a torrent client, and I'm skeptical than v2 will ever catch on. While it does solve some minor problems, it's not a large enough leap forward to ju
by smabie 6y ago
I've written a torrent client, and I'm skeptical than v2 will ever catch on. While it does solve some minor problems, it's not a large enough leap forward to justify the costs.
- bredren 6y agoI don’t know much about protocol version pacing, but was lack of substantial changes part of the reason it has taken 12 full years to get a client to support v2? http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0052.html http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0052.html
- Mindless2112 6y ago3 years, not 12. BEP 52 was based on BEP 3 and kept the same metadata, including the creation date. http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html
- rhencke 6y agoNo. It is still a draft proposal.
- Havoc 6y agoIf a couple major players adopt a hybrid system then it could perhaps
- loeg 6y agolibtorrent backs a number of popular clients (Deluge, qBittorrent), so that's a good start.
- mhh__ 6y agoFrom the perspective of the client would it be a drop in replacement like changing a static library or a from the ground up rework?
- smabie 6y agoIf they used libtorrent, then it would be easy. If they wrote their own system, then it would require a moderate amount of work to chance to v2.
- ksec 6y agoI am going to take a guess, Most people on Mac would be using transmission, and People on Windows would be using Classic Utorrent. Both are not based on Libtorrent.
- IshKebab 6y agoYeah this definitely feels like a Python 2/3 type situation. They solved one minor issue but require the whole world to update. I'm not even convinced they couldn't have done it in a backwards compatible way. Why not stick with SHA-1 but also add SHA-256 for verification for clients that support it?
- UncleEntity 6y ago> Why not stick with SHA-1 but also add SHA-256 for verification for clients that support it? Apparently you can do that with 'hybrid' magnet links. The problem is the two swarms are different so as more people move over to v2 the v1 swarms will become smaller and smaller -- thus giving people an incentive to upgrade, I suppose. ...and they seem to have solved more than one minor issue since they were breaking things anyway...
- calpaterson 6y agoSurely people will just sit in both swarms?
- userbinator 6y agoThat's an interesting comparison, given that the first BitTorrent client was written in Python (2).
- wmf 6y agouTP seemed like a small improvement to me but it happened.
- smabie 6y agoIt's backward compatible.
- ogogmad 6y agoThe use of SHA-1 in v1 seems like a major problem. [edit] That doesn't imply that BTv2 is the right successor protocol.
- akvadrako 6y agoIt’s not currently - collisions are very expensive and only in limited contexts. If you wanted to distribute malware via torrents your efforts are better spent elsewhere.
- ogogmad 6y agoAttacks only get better with time. Also, this seems quite bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_attack#Chosen-prefix_collision_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_attack#Chosen-prefix...
- loeg 6y agoThat attack isn't relevant to bittorrent swarms. What you want is a preimage attack on SHA1.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sedatk 6y agoMinor problems? Isn't this a security issue? Somebody can modify a binary and still have it return the same hash and distribute it to people who think that they are receiving an authentic file. Is it even an option to keep going with SHA1? Even Git, which this is less of an issue, has a plan for migrating to SHA2. https://git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition/ https://git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition/
- throwaway2048 6y agoThis isn't really true, sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent, which if you are, you can just make the binary malicious to begin with.
- sedatk 6y ago> sha1's weakness would require you to be the creator of the torrent Huh, why?
- throwaway2048 6y agobecause you can create two hashes that match, but you cannot create a hash that matches an arbitrary hash you do not control. That is a much more serious weakness called a "second pre-image attack"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sedatk 6y agoSo, as I understand, that's expected to happen in foreseeable future. Otherwise, why switch from SHA1 if you can't create a collision with unaltered data?
- throwaway2048 6y agoIt is not expected to happen in the foreseeable future, MD5 for instance hasn't broken in a second pre-image way, more than a decade after it was known to be weak. This class of attacks is MUCH harder to construct against a cryptographic hash.