
Researchers Expose Locations of Pirate Bay Uploaders - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/researchers-expose-location-of-pirate-bay-uploaders-120831/
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mistercow
People are acting like this is surprising news. I guess people don't actually
understand how BitTorrent works, which is troubling. When you connect to a
peer on BT, you have to be told its IP address (or that of a proxy, and most
users obviously aren't using them) in order to connect to it. You can easily
then run a reverse IP lookup on that address and usually find out the ISP.

Matching that to the initial seeder should be pretty trivial so long as you
get to the torrent quickly enough after it was first seeded so you can see who
the only person with 100% is. Even if you can't get to it before there are a
handful of seeders, you should be able to narrow it down by looking for the
common IP among several torrents.

~~~
piffey
Many clients let you look at the seeder list and show geoip data. Been doing
this with rtorrent for ages. I'm with you... how's this news?

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benologist
Mapping ip addresses to ISPs is somehow HN-worthy when it's wrapped in
torrentfreak's propaganda? These articles should be used as a honeypot to
identify people who might prefer getting their tech news at reddit because
that's where torrentfreak and its fans belong.

~~~
rockyleal
I used to go to slashdot for news, but i like HN better now. What sites do you
recommend?

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jaytaylor
If this information can be gathered by researchers who have no special access,
just think what law enforcement agencies could be doing. What a scary world we
live in.

What hope is there for being able to exchange massive amounts of data in an
anonymous fashion?

~~~
vibrunazo
Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood there
are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed, open
public wifi will only get more common.

~~~
batista
> _Why is it hard to use random open wifis? Walking around my neighborhood
> there are at least 5 open wifis in my block. With google fiber, high speed,
> open public wifi will only get more common._

If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal,
right?

~~~
lutusp
> If you are in the US (and in some other countries), you know it's illegal,
> right?

Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by, for
example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and
accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an
individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that happens
not to have a password.

If someone decided to prosecute a user of an open hub, they would have to
shoulder the burden of evidence to prove that a person knowingly defrauded the
hub operator, rather than innocently accessed a public resource.

If the hub has a password, that's a different story altogether, but in the
case of an open WiFi hub, the burden is on law enforcement to prove that an
individual knowingly stole the service. Innocent until proven guilty.

Imagine someone driving along a public road, next to a drive-in theater. He
pulls over and watches the movie over the top of an inadequate fence. Is he
guilty of a crime?

Imagine someone walking along a street who stops and reads the newspaper
headlines through the front of a newspaper vending machine. Is he guilty of a
crime?

Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty
knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open
WiFi hubs. There are plenty of open hubs that are intentionally public, and
that accept logons from anyone. And there are hubs owned by unsophisticated
computer owners that don't have a password simply because the owner doesn't
know how to set one up. Is the public required to distinguish between these
cases, or face prosecution? No.

~~~
batista
> _Both the above examples would require the prosecutor to prove "guilty
> knowledge", knowledge that the behavior was wrong. It's the same with open
> WiFi hubs._

No, it's not.

You are not supposed to _use_ a wi-fi, even if it's open (that is, unlocked),
unless you have specifically see it advertised as freely available to the
public (i.e in an airport, a cafe, etc).

> _Not necessarily. An open WiFi hub can represent a free service offered by,
> for example, a restaurant or lodging establishment, both of which expect and
> accept public logons in order to attract business. It's not obvious how an
> individual might distinguish between these hubs and a private hub that
> happens not to have a password._

You're not supposed to distinguish between them. You are only supposed to use
the restaurant or lodging hub when you are AT the restaurant or the hotel, as
a customer. And you're supposed to know which is their wifi name.

Being in a cafe that offers free public wifi doesn't give you an excuse to
bypass the law and connect to any open nearby Wifi signal you can get ("But,
Judge, I couldn't tell which was which").

~~~
lutusp
> You are not supposed to use a wi-fi, even if it's open (that is, unlocked),
> unless you have specifically see it advertised as freely available to the
> public (i.e in an airport, a cafe, etc).

Many service providers that depend on open WiFi hubs would vigorously
disagree. There are a great number of places where open, unsecured WiFi hubs
are intended to be accessed by the public, and there are an equal number of
client programs that connect up to an open hub and alert the user that a
service has been located -- all automatically. Reference:

<http://www.ehow.com/how_2193989_connect-wifi-wireless.html>

Also, those WiFi hubs that serve as a portal to a paid service often use an
open, unsecured hub as a gateway. In this case, the user is meant to log on
automatically and then open a browser to complete the authentication process.
If people believed they weren't allowed to log onto an open hub, this system
would collapse.

> Being in a cafe that offers free public wifi doesn't give you an excuse to
> bypass the law and connect to any open nearby Wifi signal you can get ...

As shown above, this is simply wrong. Some hubs require a password, some do
not. Of the latter, some hope you will log on to begin an authentication
process, some hope you will log on just to drum up business.

I visited a town in Alaska this summer that had a McDonald's with an open hub
-- no password. I asked about it, and the proprietor said it was open to
attract people to his business, and he didn't care that some people used it
without buying anything, especially because the lurkers needed to gather
around his place of business (to get adequate signal strength), making it look
popular and attracting paying customers.

