TorrentFreak Email Update

BitTorrent Network Mysteriously Doubles in Size, In a Week

Posted: 22 May 2014 01:44 AM PDT

Day in and day out dozens of millions of people use BitTorrent to share files online. Most of these transfers are coordinated by public trackers such as OpenBitTorrent, but torrents also work without trackers thanks to Mainline DHT.

The BitTorrent Mainline DHT creates a network of users through which people can find peers sharing the same file. This makes the BitTorrent ecosystem more stable, especially since public trackers tend to go offline every now and then.

Since it was first introduced nearly a decade ago the BitTorrent DHT has been growing steadily. However, this changed last week when researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology noticed a dramatic increase in peers.

“Since 2010, the DHT size has been relatively stable. It grew from 6 million to around 10 million, but that’s it,” says Konrad Jünemann, researcher of the Decentralized Systems and Network Services research group.

“This suddenly changed last week we saw a sudden increase in participating peers. I double checked our measurement engine, but everything seems to be fine, so the DHT was indeed growing,” he adds.

As it turns out, the number of peers in the DHT had more than doubled in a few days. The graph below shows this surge in peers as observed by the German research group.

Initially the researchers were clueless about the sudden increase. There were a few possible explanations, such as malware distributors using the network, or changes in a popular BitTorrent client for example. After contacting several developers, they learned that the latter was the most plausible option.

Arvid Norberg, one of the developers of BitTorrent’s uTorrent client, explained that a recent change in client may have resulted in a bug which resulted in “flapping” node IDs.

“We have some indications that this is caused by an issue in our node-ID function. We have had a mechanism to tie the node ID to one’s external IP address. We’ve had this feature for a while but made some tweaks to it recently,” Norberg wrote on a mailing list.

If this is indeed the case, then it could cause serious performance issues for the DHT, as people would get IP-addresses that are no longer online. Currently, however, there is no evidence that this is indeed the case.

TorrentFreak asked BitTorrent Inc. for more details early this week, but this far our inquiries remained unanswered. The same is true for a bug report from a user in the support forums.

Perhaps the mystery will be solved in the days to come.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Blizzard Sues StarCraft II Hackers for Copyright Infringement

Posted: 21 May 2014 09:12 AM PDT

Over the years video game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment has released many popular titles including World of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft.

As is the case with most games there is always a small subgroup of players who are happy to deceive their opponents to get an edge. Through hacks and cheats these players are able to dominate the competition with minimal effort.

In an attempt to stamp out this type of abuse, this week Blizzard filed a lawsuit against the programmers behind the popular Starcraft II "ValiantChaos MapHack." While the true motive for the suit has no connection to piracy, most of the alleged charges are related to copyright infringement.

In a complaint filed at a federal court in California, Blizzard notes that the cheat ruins the fun for other players. The true identities of the programmers who make and sell the hack are unknown at this point but Blizzard wants them to stop distributing the software.

“The hacks and cheats made available by Defendants, including a product known as the ‘ValiantChaos MapHack’, modify the StarCraft II online game experience, to the detriment of legitimate StarCraft II users, and thus to Blizzard itself,” the complaint reads.

“Defendants create and sell their unlawful software products with the knowledge that they are facilitating and promoting users to infringe Blizzard's copyrights, to breach their contracts with Blizzard, and to otherwise violate Blizzard's rights.”

The complaint lists several counts of copyright infringement for using Blizzard’s work without permission, as well as breach of contract for violating the game’s terms of use.

At the time of writing the ValiantChaos MapHack remains for sale online. Users can buy the hack by joining the forum, and paying a “donation” of $62.50 for access to the VIP section of the site. The hack has been available for a few years already and during this time has generated tens of thousands of dollars in sales.

Blizzard doesn’t mention the sales aspect extensively, but focuses on how these cheats devalue the game. This causes serious harm to the the company, Blizzard says, as it results in less sales of StarCraft II add-ons and expansions.

“Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard's legitimate customers to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience of StarCraft II. That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction,” Blizzard informs the court.

“This results in lost sales of the game and/or ‘add-on’ packs and expansions thereto, as well as harm to Blizzard's reputation, the value of its game, and other harms to Blizzard,” the company adds.

Blizzard asks the court to issue an injunction against the maker of the hack, which among other things would prevent them from distributing the software. In addition, they demand damages for the copyright infringements carried out by the programmers and their users, which add up to millions of dollars.

Although Blizzard emphasizes that users of the cheat are also copyright infringers, there’s no indication that they will target individual users. Instead, it appears that the company is mostly interested in making the cheating software unavailable.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.