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PostPosted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 9:51 am 
Hi,

Here is an idea for an additional feature that BitTorrent/BitTornado that doesn't have yet.

"Filename Masking"

And it won't be very difficult to implement, since it basicaly works by renaming filenames.

But the basic structure goes like this:

1. The file you want to seed is called "The.Uber.Leet.XNOPPIX.v12.03_EN.iso".
2. When you generate the .torrent file for it, you have the option to randomly generate a filename mask for it, which is just some random alphanumerical string. So, the the .torrent file will have a little lookup table that says "The.Uber.Leet.XNOPPIX.v12.01_EN.iso -> jkdi49959200V9200oweWEFksl"
3. When you start to seed the file, you have the option to host/seed the file as "masked" or "unmasked".
4. When you choose "masked", BitTorrent/BitTornado will rename the "The.Uber.Leet.XNOPPIX.v12.01_EN.iso" on your hard drive to "jkdi49959200V9200oweWEFksl".
5. When a leech connects to the seed, after they donwloaded the .torrent with the mask lookup table in it, they will by default download a file named "jkdi49959200V9200oweWEFksl".
6. While they are in the middle of transferring the file, if they click on the "details" button, the mask lookup table will be shown there, BUT the actually network transaction, through it's entire duration, will never use the actual filename.
7. That is, the process of masking and unmasking the filename, is done only locally on each machine involved, and that information is not sent over the network. So, when transfer finishes, and the person decides to stop seeding it, when they click the "Finish" button, before BitTorando exists, it will automatically rename the "jkdi49959200V9200oweWEFksl" on the hard drive to ""The.Uber.Leet.XNOPPIX.v12.03_EN.iso".

So what's the point of this you ask? Well, it prevents network logs on any routers/boxes anywhere along the network path, from containing the filenames of the data you are transferring. So no one can come up to you and say, "At this time, you transfered a file named such and such".

What do you think?


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PostPosted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 6:28 pm 
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Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 8:05 pm
Posts: 49
Have you taken time to read the actual BitTorrent specification?:
http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification

Filenames aren't sent back and forth between peers -- only the indexes of pieces.

The method you describe would still result in the filename getting sent across the network in at least some form, though, since it will be contained within the .torrent file (basically the same as it is now in the "path" variable).


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PostPosted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 8:39 pm 
Hmm...I'll check out that specification.

The filename would be sent across the network, in the .torrent file, but only ONCE, which would probably be less then when you actually transfer the file. I'm not familair with the technical side of this but it was just an idea I had, logs usually contain filenames in them, and sometimes that kind of sucks.

It could be even possible to use somekind of a srambling technique within the .torrent file itself to maks the filename. So, the only time you would see the filename, over the network, would be in the HTML link:

<a href=scrambledfilename.torrent>KNOPPIX_v4.0.iso</a>

or something like that. So, in essance, there would be no log that you downloaded a file called "KNOPPIX_v4.0.iso" or even "KNOPPIX_v4.0.iso.torrent". The filename would just be in the contents of the html file, which log-wise only indicates that you looked at a webpage.


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