What is Digg?73 Comments
- FlyboyP, on 10/12/2007, -0/+34"only 10% of students identified by the system as engaging in unauthorized activity were caught a second time, and only 10 percent of those students were caught a third time."
D'ya think that might be because they get better at avoiding it? - darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30As noted by the article the application is a double edged swords since it cannot preform any sort of a content inspection - as such, it cannot tell the difference between a legitimate P2P transfer (i.e. downloading a Linux distro over Bittorrent, or downloading an academic paper of FTP) from an infringing use (i.e. downloading a movie). This coupled with the fact that it costs $1M to install and and $250,000 to maintain likely means that it will never see any use.
- bittermang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29"a legitimate P2P transfer"
Don't forget World of Warcraft patch downloads. 8.5 million people is a lot of angry people on patch day. - JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27I have an idea. On campus, send packets with forged IP (and MAC if necessary) addresses into the network to make it look like EVERYONE is file sharing and Denial of Service the network cGrid will block everyone, everyone will be pissed off and force the control-freak fags to remove it.
Not really the best solution, just a small-time way of protest. The real solution is to put the people implementing the control-freak/snoop systems out of power. - wired4u, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21wheew,, it relies on a mac address good thing they can not be spoofed!!
- Foamator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18It costs $1 Million!? Universities should just torrent it.
- teeks99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Trade movies....get booted off the network. WTF? I have no idea how this software would accomplish this task, but I really don't want the government to start mandating this kind of thing. Or I can just change my MAC address.
- tacroy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14quad, that was his joke.
*saying it nicely so the children don't feel the need to say it not so nicely. - darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13@j2007 - I don't know, the article says that the can detect darknets in operation so it might boot you anyway if it sees a stream of encrypted traffic going from you to someone else.
- kurtwinter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10The use of applications like this in academic settings makes me sick. Fair Use has been beat up, kicked around and drowned in a bathtub. Fair Use is supposed to cover academic uses of copyrighted material. What's next? The book publishers form their own **AA and go to colleges to shut down libraries?
- leffunov, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"cGrid's developer Red Lambda hopes that the current imbroglio between the RIAA and America's colleges will turn into a business opportunity"
Yeah, Lawsuits - tokyomonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8From the red lambda web site: Red Lambda's deep packet analysis technology is combined with powerful behavioral analysis, which means that cGRID::Integrity is still effective even when packets are encrypted.
So, it runs a packet sniffer, probably something snort based or similar, and compares it to a list of existing rules to weed out P2P protocols. If the traffic is encrypted, this method fails. However due to the nature of P2P, it's easily detectable otherwise. "Hmm..so, this guy is connecting outbound/accepting connections inbound, from multiple IP's, with random source and destination ports...that looks like P2P!", and then you're busted. The anatomy of a P2P session is easily detectable.
The only way to avoid detection would be to route it through a vpn or something similar. - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Indeed, it can be as simple as routing your traffic through a third party over an encrypted VPN solution such as Hamachi (What, are they going to block Hamachi, which has many more legitimate uses, and P2P proxying would be a tiny part of it?), or even SSH (SSH tunnel for proxy data for BitTorrent). Or even just downloading on that third party and pulling the files down using a regular file transfer after the fact.
At that point, with Hamachi and/or SSH, their detection algorithm would have to be something like "There's a lot of data going through an SSH or Hamachi pipe. Better cut it off."
However, a "lot of data going through an SSH or Hamachi pipe" is so general a usage that they'd be insane to cut people off for that. Especially because they'd have no proof that filesharing was going on. Simply because it's encrypted, and doesn't look like typical P2P activity (One or two way encrypted communications with a SINGLE remote host) means that their "warnings" are meaningless.
"Sir, I wasn't proxying BitTorrent, I was merely synchronizing my school computer with my home computer using rsync over an ssh connection."
"Sir, I wasn't downloading movies from a server, I was copying Linux ISOs to my school computer to run in a virtual machine."
"etc"
The thing is, simply because these all just look like a lot of encrypted data going between two hosts (even with proxied BitTorrent, all data goes through the proxy, and there's no way for cGrid to know what is inside the Hamachi or SSH tunnel) and they can't prove anything. If they give you a warning you can simply deny it and request that they stop interfering with legitimate usage.
Of course, not everyone is technically savvy enough to have a relatively high bandwidth remote host through which they can set up an encrypted tunnel to proxy stuff through... But all it takes is one person in a dorm to set this thing up to get movies and other content from the outside world, and from there they can share it through the local network. - OmegaNine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It watches IM and FTP file sharing. WTF, this will never work, it will be booting the wrong people off, and the people that are sharing legal files. No ISP is going to be able to use it, it would be an admin nightmare. I don't think it would work even on the smaller College level.
People that are sending pictures over AIM to thier grandparents might get kicked off if the files are to big, or someone seeding a linux torrent might get kicked. Every time it happens they will get a call. No sane admin would ever stand for that. - aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7First of all, they're targetting this at universities. Second, it MAY be able to detect darknets. That claim was made by the company under controlled conditions. Third, universities that adopted this technology would quickly remove it shortly thereafter when a professor was unable to conduct their research. These technologies are far from perfect and the minute a legitimate use is infringed in academia, they will get rid of it.
- IneffibleMind, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Damn...
$1,000,000 for a packet sniffer AND the thing costs $250,000 a year to operate????
Wouldn't it just be cheaper to turn off the network? That is the ONLY way to avoid piracy
Aarrr! - zbeast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+61 Million dollars plus $250,000 a year to piss off your network users, ya, thats just stupid.
- maffiou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Although I agree with your second statement, I beg to differ on your first one !
I do think it is news worhty... - Chordonblue, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I was thinking more along the lines of a wireless mesh network...
But I like the way you think... :) - BLKMGK, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Yeah, I use Torrents to get big things like Linux Distros - this thing would have a cow if it saw that. A million an install? Uh huh suuuuure. What good is a MAC address exactly unless this thnig sits at every router on the network? The MAC is destroyed at each hop....
- nerdx1000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Seriously though, suppose for a second that the riaa's dream comes true and they are able to completely shut down all internet piracy. Can you imagine the dumbfounded looks on their faces when even that doesn't revive their failing business model?
- djsku82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4And get dropped by their users. No users, no money. Many ISPs already know implementing software like this to paying home users is their demise. Not all ISPs bend over to the RIAA's ***** demands. Also, colleges will also realize whats more important. Students tuition or keeping the Industry happy?
- darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@ineffiblemind - Then the dorm residents just counter with a few miles of CAT5 going from dorm to dorm. Never underestimate the power of video games and porn.
- Chordonblue, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"I have an idea. On campus, send packets with forged IP (and MAC if necessary) addresses into the network to make it look like EVERYONE is file sharing and Denial of Service the network cGrid will block everyone, everyone will be pissed off and force the control-freak fags to remove it."
Well that SOUNDS like a good idea unless your Cisco administrator locks down MACs and IPs from the central switch, then you're SOL. No, a MUCH better idea would be to have everyone connect to a torrent of Ubuntu - a clearly legitimate use of the tech. Shutting the whole school down for this sort of thing would delegitimize this mess in a hurry.
Make no mistake though, these control mechanisms are here to stay. I administrate a small prive secondary school and we use Blue Coat. BC also has anti-peer-to-peer and even filters out Skype. Due to our remote location, I've only got 6 megabits of bandwidth for 200 users. Gotta have SOME level of control! - click170, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hm, Another case of universities telling their students what they should and should not do.
Besides the moral implications of ethical filtering on university grounds, the most sacred of places when it comes to 'freedom of speech' and so on and so forth...
1 Million dollars? That's a little bit more then I would be willing to write a check for if I was in a position of authority over the matter, but I'm not, so let's discuss it anyway.
First of all, the product claims that it can block darknets, without even defining what a darknet is. Now don't misunderstand me, I am not the one who does not know what a darknet is, but 'darknet' is a very lose term that could easily fit any number of file exchange methodologies. I do currently use a darknet of my own creation, and I also allow any of my friends to join up and check out my many delicious files. I use an encrypted VPN solution on a Linux machine to encrypt all of the traffic that I don't think my ISP should be allowed to filter.
Theres lots of encrypted solutions out there, the one you choose doesn't have to be a VPN solution either, uTorrent will encrypt your bit torrent headers for you.
The product also says it monitors FTP and IM activity, using behavior analysis (among other things) to determine if you are sharing files.
So, the machine will psycho-analyze you and your traffic, and your room mate's traffic, and it will assign you an integer representing 'psycho-analysis'. Does anyone else take comfort from once again being boiled down to a number? Anyway, moving on.
So, based on this integer, and the amount of traffic that your are transmitting, it will make a block or allow decision based on that. So I have to wonder... what about web developers who use FTP to communicate to off-site servers? Poor web developers, I guess your just not welcome at whatever college or university that your at anymore.
After reading through all of the documentation I could find on the product, NOT ONCE did I see the phrase 'Bit Torrent' anywhere, on anything. It claims to stop P2P, but I read nothing to indicate that it actually monitors the most bandwidth hungry protocol of them all. Not too shocking though, I suppose if you've got a million dollars to throw around on socially experimental equipment, then you probably have enough money to buy Ellacoya's and other such systems to independently monitor Bit Torrent traffic separately.
Even if the product did filter Bit Torrent, I wouldn't be the first Digg user to point out the hundreds of thousands of legitimate uses for Bit Torrent. Good luck implementing a Bit Torrent block without social backlash.
I simply cannot see this product ever being used in any sort of ISP environment. Not only would this castrate any claim that the purchasing ISP had to network neutrality, but it simply 'watches' too many protocols. Consider it this way, would you want your ISP to be able to sit it on every IM you send as if they were watching over your shoulder? Would you want your ISP to be able to see every little change you made to your web page, and then uploaded to your web server? Would you want your ISP to have 'historical logs' of not only your IMs, but your FTP accesses, any files shared using Windows networking, and your HTTP traffic too? I think not.
But then again, when has that ever stopped brain dead ISPs from committing suicide, so who knows.
Circumvention
Why would you want to circumvent this product?
If you have to ask, then unplug your computer and go drown yourself in the bathtub.
How would I circumvent this product?
Well, I would continue to use encrypted VPNs, I would encrypt my IM conversations (yes, to those of you who don't know, it can be done, go ask Google), I would tunnel my FTP traffic to an off site FTP proxy using encrypted tunneling via a VPN or an SSH tunnel, because they are really just one and the same, and to make a point that the system was in-effective and that they pissed away one million dollars, I would download every distro of Linux that I could find, and I would seed them too.
What if I don't know how to use all that fancy encrypted stuff?
Well, such is the power of the geek in your closet. The product is aimed at university and college campuses. Who goes to universities and colleges? Smart people! Chances are you either know someone, are related to someone, live with someone, live across the hall from someone, smoke weed with someone, listen to music with someone, protest with someone, or perhaps even sleep with someone, who would be able to help you set up a circumvention measure. And to those unfortunate enough not to know someone to help them out, well for those lucky folks, I refer you to Google, the friendliest friend of them all, and she doesn't even sleep either!
Why circumvent?
Well that's simple. Do it sooner rather then later.
People like the company who produced said product, will never stop coming out of the woodwork. There will always be stupid people, with even stupider ideas, trying to force their ethics morals and judgment upon you. The only technological way of getting around it, is to physically with the help of encryption, go around it. If you don't start learning how to do it now, then your just going to end up doing it later. Perhaps when you are trying to do important research but can't because of this fantastic new ethics filter that your university or college campus has installed.
Why should I want to circumvent?
Because you want to do what makes you happy, and for the MILLIONS of people who choose to fileshare and who's wants apparently have no sway over the democratic process despite their demographics making up a LARGE percentage of the American population, for some reason, that large chunk of people is alienated for their beliefs that some things should be free.
To put it more simply;
The number of people who share files 'illegally' makes up X% of the population. Now, as I understand it, theoretical democracy should recognize that 'Hey, those people really really want to share files, and they don't want to pay for them' and would respect that and change the laws accordingly.
The problem, is that theoretical democracy failed long ago, and was replaced by a small group of people known as Lobbyists, who insist on telling YOUR government that THEY know what YOU want. Hmm... Does that still sound like Democracy to you?
Who are you going to let lead your life?
Just some thoughts from up here in Canada eh? - b3tamike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I attend UF, where this software was developed (originally under the name ICARUS), and I can tell you, the school administration's policy is essentially 'There is no legitimate P2P use.' WoW players (like myself) are explicitly told to disable P2P patch downloading (see http://www.dhnet.ufl.edu/dhnet.php?main=soft&sub=wow&page=1). (actually, just check out www.dhnet.ufl.edu if you want an idea of just what can happen with this kind of software in place).
I can only imagine that cGrid will further push this kind of mindset into people's heads (P2P = automatic evil). - itanshi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2until some foolhardy kid does a port sniffer and reroutes the bittorent traffic, but yes, My college blocks ports instead.
- TheLoneWolf071, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3When Will Anyone Learn? All these programs do is cause problem for the Legit users of services, such as AIM or FTP, kicking them off the network, while the real people who are using P2P and downloading "illegal" movies will find a way to circumvent the system and will pwn the RIAA/MPAA into submission. It's like Border Security, They spend all the time trying to screen the 80 year old grand mother and give her a full body-cavity search, mean while the drug dealers and illeal crossers are down the road 2 miles cutting a hole in the fence and getting through.
- Mirag3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2chordonblue
That's not true at all. Switches can be hacked and tracking where someone is through a wireless is just ***** star trek technology. While I can't say that it's impossible to stop ARP poisoning, a lot of networks that I have seen are vulnerable to it. Also, multiple outgoing connections with encrypted packets is not a reason for banning someone from the network - its not going to go anywhere.
P.S. A virus could do the same thing as IP spoofing. - 5DMT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is just the sort of thing that ruins any new technological advances. Bit-torrent is a phenomenal way to mass distribute large files. Instead of maintaining a large server farm to distribute files you rely on users to disseminate files in smaller chunks. The music industry and movie industry are failing because of their stubbornness and inability to change and adapt to a new environment. They want to sell you the same crap, control how much you pay for it, and not allow you to obtain the same material in other forms.
Why kill a new technology? Why force colleges to waste a million dollars+ for some overpriced system that breaks down end user service and alienates your customers. Lets face it, every universities students pay the college for education, housing, Internet service, food, etc etc. Why piss off the people that pay you? You don't bite the hand that feeds.
The Music industry could have dominated the on-line music business, but they chose to stick to their dying business plan that hasn't worked since the 70's. You cannot win your customers back by suing them and taking all their money. I refuse to buy any new Cd's for this reason. I'll go to a concert and buy merchandise and Cd's from the stands and support the musicians that way. I'll pay an expensive ticket so that the bands I like make some money, cause you know that the music industry isn't giving the artists any more money. - dmsean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2good thing the majority of network admins I know are lazy. setting this ***** up is just time consuming because you have to monitor it.
$250,000 a year to run? wtf....waste of $$
***** they could just *buy* all the movies the kids in the college wanted for that. - dezmd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If you know what you are doing as a network admin you don't rely on MAC addresses as a primary security or reporting mechanism..
Cheers. - Kier, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2$1,000,000 for a glorified version of:
IF packetsdown > ~500000 AND port = 6881 THEN
connection.enabled = FALSE
END IF
? What a rip. - Chordonblue, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3$1 MILLION DOLLARS - is just a starting point. Eventually the price will come down. Our Blue Coat unit here didn't cost near that (around $4000 total), and it controls PtoP very nicely.
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's not hard for someone to set up a VPN tunnel. Just get a VPS host somewhere that doesnt' track their bandwidth useage very well, and then set up your own tunnel there. Sure - this is more than the average student would want to do - but for a hardcore pirate getting dirt cheap bandwidth from their university, this is more than doable...
Which once again shows - this tech will only hurt casual users and do nothing to prevent the real pirates from doin what they do best. If anything, it makes it harder for the MPAA and RIAA to find them. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i doubt this will pick up steam, the cost to install and maintain it is hilariously over priced,
and if it did pick up steam it'd only be a matter of time before someone worked a way round it (mac addy spoofing for instance) - dmsean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1dude $60? you must actually *buy* the popcorn and pop there. ***** that *****. they can't even legally check your bags :P
- AlexMax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And you're nuts if you think that an already cash-strapped university is going to flush a 1 million dollar investement (Today, think about how cheap these things will be in five years), down the tubes because a few percentage points of their userbase is downloading huge files. Honestly, a vast majority of people who go to college do nothing with their internet but check their email and maybe play games. And you're not even guarenteed that, I had an online friend whose four-year university (I beleive in Mississippi) blocked everything except web traffic because concerned parents were worried that Quake 3 was causing little Johnny to fail out of school. But getting back to the origional point, I can just imagine the phone calls now...
"Sir, this is the third time this year you've called us complaining about your game patches and Linux ISO's. Most of our users have no complaints about the system, and it's probably something YOU'RE doing that is making it go off."
And then you're up ***** creek. You complain, it gets filed away and ignored. Your parents don't want you to raise a stink about it because you're at college to get an education, not be a target for an **AA lawsuit, and the quality of the internet connection was probably not a factor when choosing where to go. And good luck trying to convince your local cable company to give you your own internet in a dormitory, and even if you somehow do, you have to pay for it, and I doubt the housing department would refund you for the unused connection in your room. The only out I can see is living off-campus and getting your own internet, but depending on where you go, off-campus apartments might not be within a reasonable price range.
(By the way, this is not speaking from personal experience. I live in an apartment and pay for my own connection. A few years ago, I lived in an older dormitory that wasn't wired for eithernet, and had a roadrunner business class connection in every room. Unfortuniatly, the new dorms around here are being built with ties to the universities network, so I feel sorry for incoming freshmen.) - MrPaulAR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Um, there are commercial products that service providers use today to block / rate limit any protocol as they see fit. Changing the port number doesn't matter as these products look at layer 7 (the data). Encrypted bittorrent, yea, that's caught too. The only way to get past it is to SSH tunnel through it and have another ingress point outside of the network but who has that?
- Dwgystyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At 1million for install.. one would hope no ISP decides to be dumb enough to install that application.
Either way implementing such a product is not in any way financially sound. Universities and Colleges are already crying out for more funding. And students can barely afford to stay in class let alone BUY all the music they would want to hear.. same with Going out to a movie on any given night (about 60 bucks Cdn by the time you add drinks and pop to the ticket cost for 2), So unless they plan to reduce the cost of what they want us to be buying into. Students are simply going to use their talents and come up with a better way to get what they want.. - ferrofluid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"$1 million price tag for installation and $250,000 yearly operation costs."
Can you say RICO (or dial the DOJ number) , its out and out extortion, or at the very least a form of tax.
Plus would you trust malware from *AA running on your servers, who knows what else it might be doing.
If its deep inside the server with admin exec privileges, It could install rootkits, keyloggers across the network, all sorts of nasities.
Any University, College or body with any gov connections would hate this, and prob not be allowed to use it. - cowabuse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What a ***** piece of software. $1 Million, ROFL. Idiots and their get rich quick schemes.
- Shaggy63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11 million.. Thats crazy, I could do the same thing with a Linux box and a couple of hours to write custom scripts..
- b3tamike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@mrcoldheart
(just wanted to clarify that I don't actually agree with the policy at all)
I know what you mean man; cGRID does not (nor is there really any way to) distinguish between legal and illegal content. It was a pain in the butt to download any linux isos, podcasts, or any of the other legitimate uses that I have for BitTorrent. I just hope that BitTorrent Inc. will make enough waves that they'll have to change the policy due to the flood of legal content available via BitTorrent. - rouslan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Every college student should use Tor, because after all these anti-piracy articles about p2p, the university is most likely spying on students and reporting to the RIAA, etc. To share files, IM, or do stuff Tor doesn't allow, use an encrypted VPN tunnel to some old computer set up as a server at your parent's house or some other place that has a normal broadband connection. Problem solved.
- AlexMax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They don't give a ***** about them. If they can get 99% of the users to not even bother trying to pirate, then they have won. And it makes the 1% who are much easier to pick out.
- ferrofluid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It was a good post, no harm in doing so.
- ferrofluid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is not the RIAA trying to get their claws into the convert revenue stream!
When you have likes of Pink Floyd doing a concert and raking in $4 million Aus for three hours work, this is an appealing target for the RIAA.
- click170, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@myself
I think I owe Digg users an appology, it seems in trying to write a simple comment, I inadvertently produced somewhat of a blog entry despite not having a blog.
I am sorry for inadvertently producing what may just be the longest Digg comment to date lol. - MrColdheart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@b3tamike
your schools policy is bs. I use P2P for lots of legit uses..
how can cGRID know the difference between me downloading the latest Diggnation or an illegal movie *(i.e. clerks)?
man these resident dorms need to go back to drinking
-
Show 51 - 72 of 72 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is