Orcon's LAME attempt at blocking BitTorrent

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superleaded

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#17209 16-Nov-2007 23:39

So after seeding for a day or so, I noticed that all my torrents were going red, and the connection to the tracker was timing out. But I knew the tracker *was* working, and the torrents' details pages still showed me as a seeder, but stats weren't updating.

After a few hours of trying to track down the problem, I noticed that neither Azureus nor µTorrent were able to make any HTTP connections, even µTorrent's update check feature wasn't working, despite the exact same URL working perfectly in my webbrowser. A little testing with WireShark showed that for some reason, whenever µTorrent tried to send an HTTP GET request, for some reason the server never responded, not even sending a TCP ACK, which caused µTorrent to repeatedly retransmit the packet, but to no avail.

So I fired up firefox, and set the setting general.useragent.override to 'uTorrent/1750' and lo and behold, not a single webpage loads. Firefox connects, then sits there doing nothing, resending the request packet over and over with no response.

I decompressed uTorrent.exe with UPX, and used a hex editor to change all instances of uTorrent/1750 to Mozillas/1234 (same string length), fired up the modified uTorrent.exe and all my torrents are green and seeding fine. What a f**ing lame, and f**ing obvious attempt to stop their users seeding. I'm pretty sure this has gotta be illegal.

Edit: If anyone else can verify this, I think we should try and make this well known, and make sure noone signs up with Orcon. BTW I'm on the full/full plan.

[Moderator edit (tonyhughes): Removed "(possibly illegal!)" from the title of this thread.]

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194 posts

Master Geek

#95600 17-Nov-2007 00:14

Same here, not working.
Nice job, really sad move from Orcon
(our baby will miss all those nice cartoons from my childhood)

paradoxsm

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#95603 17-Nov-2007 00:20

lol.. haxor! The type of things I love doing (ViTO products got chopped apart tonight!)

I have never had any luck with any form of filesharing on Orcon (no emule, limewire or torresnts) but it's possibly my ports not forwarding correctly and not really orcons fault!
care to share your hacked utorrent to save us the trouble?

richms

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#95604 17-Nov-2007 00:45

I just set same string in firefox and pages loaded fine for me.

Torrent speeds are ok when we use them, even without port fowards since 2 nats makes it too much effort.

Are you on a metered plan or their lame fair use one?

Richard rich.ms

bradstewart

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#95605 17-Nov-2007 00:53

Thanks for the tip. That works perfectly.

richms

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#95608 17-Nov-2007 01:18

Just fired it up and grabbed a torrent off stmusic - all is working fine here so either its selective about who gets messed with, or something else that I cant explain.

Richard rich.ms

superleaded

34 posts

Geek

#95625 17-Nov-2007 08:16

I have a suspicion it may only happen if you try and seed 24/7 for a few days.

superleaded

34 posts

Geek

#95648 17-Nov-2007 10:17

...
care to share your hacked utorrent to save us the trouble?

Sure, just send me a PM with your email address and i'll send it your way.

Edit: Though I'm not sure how much good it will do. I'm getting constant Hash fails, and my uTorrent log is full of errors like:

[10:18:50] ***.***.***.*** : Disconnect: Peer error: offline (timed out)
[10:18:51] ***.***.***.*** : Disconnect: Banned

I think the 'banned' is likely a result of repeated hash fails.

So either something's really wrong with my setup (which I doubt), or Orcon is really pulling out all the stops to mess up bittorrent. Time to change ISP I suspect.

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dan

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#95649 17-Nov-2007 10:38

Orcon block bit torrent during peak hours? its not a secret

nice work finding a workaround..

superleaded

34 posts

Geek

#95665 17-Nov-2007 12:45

dan: Orcon block bit torrent during peak hours? its not a secret

nice work finding a workaround..

Actually, they block it _all the time_ (on my connection at least).

Update: Uploading seems to be working right now, try the following:

Disable DHT
Disable Peer Exchange
Set Encryption to 'Forced'
Disallow incoming legacy connections
Reset your DSL modem and restart uTorrent, and it should be fine.

bradstewart

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#95700 17-Nov-2007 18:05

What speeds are you getting now for your torrents?

dan

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#95711 17-Nov-2007 19:32

Never had an issue seeding or leeching outside peak hours on Orcon, when it is offpeak, speeds are great.

I'll give your exe a crack tho see if it makes a difference on peak

edit: no change in downlod speed during peak hours for downloading torrets, still crippled.

PromNZ

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#95797 18-Nov-2007 20:33

superleaded: ... What a f**ing lame, and f**ing obvious attempt to stop their users seeding. I'm pretty sure this has gotta be illegal.

My 2c worth, but how can this be illegal ??

You use an ISP according to their terms, which is pretty open and fluid and they can change at thier whim.

Without sounding rude, but you'd be hard pressed to call their activites illegal I would've thought.

freitasm

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#95799 18-Nov-2007 20:48

superleaded: What a f**ing lame, and f**ing obvious attempt to stop their users seeding. I'm pretty sure this has gotta be illegal.

May I ask you if your BitTorrent usage is just for legal content?

While I think they would be doing this to prevent their network to melt down (lack of capacity, cost, etc would be another discussion) and not to prevent users downloading copyrighted material, I find the comment ironic...

superleaded

34 posts

Geek

#95815 18-Nov-2007 21:52

freitasm:
superleaded: What a f**ing lame, and f**ing obvious attempt to stop their users seeding. I'm pretty sure this has gotta be illegal.

May I ask you if your BitTorrent usage is just for legal content?

While I think they would be doing this to prevent their network to melt down (lack of capacity, cost, etc would be another discussion) and not to prevent users downloading copyrighted material, I find the comment ironic...

While I have no problem with them deprioritising P2P to keep other services fast, completely blocking it is another story altogether.
And Bittorrent is increasingly a valid method of distributing legal content.

For example:
http://americasarmy.com/downloads/torrent.php
I'm sure the file (over 2GB) would download many times faster by torrent than by HTTP (without throttling) and without the hassle of registering/paying money/looking at ads/waiting in queues associated with the other download locations (fileplanet etc.)

Legitimacy aside, Orcon claim here:
http://www.orcon.net.nz/faqs/residential_broadband_faq/do_you_restrict_bandwidth_or_throttle_peer_to_peer_p2p_traffic/
that they do not interfere with such traffic. This is a blatant lie.

paradoxsm

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#95825 18-Nov-2007 22:58

I have just started using bit-torrent and yes there are MANY legal uses. Mainly a pile of game remakes (duke3d and DooM with 3d models) and plenty of other stuff where people just do not want to pay for hosting. I will now work on placing up a bit torrent of that MGmaps cache so others can download it.

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