The first attack is on people who configure their Bittorrent application to proxy their tracker traffic through Tor. These people are hoping to keep their IP address secret from somebody looking over the list of peers at the tracker. The problem is that several popular Bittorrent clients (the authors call out uTorrent in particular, and I think Vuze does it too) just ignore their socks proxy setting in this case. Choosing to ignore the proxy setting is understandable, since modern tracker designs use the UDP protocol for communication, and socks proxies such as Tor only support the TCP protocol -- so the developers of these applications had a choice between "make it work even when the user sets a proxy that can't be used" and "make it mysteriously fail and frustrate the user". The result is that the Bittorrent applications made a different security decision than some of their users expected, and now it's biting the users.
logic building and effective problem solving by torrent
Another answer is to separate streams by destination port. Then all the streams that go to port 80 are on one circuit, and a stream for a different destination port goes on another circuit. We've had that idea lurking in the background for a long time now, but it's actually because of Bittorrent that we haven't implemented it: if a BT client asks us to make 50 streams to 50 different destination ports, I don't want the Tor client to try to make 50 different circuits. That puts too much load on the network. I guess we could special-case it by separating "80" and "not 80", but I'm not sure how effective that would be in practice, first since many other ports (IM, SSH, etc) would want to be special-cased, and second since firewalls are pressuring more and more of the Internet to go over port 80 these days.
I'm not suggesting I have all the answers... that I know what will and will not work. What I am saying is that users will and do use Tor for bulk data exchange, and may possibly continue to do so in ever increasing numbers as a method of anonymising (to a sufficient degree) their file-sharing activities. Now you can try to fight that with clever technology in the binaries if you want, though I'm sceptical as to how effective that might be, and also where it may lead as Tor wanders off down the path to denying this, that, and the other, as it tries to fix its little problem. Why not have all the exits block the heavy sites you don't want people accessing, too? You could pop in code to block all of the file-sharing sites, video sites (most people only watch funny cat/cheesy pop/porn videos anyway), file hosts, ... and there you go, loads of bandwidth.
I think a problem with Tor is that there are not that many people willing to run systems for the purposes you mention. The Tor network has proven easy to block. It is probably also very easy for them to monitor who exactly is using it (if not what for). It seems to me that what's needed is a great deal more systems involved in the network. But what creates an incentive for people to want to do that? You talk of a problem here with people using the Tor network to file share, and hope for technological solutions to cure those ills, but I don't see any entertainment of the idea of creating a network that could satisfy those demands and potentially cure the whole problem of users file-sharing across the network, and create many more intermediate relays, and prevent easy blocking.
I'm asking myself; why it's wrong to download a file through "Tor+BitTorrent", but it's ok if you download the same file via "Tor+HTTP"??????!!!!!!! I think that the application transfer protocol doesn't make any difference!!!!! Indeed, if you look into it, you'll find out that BitTorrent will improve the performance of the Tor network!!!!! If you download a file from one normal "hidden website", the max download speed you'll have is going to be the upload speed of that hidden service!!! and its upload bandwidth is shared among all the users downloading the same file and all the others files hosted at the same server!!!! With bittorrent, you'll share your upload bandwidth too!!! it's shared among all the "peers" and this will indeed improve the performances!!!!!! a single "tor hidden service" isn't able to host big files, because the Tor network isn't yet made like RAID disks are made: Tor isn't able to increase its performance exploiting the redundancy of files!!!!!!!! And, guess what BitTorrent is able to do?!!!!!! There isn't a single centralized HTTP server serving the file(s) using its upload bandwidth alone, but increasing the number of peers and seeders you'll also increase the bandwidth available to download the files!!!!!!! You won't download anymore from a single website, but from multiple sources!!!!!! bittorrent is also ok to automatically check if files were downloaded successfully (torrent clients check whenever the downloaded files hash values match against the hash keys memorized inside the `.torrent' file!!!!!!!!!!). I think that the main problem, always pointed out, about the Tor network load, is described in a very biased way!!!!!!!! What i wanted to say 1 second ago with my entry question is that if ten people will download a 600MB ISO image from one HTTP hidden service they won't cause "less network load" than the same ten people downloading the same 600MB ISO image using the "BitTORrent" system!!!!!!!!! Indeed, if you think about it, you'll find out that it's much more easy to ask to the ten people using bittorrent to share the Tor network load than asking to the ten HTTP-downloaders to do the same!!!!!! If you had a BitTORrent client made in the way i described in my first post here, you'll also have ten people running tor nodes, and downloading at a moderate speed to avoid the congestion of the network!!!!!!! Of course people could use their BitTORrent clients to leech files and bandwidth, but even in this pessimistic worst case scenario you'll have no more than the same effect of downloading files via the HTTP protocol without sharing anything!!!!!!!! so, in the same way as torrents are alive only if you `seed' them after downloading, also the network load will be balanced if people will begin to share it!!!!!! People using the HTTP .onion protocol alone (this is almost sure) won't share anything, and you'll have worse performance than in a "BitTORrent-ready network" and you'll put an heavier load on the Tor network because nobody will share neither the files (redundancy of files parts already downloaded) nor the bandwidth of the nodes!!!!!!!!! I really think that a "BitTORrent Bundle", made with a patched version of a BitTorrent-client made to work within the Tor Network, and made with the original idea to share ALSO the network load (and not just the files), to be a very good idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Giving to all people the general idea that Bittorrent over Tor isn't a good idea is a bit deceiving!!!!!! BitTorrent is only a protocol!!!!!!!!!!!!! BitTORrent could be a great way to solve a lot of flaws related to TOR!!, allowing the Tor network to support big files, decentralizing the storage of hidden services (because the only hidden services you'll need, are very simple "Hidden BitTORrent Open-Trackers", similar to openbittorrent.com and websites indexing small ".torrent" files), increasing the performance at sharing big files (this is the typical improvement that BitTorrent gives also on the normal Internet!!!), increasing the number of nodes and the bandwidth for the whole Tor network (average case scenario: the BitTORrent-bandwidth is balanced 1:1!!! worst case scenario:-->), and yet nothing is gonna change about denial-of-service effects, because it's possible to overload the Tor Network even downloading DVDs ISO without BitTORrent!!!!!!!!! so, if you apply the Occam's razor principle to "Tor+Download(BitTorrent) = NetworkOverload", you'll find out that "BitTorrent" isn't required in that equation!!!!!!!! What about the bulk traffic and why are big files useful for the Tor Network?!!! Well, i don't know it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why were you asking it to me though?!!!!!!! Somebody could say that BitTorrent and Tor are both useless!!! Indeed, that's right for all the people that don't need them!!!! but it's very wrong, for all the people using/needing them!!!!!! Also factorbee is useless for people using exclusively Windows, because it works only on Linux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, it's a question i can't answer at, because it's something of personal, and i can't know what you're thinking and why you need Tor, BitTorrent or even BitTORrent!!!!!!! Finally, having a technology like BitTORrent cannot be wrong, if you don't need it, you won't use it!!! In the same way as, if you don't need Tor, you won't use it either!!!!!!!! But i'm sure that a lot of people will find it useful!!!! (mostly to laugh at the non-working copyright-justified censorship!!!!!!!!!) Ah, thinking about DVDs ISOs!!! this is funny!!! Linux systems cannot be "exported" to non-free countries (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria; actually the only places where LINUX+OpenSSL+Tor+... are useful for real), because the cryptographic software in Linux, which is regulated under US Export laws, cannot be redistributed there!!!!!! Anyway, there is Canada, south America, there is the Europe and good places in Asia; but if there weren't those free (for real) countries, used to share Linux ISOs, you could even had people with reasons to download LINUX!!!!!(the free and open source operating system!!!!!!) distros through TOR!!!!!!!!lol!!!!!!!!!! Now, this is off topic, but you've got to ask yourself, how such a brainless and useless restriction is possible in a so called "free country"!!!!!!!! The `US' is also the only problem i could think about BitTORrent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Could the TorProject be liable for helping the development of file sharing technologies?!!!!!!!!!!!! Lets say communist software?????!!!! ha ha!!!!!!! this is funny too lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! though it's something of important to be aware of, because even websites like are now outlaw in the USA!!!!!!!(they could help copyright infringements!!!!) could it be something to be afraid of!!!!!!? In either case, i think that my BitTORrent idea is very nice, and it could work for real!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bee!!!!!!!!!!!
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