Bittorrent secure?

[cpghost at cordula.ws]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 08:22:53PM +0100, Hanspeter Roth wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> how secure is Bittorrent?

Do you mean the Bittorrent *protocol*, or a specific
*implementation* thereof? And what do you mean with 'secure'?

> How can one know how trustworthy the stuff
> downloaded from other Bittorrent fellows is?

>From which torrent? :-)

You get what you download. This is *normally* that, what the
seeders offered. You may want to checksum (md5, sha1, ...)
the files you get, comparing the digest strings with the
signatures published on trustworthy sites (e.g. if you
download an ISO image or so). All this is independent of
the transport protocol that you used (ftp, bittorent, ...).

The bittorrent protocol uses TCP to transmit the chunks,
therefore ensuring that the chunks are not *intentionally*
corrupted along the way. Moreover, bittorrent checksums
the chunks internally, as an added measure of security.
But you are still encouraged to checksum the complete
file(s) anyway.

> -Hanspeter

Cheers,
-cpghost.

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