“txtor” tool circumvents basic torrent blockers

Some universities block the downloading of torrent files by not allowing users …

To the frustration of many students and other avid torrent downloaders, some universities and ISPs have been known to block the download of .torrent files in an effort to curb illegal file sharing. This quick and dirty method of filtering Internet content is usually done through the use of a proxy server that will look for a torrent mime-type in the file or, even simpler, the file extension itself. Although this method seems almost too simple to take seriously, enough admins have found it effective enough to justify its use.

That's why a group of developers launched txtor today, a site that makes it possible to download .torrent files as if they were text files. As the site explains, from the user perspective, the service functions very simply. Plug in the URL of a torrent file, and it's translated to a text file for you to download. For a moderately more technical explanation, the site merely takes the file and changes the mimetype and extension, then spits it back out at you as a text file in order to bypass proxy-level torrent file blocks. Then, all you need to do is change the file extension back from .txt to .torrent and open it up in your favorite torrent client. Based on our testing of txtor, we can say that the tool works exactly as advertised.

txtor does not, however, help to bypass more sophisticated methods of blocking torrents, such as deep packet inspection (DPI). Since DPI involves scanning the contents of a data stream (and not just file names or mime-types), an obvious sidestep such as txtor won't be able to elude it. Luckily for regular torrenters, most ISP haven't full deployed DPI gear just yet, save that required to fully comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

Because this "hack" is so basic, we wouldn't be surprised to see some equally basic torrent-blocking tools to catch up eventually. Simply blocking text files, however, certainly won't work (at least without irritating a large portion of an admin's user base), so it might prove to be a slightly bigger challenge than just blocking files with certain extensions. When it comes to P2P services though, it's safe to say that the cat-and-mouse game between clever developers and network admins won't be over anytime soon. If you're one of the unfortunate group behind a proxy server that blocks torrent files from being downloaded, txtor will probably do the job... for now, anyway.

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