BitThief

A Free Riding BitTorrent Client

BitThief Documentation

Requirements

• A recent version of a Java Runtime Environment is required (JRE 1.5 or newer). You can download Sun's JRE from www.java.com.
• If your host is behind a firewall, make sure it can receive incoming TCP connections on the port you have configured BitThief to run, as this will improve performance significantly.
• If you have an old version of BitThief installed, please remove the “bitthief” folder in your home directory before using the new version.

Running BitThief

Windows

Download “BitThief.exe” from the download page, and execute it.

Mac OS X

Download the tgz-file from the download page, decompress it and run the enclosed application (“BitThief.app”).

Linux/Unix

Download the tgz-file from the download page, decompress it and use the enclosed starter script (“BitThief”). You can do that by opening a shell prompt, changing into the BitThief directory and running the script as follows:

./BitThief &

Jar File

If you want to run the jar file directly, you can download it from the download page, change into the enclosing directory and enter the following in a command prompt:

java -Xmx512m -jar BitThief.jar

Configuration

The following global settings are available:

• Limit Connection Number — Sets the maximum number of TCP connections that BitThief will maintain.
• Limit Traffic Speed — Sets an upper limit to BitThief's download and upload speeds.
• Use Tit-for-tat Protocol — Sets the default for the torrent specific option of whether to use the Tit-for-tat protocol or not.
• Upload Statistics — Allows BitThief to transmit download statistics to our webserver. No personal data or information about the downloaded files is transmitted. Enabling this option will help us doing our research.
• Check For Update — If enabled, BitThief will check for a new version on startup.

These options are specific to a single torrent download:

• Upload Data — If unchecked, BitThief will not upload any data to other peers. If checked, BitThief will behave like any other BitTorrent client.
• Upload Slots — How many clients BitThief will simultaneously upload data to.
• Use Tit-for-tat Protocol — If enabled, BitThief will use the T4T protocol to communicate with other BitThief clients and engage in fair data exchange.
• Listening Port — Defines the network port on which BitThief will listen for incoming connections. Open this port in your firewall.
• Download Pieces In Order — Instructs BitThief to try and download the file(s) sequentially. This can be used to start using files before the download is complete (e.g. media files).
• Initial Announce Interval — Time in seconds between subsequent tracker queries.
• Share Ratio — The share ratio that BitThief will announce to the tracker.