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Jason Mick (Blog) - July 16, 2009 6:41 AM

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8 comment(s) - last by DotNetGuru.. on Jul 20 at 6:38 PM

Hid.im offers handy tutorials on how to use their easy-to-use Firefox extension. The tool allows you to post torrents to forbidden locations by converting them to an approved PNG image. (Source: TorrentFreak)

No one will suspect that the innocent file is really a torrent

People love to file-share and torrents are one of the most popular modes of filesharing. However, typically to get torrents you have to go to a site like The Pirate Bay. Most internet forums and chat boards ban torrent files (which carry the .torrent extension, typically).

However, internet whiz Michael Nutt, and others have unleashed onto the nets a whole new way of sharing torrents -- via a web utility called Hid.im that converts torrents to and from picture files. The resulting files should be safe to post on most message boards. They just look like a bunch of pixel-fuzz, but in reality they encode the torrent.

Mr. Nutt describes, "It is an attempt to make torrents more resilient. The difference is that you no longer need an indexing site to host your torrent file. Many forums will allow uploading images but not other types of files."

Currently torrent file size must be under 250 KB for the utility to work. A Firefox extension or bookmarklet has been added, which allows users to decode the torrent image. The code for the project is open source, so fans can easily add it to their favorite browser of choice, assuming it supports extensions.

While Hid.im is not the first to convert torrents to images (Stegtorrent is believe to hold that distinction), it is the first to do it entirely online. With an easy browser interface, it should make spreading torrents in forbidden locations a walk in the park.

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Can be made even better

By Mint on 7/16/2009 11:56:01 AM , Rating: 3

The next version should hide it in regular images instead of fuzz. Just use sacrifice a few bits per pixel to encode the information and it'll look like a slightly noisy picture. You could even use some simple encryption.

It's open source, so I'm sure people are working on such a version right now. Or maybe I will...

This is FRACKING AWESOME!

By SilthDraeth on 7/16/09, Rating: -1

RE: This is FRACKING AWESOME!

By pianom4n on 7/16/2009 11:21:23 AM , Rating: 2

The torrent doesn't have to be less than 250KB, the .torrent file does. And from what I see they're normally 15-20KB.

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RE: This is FRACKING AWESOME!

By Xenokyn on 7/20/2009 5:08:36 PM , Rating: 2

After doing a little experimenting creating torrents, depending on the amount of files in the torrent and the size of its pieces, a 250kb .torrent file should allow a download of about 10-15GBs.

I'd be interested to see what others find with their experiments.

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RE: This is FRACKING AWESOME!

By DotNetGuru on 7/20/2009 6:38:06 PM , Rating: 2

Am I the only one to have actually looked at a .torrent file ?? They just contain connection info, etc and their size is not at all related to the size of the file(s) that they link to.

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