Comcast Forging Packets To Filter Torrents

An anonymous reader writes "It's been widely reported by now that Comcast is throttling BitTorrent traffic. What has escaped attention is the fact that Comcast, like the Great Firewall of China uses forged TCP Reset (RST) packets to do the job. While the Chinese government can do what they want, it turns out that Comcast may actually be violating criminal impersonation statutes in states around the country. Simply put, while it's legal to block traffic on your network, forging data to and from customers is a big no-no."

Can you say "class action" ?

[unity100]

say it ! and add a "lawsuit" to the end. Such "companies" deserve it.

Forged RST packets

[ACMENEWSLLC]

We use a popular web content filter. The way it works is by doing the same thing. So when we are blocking traffic, we block it by issuing a forged RST. It's either do this, or place the content filter inline ACTIVE. Right now it is passive It does packet capturing and RST to block. If it's down, then traffic still flows. If it were active, we could simply drop the traffic and not forge the RST. But performance and uptime are horrible on many products when these are inline.

Initially this sounded a lot worse to me.

Re:Suure... legal action is possible...

[Spy der Mann]

do you think you even have a chance in Hell?

Then again, Rosa Parks [wikipedia.org] had no legal right to keep her bus seat from a white guy. And yet, she did.

If you don't stand up and fight for your rights, who else will?

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[ajs]

If they attack any and all Torrents this way, then their users should build a case based on the blocking of major Linux distribution downloads from Fedora, SuSE and Ubuntu and make a class action out of it, certainly! This is a clear violation of their ToS, at least as I read it a few years ago when I was a customer. If it has changed, then perhaps someone could post the relevant quote from it here? Please, not the whole thing.

Re:Suure... legal action is possible...

[nuzak]

There are legal torrents. Comcast is certainly screwing you. That said:

I may not have known Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks wasn't a friend of mine, but I can say with pretty god damn clear certainty that you are no Rosa Parks.

Even worse, these packets count towards your cap

[Anonymous Coward]

Causing you to get TOSed earlier.

Good heavens...

[Otter]

...forging data to and from customers is a big no-no...

I realize that to the nerdish mind falsifying the sender of an IP packet is equivalent to "impersonating another", but no sane prosecutor would ever make such a case.

Re:But, this is awsome

[QCompson]

I'm so glad I live in Canada.

Why, because of the weather? It can't be because of your traffic-throttling happy ISPs:
http://torrentfreak.com/rogers-fighting-bittorrent -by-throttling-all-encrypted-transfers/ [torrentfreak.com]

Re:Forged RST packets

[Opportunist]

The difference is most likely that you're the endpoint of the traffic. When traffic comes to me, it's my business what I send in reply. A RST, nothing or a "thanks for sexual services".

Comcast is the carrier. They have no business sending RST packages. Their business is to transfer packets to and from you. If you allow them to manipulate your packets (which this essentially is, injection of packets is by no means different from altering them, it changes the data stream and the information transmitted), you can never be sure that what you sent is what arrived on the other end.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[unity100]

and you should have told them they should have invested while they were overselling their lines. it doesnt matter what percentage of p2p is legal or not, the fact is they are not able to provide what they promised. the debate should be on that, not p2p's legality.

Why do you say that?

[WindBourne]

First, Spyder was not saying that he was Rosa, but even ignoring that, why do you say with certainty that this is not the same? This is standing up to a MUCH bigger bulley who is trying to take what is not theirs. It was no different than when the geek stood up to a circuit city store and then the police. That is a case that may make a difference, as might this (keeping our rights from those that would gladly steal them). You can bet that at the time of Rosa, the locals just thought it was a silly disturbance.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Major ISP's in the US have told me in meetings that P2P makes up 70-80% of their total traffic. Do you really believe that the majority of this is legal content?

That's not for the ISP to decide.

Re:Only thieves use bittorrent

[lordtoran]

I wish you continued fun waiting for 2 hours in a download queue at Fileplanet to get a 50 kb/s download slot.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[Karzz1]

The problem is, as I see it, that their ToS is "fluid". In other words, the ToS can be changed at any time by the company. Whether or not this is in fact legal remains to be seen, but I suspect that it probably is (at least in the U.S. which is where I assume we are referring).

Do some good with resets

[skidv]

I haven't done a packet capture recently, but my Comcast modem is usually pegged with crap packets (port scans). Why don't they send some resets for potentially harmful packets, then they wouldn't have to worry about a few torrents.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[HiThere]

Did the US ever ratify it? We've weaseled out of most international treaties.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

BINGO!!!

They offer a service, that you agree to pay for. If they have qualms about what is being done with the service they are selling, they should either put up, or shut up. No half ass measures like we're seeing with Comcast. They want to de-prioritize p2p? Fine. They better put it in the fine print when they do otherwise what they are doing is breach of contract.

Oh, right. Modern ISP contracts are one-way non-negotiable. Nevermind.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[jafiwam]

"Legitimate" content and "Trusted" sources will get priority. The ISO of your favorite Linux distro is in. The unknown and likely pirated DiVX rip is out. This doesn't have to be BT as you know it. It could be an ISP administered P2P net.

This statement leads me to believe you don't even know how bit torrent works. You are aware, it downloads from peers that have also downloaded from their peers from an original source right? And that aside from a small few bits at the beginning, ALL of the downloads come from (what is going to be essentially from the ISP's point of view) random locations right?

How is it you think they are going to "source" the download? Download it first, then put it on a list?

As someone who has downloaded lots of music illegally, I have NEVER had to resort to bittorrent to get it. It's always some person I know sharing an entire hard drive full or whatever. (Not public sources.) Heck, you can put certain phrases in Google and get the default "directory listing allowed" for common web server software and find TONS of music shared on web servers.

Since it came out, I have probably downloaded 150 gigs of various game patchs, game mods, Linux versions, etc. all of which the users I got them from had a right to distribute and I for which I had a right to download. ZERO percent of my torrent use has been illegal downloading.

Limiting traffic is one thing (just throttle ALL of the heavy users traffic, email, web, games, etc.), saying all torrent downloads are illegal is plain flat out incorrect.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[winkydink]

And just what is the "guaranteed rate" stated in your terms of service? Hmmm? Probably somethign along the lines of, "We guarantee that some of your packets will get somewhere eventually."

You want a circuit that's not overprovisioned? Call up your telco and price a fractional DS3 that connects directly to your ISP. OF course, there's no guarantee that it won't be overprovisioned past the ISP's MPOE.

Simple solution

[cumin]

If I want a static IP, I pay more. If I want more bandwidth, I pay more. If I want to run a mail server, you guessed it, I pay more. I think the solution is simple for ISPs if they're not too chicken to try it. Offer a premium "file monster" service for an extra $5/month. Don't phrase it that way of course, just roll out the usual price increases and a couple months later offer a "$5 discounted, non-p2p" service.

I almost feel dirty for posting this, but somebody else has already thought of it who didn't post to /. and seeing it here will make it sound familiar when they start doing it. Doubtless this will come as some vague fine print like ISP reserves the right to terminate disruptive traffic buried at the back of a bill.

Re:Good heavens...

[Bryan Ischo]

Even if it *is* impersonation (and I don't agree that it is, because the packets in question are part of a networking protocol and not messages being sent by one person to another), it's impersonation of one computer by another computer. I don't think it necessarily follows that this can be construed as impersonation of an individual, especially when the mechanism for this supposed impersonation is a low-level networking protocol packet, not a user-generated message.

For The "I Have A Right To What You Sold Me" Crowd

[patio11]

My family has the same unlimited DSL connection that was sold to Jolly Roger next door who has BitTorrent pegging the block's bandwith allocation for 168 hours a week. This is partially responsible for the constant service outages and poor performance they experience (or, in family parlance, "It's Comcastic!"). Slashdot seems to get rather excised about Jolly Roger not getting the "unlimited" dirt-cheap bandwidth he thought he was going to get when he signed up for Comcast. Can you guys explain why my family needs to put up with terrible speeds on their moderate Internet usage to subsidize Roger's piracy, when they both bought the same package at the same price?

(Sure, sure -- blame Comcast. Believe me, we already do. The fact is, though, that if you're offered unmetered amounts of a finite resource and you then employ technology specifically designed to maximize your use of that resource that something will have to give. It might be Comcast's pricing model, but that would probably be pretty sucky: how many folks here would enjoy having bandwidth on the cellphone pricing plan, with a certain amount included, overages charges galore routinely affecting anyone with above-average needs, and a flat-rate plan costing about the price of your PC every month?)

Re:Simple solution

[Simple-Simmian]

I already have the top residential plan offered by my ISP and buy VOIP from them. I torrent Anime (a shedload) and Linux ISOs which is why I pay for the top plan. I expect my packets to go where they should. I am glad I don't have Comcast.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

There is no legitimate use of BitTorrent. Anything BitTorrent can do, FTP can do better.

There is not legitimate use of FTP. Anything FTP can do rsync can do better.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[zippthorne]

While technically true, perhaps the best kind of true, if the companies cannot deliver their advertised rates, which are quite often !!10 mbps, unlimited*!!! (with all those extra exclamation points, even) then they either advertised falsely or planned poorly.

*Some restrictions apply, but you'll never know about them unless you have a high def TV, and happen to be watching a high def channel when the company's advertisement airs, assuming they bothered to film it in high definition itself.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[InvalidError]

This is slashdot, believe it!

Oversubscription is what makes it possible for ISPs to offer 10Mbps service under $80. Without it, the same service would cost closer to $200, with $50 of both amounts being the ISP's operating income for the service class. Many ISPs have "reasonable use" clauses in their otherwise "unlimited" service plans and this cap appears to be around 250GB in many cases, which would theoretically allow ISPs to fit roughly 3000 high-bandwidth 250GB/month customers per ~$30k/month OC48. The same OC48 can accommodate little more than 250 wire-burning, non-oversubscribed 10Mbps customers... that would be more than $100/month uplink cost per customer.

Because the top ~5% of customers (ab)uses ~90% of the bandwidth, over-subscription reduces the ISPs' infrastructure costs for typical users by >90%. The recent stories about heavy users getting either kicked off or pushed onto higher-margin business/special service shows that ISPs are starting to push the extra operating costs down to the relevant customers. I have calculated that a fair price for true unlimited access would be ~$150/month: rent for ~1/300th of an OC48 + other operating/service costs and profit.

But none of that quite excuses ISPs from interfering with their customers' traffic unless the customer has specifically requested it.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[silverkniveshotmail.]

I would think at around 1/2 of it is legal. About 1/2 or more of the music is probably legal. I would guess about 10% video is legal. And probably the vast majority of the software is legal. But does it matter? I think not.

Where on earth do you get this number from!? this is completely made up. and it only has to be 1/10 of 1% for it to be wrong of them to do this.

Re:Can you say "class action" ?

[ubuwalker31]

Oversubscription is what makes it possible for ISPs to offer 10Mbps service under $80

Bullshit. The problem is that the US taxpayers have pumped Billions upon Billions of dollars into the internet/telephone/fiber optic infrastructure, and the telephone companies, cable companies and other large companies have wasted that money over the past 30 years, by not using the money as it was intended. Which is why it is cheaper overseas to have faster broadband than in the US.