What happens when a proxy fails?

Specific support for Deluge on Microsoft Windows OS
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yacks

What happens when a proxy fails?

Post by yacks »

Hey All,
Apologies for not having significant details right now, but I'm just trying to track down a problem I have recently started getting. Namely that my anonymous torrent proxy seems to no longer be entirely anonymous. I have it set up, and it has been working fairly well, but I actually got EUA notices for a couple shows I downloaded on sunday night.

My question I guess in a nutshell is this: If for some reason a designated proxy fails, will deluge default to the regular internet connection, or will it fail to connect to anything completely? I'm just trying to identify if this was a software or a service problem, so any help people can give me in understanding how Deluge treats proxies would be much appreciated.

Cheers!
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gderf
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Re: What happens when a proxy fails?

Post by gderf »

Are you using any of the available torrents or magnet links that show you the IP address their tracker sees? I always verify this before starting a torrent and I leave these always loaded.

http://checkmytorrentip.net/torrentip/c ... ng.torrent
http://ipmagnet.services.cbcdn.com/
https://www.doileak.com/

But to answer your question, I think that recent versions of Deluge will stop if the connection if the proxy fails rather than falling back to your internet connection using your real IP address.

I do know that some older builds of uTorrent/Bittorrent did not behave correctly in this regard and fell back to the internet connection using the real IP. This happened to a friend of mine who decided not to read the emails that his proxy provider sent announcing future proxy host name changes. When the proxy hostname he had configured stopped resolving, uTorrent connected anyway using his real IP. He had no idea this was happening as he didn't use any of those IP revealers above. He found out when his ISP sent a few infringement notices.

Maybe someone has a definitive answer or can suggest a bulletproof test regimen simulating a proxy failure that can be applied while the application is running.

What I do from time to time is check the state table in my firewall to see what IP addresses I am connected to. Any IPs that don't belong to the proxy get a hard look, and so far have always been explainable as belonging to other things I am doing.
itsmrjack

Re: What happens when a proxy fails?

Post by itsmrjack »

Hi, is there any recent info on this?

I had a letter come through the post from "getitrightfromagenuinesite" last year. I believe it was due to me using a crappy free proxy with Deluge, but I don't have the know how to investigate properly so cannot be sure that it wasn't Deluge's 'fault'.

I am now using deluge again with a socks5 proxy from IPVanish, however not feeling 100% confident that it won't just default to a regular connection if something happens to the proxy.

I have used the checkmytorrentip file mentioned in the previous post and the tracker addresses show up as being IPVanish's, however when I change the socks5 credentials mid-torrent to something invalid (to emulate it stopping working?!) then the torrents will continue working. However if I restart Deluge or pause/restart the torrents then they stop working. If I reenter the correct socks5 credentials then the torrents resume working again, without having to restart Deluge or pause/restart the torrents.

As I say, I lack the technical know how to really understand what is going on here, but this behaviour seems suspect to me. Can anyone shed any light? Moderators please?

Thanks
mhertz
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Re: What happens when a proxy fails?

Post by mhertz »

Sorry for late reply.

Quote from my mailings with Arvid Norberg(libtorrent author):
When adding the anonymous mode feature (which really should have been called privacy mode), my intention was to make sure that information about the host system did not leak out via any protocol messages. Things like sending our IP to the tracker or other peers. It also tries to obfuscate identifying the client version by not sending version-identifying information in handshakes or http requests. There may be subtle information leakage still, but noting intentional. I imagine primarily that some behavior or advertising support for some features may reveal which version of libtorrent is being used.

When adding the force_proxy feature, my intention was that it would never make any outgoing connections nor accept any incoming connections other than through the proxy. There are some tests to make sure this assertion is not violated (see test_privacy.cpp). There's obviously the risk that there are bugs where under certain conditions this is no longer true.
These two settings aren't enabled by default and Deluge itself doesn't support enabling/changing these settings, so you need the ltconfig 3'rd party plugin installed first, to be able to set forceproxy and anonymous_mode.

qBittorrent have supported both of these settings almost from when Arvid added them - people seeing the proxy settings available in deluge get a false feeling of security without these additional settings applied. If too much trouble adding in two extra checkboxes, then i'd recommend hardcoding force-proxy and anonymous_mode whenever a proxy is defined.
raheel_j
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Re: What happens when a proxy fails?

Post by raheel_j »

Try a free vpn temporarily such as windscribe etc. this is not a permanent solution but may help.
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