this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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How torrents validate the files being served?
Recently I read a post where OP said they were transcoding torrents in place and still seeding them, so their question was if this was possible since the files were actually not the same anymore.
A comment said yes, the torrent was being seeded with the new files and they were "poisoning" the torrent.
So, how this can be prevented if torrents were implemented as a CDN?
An in general, how is this possible? I thought torrents could only use the original files, maybe with a hash, and prevent any other data being sent.
I don't know what that post is about. It's not possible to change the contents of a torrent. The torrent file itself is a list of checksums which validate byte ranges within the files being downloaded. If a client downloads a poisoned piece, it discards it and deprioritises the seed it got it from. Perhaps they're transcoding a file, whilst still seeding the original.
Torrents can work as a CDN for static files, because the downloader has to validate that the file is the same one as on the server using the checksums in the torrent file.
Yeah, I just searched a bit and found this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28348678/what-exactly-is-the-info-hash-in-a-torrent-file
The torrent file contains the hashes of each piece and the hash of the information about the files with the hashes of the pieces, so they have complete validation of the content and amount of files being received.
I wonder if the clients only validate when receiving or also when sending the data, this way maybe the seeding can be stopped if the file has been corrupted instead of relaying on the tracker or other clients to distrust someone that made a mistake like the OP of that post.