A month ago I posted an article about a bug on bittorrent tracker that enables you to increase your upload/download ratio. A lot of bittorrent tracker sites are patched from this bug and if you try to use this bug, your account will be immediately banned.
Few days ago I found RatioMaster and it is an application designed for spoofing uploads on BitTorrent trackers.
RatioMaster connects to a tracker and behaves like a normal BitTorrent client, but without actually uploading to / downloading from other peers in the swarm. It reports to the tracker that it’s uploading (or downloading or both, it’s your choice) at a certain rate, thus making it useful for artificially increasing your ratio on certain sites that track a user’s overall ratio (total uploaded/total downloaded).
RatioMaster has hardcoded emulations for the most commonly used BitTorrent clients, but it is also able to parse external files for emulation settings, thus making it easily extensible for your favourite client and easy to update when new versions of said clients are released. The client files (extension “.client”) are actually renamed XML files and the syntax should be pretty straight-forward. The emulation layer includes support for parameter order in GETs, reproduction of HTTP headers, generation of application-specific peer_ids and keys and more. RatioMaster can also parse the tracker reannounce time from the tracker’s HTTP response, and combined with the fact that you can specify down and up rates makes it pretty hard to detect by any anti-cheat scripts, if not downright impossible. Other features, like a TCP listener (so as to appear connectable on the tracker’s peerlist) and a leecher counter (so as to stop any uploads when a torrent has 0 leechers) also contribute to RatioMaster’s spoofing abilities.
* How to use *
- 1. Get a .torrent file associated with the tracker you want to spoof.
2. Load or Drag/Drop that file into RatioMaster.
3. Change the settings in the Options group to your liking: upload speed, download speed (set to 0 to spoof upload only), finished (how much of the file do you want to appear that you have – set to 100% if you want to appear as a seeder) and the type of client you want to emulate. Normally there’s no need to change the tracker update interval as it is read from the tracker’s reply.
4. Optionally, look through the Advanced and Network tabs and see if you need anything changed there, like using a specific port or announcing through a proxy server. Most users won’t need to change anything here.
5. Press the Start button and watch the bytes start rolling.
6. After a while, when you decide you’ve spoofed enough, press the Stop button to announce to the tracker that you’re ending your session.
* Things to remember *
First of all, don’t use very high upload speeds. Some trackers check sessions for very big upload rates. Using a 6 MB/s upload rate when your IP belongs to an ISP who only has a 512 kbps plan is plain stupid. Check the moofdev forums on more info on maximum safe speeds reached by other users on different trackers.
Never spoof uploads on a tracker with few peers. If there are only 2 leechers and they’re downloading at a maximum of 300 kB/s, and you’re spoofing an upload of 2 MB/s, it will look suspicious.
Keep the software up-to-date. Sometimes bugs are found that may get you banned on sites. RatioMaster includes an automatic version checker and will notify you when a new version is released. Update!
If you’re going to take part in discussions on the moofdev forums, or other forums that deal with this sort of software, don’t use the same username you use on trackers. We’ve had instances of tracker admins visiting the forums to see whether any of our users were members on their trackers and… well, you can assume what happened next.
Read the forums. Sometimes users will report that a certain tracker simply cannot be fooled. It’s better to stay informed than be banned on your favourite tracker.
Last, but not least, only spoof when you NEED to. By cheating on a torrent, you’re disrupting the swarm and going against the spirit of p2p. Unless you really need to increase your ratio and there’s no better way (short of paying money – pay2leech trackers are a lot worse than cheating peers), don’t cheat.
RatioMaster requires that you’ve got the .NET Framework version 2 installed. You can get it from Microsoft.