TorrentFreak » opera

Opera Web Browser Unblocks The Pirate Bay

Ernesto — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:17:55 +0000

Back in 2006 Opera was the first major browser to include BitTorrent support.

Today, however, it has another interesting feature for BitTorrent users.

The browser offers a “Turbo” service which makes websites load faster for users on a slow connection.

“When Opera Turbo is enabled, webpages are compressed via Opera’s servers so that they use much less data than the originals. This means that there is less to download, so you can see your webpages more quickly,” Opera explains.

But this feature does more than that. It also unblocks Pirate Bay for those who can’t access it.

Blocked Internet subscribers can simply click the “Turbo” button in Opera and TPB loads just fine.

Totally secure, and perhaps even faster before.

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Opera 9.50 Kestrel Adds BitTorrent Peer Exchange

enigmax — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:55:25 +0000

As BitTorrent is a swarming technology, more peers usually means faster downloads so finding as many as possible is a good start to getting a quick transfer.

Just as information about available peers sharing particular content can be discovered from a BitTorrent tracker, Peer Exchange is an additional feature which allows peers to communicate with each other directly, to discover if there are any additional peers that one peer knows about, but that others do not.

As far as efficiency is concerned, this communication takes place directly with other peers and as a result, some load is eased from the torrent tracker.

Although it already supported the basic protocol, up to now the torrent engine inside the Opera browser didn’t support Peer Exchange. The introduction of Opera v9.50 Alpha 1 (Kestrel) changes that situation and sees the introduction of a uTorrent and libtorrent compatible feature. As is usual with any uTorrent compatible peer exchange, peer exchange with Azureus clients will still not be possible until Azureus makes some changes to their client.

The Windows version changelog lists a whole bunch of bug fixes and tweaks.

For those wishing to take the new browser for a test drive, the advice on the Opera site is to do a clean install and “copy over your profile data (but not your preferences file) if you’d like to test the upgrade procedure. You may not be able to downgrade if you upgrade an existing install!”

Downloads:

Opera 9.5 Alpha Windows

Opera 9.5 Alpha Mac

Opera 9.5 Alpha Unix

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Critical BitTorrent Vulnerability Found in Opera Browser

enigmax — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:04:03 +0000

According to Danish computer security outfit Secunia, a vulnerability has been discovered in Opera v9.21 on the Windows platform, which can be exploited to compromise a user’s system, potentially taking remote control of the machine.

The advisory states that the vulnerability is created by Opera’s utilization of already freed memory when parsing BitTorrent headers. This flaw can then be exploited to run code on the host machine when a user is tricked into clicking a specially created .torrent file. When the file does not transfer, the user naturally deletes the .torrent file with a right click, an action which triggers the exploit.

At the moment, Windows version 9.21 is reported as being vulnerable although previous versions may also be affected.

Secunia offers a software tool which which enables users to see if they are affected by the vulnerability.

Any affected users can overcome the problems by upgrading to version 9.22. Opera is no stranger to vulnerabilities in its BitTorrent engine, as reported by us back in May.

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Faster BitTorrent with New Opera Browser Build

enigmax — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:34:54 +0000

Opera was the first major browser to include BitTorrent support. Way in advance of the announcement of a partnership with BitTorrent Inc, Opera released a TP (technology preview) version which included support for the BitTorrent protocol. Already supporting HTTP and FTP, the inclusion was deemed a success and was later embedded into version 9.0 of the browser, enabling users to both search for and download .torrent files without the need for a separate search engine or torrent client.

“Implementing BitTorrent is a natural choice, considering its efficient use of bandwidth and worldwide popularity” said Christen Krogh of Opera Software, “For users this means that they can browse and download content in an application they’re familiar with.”

Many features were added or modified in later releases of the browser, but BitTorrent related changes were minimal, with just a small change to torrent functionality in v9.10 (relating to the cancellation of torrent downloads) and the addition of support for the optional “key” in BitTorrent tracker requests in v9.20.

Revelations that Opera was vulnerable to an attack against its BitTorrent engine led to a fix being made in v9.21 along with a fix for some torrent stability issues.

Now the Opera Desktop Team have announced that they are in ‘BitTorrent bug fix mode’ with new build 8800 on the v9.22 branch, offering greater stability and faster speeds.

Toman, an Opera ‘software nurse’ is inviting users to ‘break’ this new build and as Opera is available multi-platform, everyone has the chance to try.

Windows MSI
Windows Classic
Macintosh
Unix

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