Unfortunately, as fast as we report such things, the malware peddlers create yet more bad clients with new names, but carrying the same bad story. However, these guys are very determined to get software such as CIDHELP on your machine, ready to watch your activities and to this end have become quite creative. Recently BitTorrent users are reporting that they have downloaded various pieces of video (usually a TV show) only to be confronted with a message during the first few seconds of the video which advises them to download a new media player called 3wPlayer, in order to view the rest of the file.

The displayed url directs the unsuspecting to the Play3W site, where they are given the chance of installing a shiny new media player.

From the screenshot you will see that there is a ‘more’ button and when you install this player ‘more’ is exactly what you get – more malware in the form of CIDHELP, yet again. It can be difficult task to uninstall it too, especially when you consider the veiled legal threat on the CIDHELP site – the vendor warns you could be in breach of the EULA if you try to remove it with your anti-spyware software. To get rid of the software, they advise to first turn off your anti-adware/spyware software and re-install the software, something that rings a few alarm bells!

It may seem that every pusher in the world is getting involved in the BitTorrent malware scene but a simple WHOIS on all the domains hosting the torrent clients listed above, (Torrent101 for example) including the 3wPlayer site, reveals that they are more than likely the same outfit, exploiting the less experienced members of the BitTorrent community. Anyone concerned about a particular torrent should take the time to read the user comments on the site where the torrent was downloaded from. Very often problems such as fake files are spoken about there.

Anyone needing a media player that will deal with almost any video format should consider the excellent VLC Media Player, available for free download. Those who still haven’t settled on a quality BitTorrent client will find everything they need by getting uTorrent. No spyware, adware or malware present in either product.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Unfortunately, several popular torrent sites carried advertising for these bad clients but thankfully, sites like The Pirate Bay saw the damage these things can cause and removed the adverts. TPB’s brokep wrote, “We’re getting a lot of email about people downloading torrent clients that are advertised on the site. Do not download them! We have put a ban for the ad companies to sell ads for these clients on our site.” Mininova and Snarf-it also blocked the adverts.

In February, we reported on yet another client, TorrentQ after a tip-off from the owner of BT-Junkie. Of course, this wasn’t a new client but the old one with a new name.

In April, in order to try to save unsuspecting file-sharers from installing malware, we ran Google Adword campaigns on the BitRoll, Torrent101 and TorrentQ websites, informing people of just how bad these clients are. Google apparantly doesn’t like to be associated with bad news and a few days later, Adsense adverts disappeared from the sites.

Disappointingly, we are now exposed to yet another ‘new’ bad torrent client. Get-Torrent is the latest in a sequence of malware-laden torrent clients, cloned from the same infected DNA as BitRoll, Torrent101 and TorrentQ. As can be seen from the client’s ‘skinning’ pages, these products are identical;

As we promised in our earlier posts, every time a bad client appears we will do our best to let the BitTorrent community know about it. Anyone thinking of installing a BitTorrent client should stay away from these products and install a free, clean client, such as uTorrent.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Note that there’s a difference between kb/s (kilobits/second) and kB/s (kilobytes/second). To be precise, kb/s = kB/s divided by 8. In this tutorial we use kB/s (like most torrent clients do). This means that you might need to calculate your max speed in kB/s yourself if the speedtest only gives you the results in kb\s (so divide by 8 then).

Settings 1-4 can be found in the options, settings or preference tab of most torrent clients.

1. Maximum upload speed

Probably one of the most important setting there is. Your connection is (sort of) like a pipeline, if you use you maximum upload speed there’s not enough space left for the files you are downloading. So you have to cap your upload speed.

Use the following formula to determine your optimal upload speed…

for relatively fast connections (upload >20 kB/s)

upload speed * 85%

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

40 * 85% = 34

Slower connections (upload <20 kB/s) need a little more space so I use this formula

upload speed * 75%

so if your maximum upload speed is 12 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

12 * 75% = 9

2. Maximum download speed

Although setting your maximum download speed to unlimited may sound interesting, in reality it will only hurt your connection.

Use the following formula to determine your optimal download speed…

for relatively fast connections (download >60 kB/s)

download speed * 95%

so if your maximum download speed is 200 kB/s, the optimal download rate is

200 * 95% = 190

And again I experienced that Slower connections (upload <60 kB/s) need a little more space so I use this formula

(download speed * 85%

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

40 * 85% = 34

3. Maximum connected peers per torrent

Yet another setting that you don’t want to max out. I experimented quite a lot with the max connected peers settings and came to the conclusion that both high and low number hurt the download speed of a torrent. The following setting worked best for me.

upload speed * 1.3

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal amount of connected peers per torrent is

40 * 1.3 = 52

I didn’t noticed a difference for fast or slow connections here.

4. Maximum upload slots

1 + (upload speed / 6)

so if your maximum upload speed is 30 kB/s, the optimal number of upload slots is

1 + (30 / 6) = 6

5. Maximum half-open tcp connections

This tweak was mentioned in previous post and I noticed some debate about the optimal settings. So I played around with this tweak on different machines and came to the conclusion that the best setting is

for relatively fast connections (download >60 kB/s)

upload speed * 2 (I will advise to never go higher than 1000)

And for Slower connections (download <60 kB/s) can have a little extra.

upload speed * 4

These numbers are not as holy as the other tips, but they are a good guideline. For more info on the max half-open tcp tweak read our previous post.

6. Optimize your internet connection

The TCP optimizer is a freeware utility that optimizes your internet connection. I found it very useful and it helped speeding up my connection for regular internet activity and for downloading torrents. Just download it, and move the slidebar to your maximum download rate (note that it’s in kb/s). Don’t try to set it higher because that will hurt your download speeds!

I hope these tips are useful and help you to get the most out of BitTorrent. Note that these these tips are the result of extensive “trial and erroring” but still very subjective. For the uTorrent users out there, 1c3d0g wrote a great tutorial, the numbers might slightly differ from the ones I found though.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.