Posted on: 01/22/2004 @ 1500

Subject: MUTE - Truly Anonymous File-Sharing?

MUTE - Truly Anonymous File-Sharing?

Well, it's about as close to it as you can get right now. Although it is in its early stages and has lots of bugs, it works! Well, most of the time. There are alot of random crashes in MUTE v0.2 for Windows which I tested. Yes, version 0.2, like I said.. it's in its early stages.

All searches and transfers are routed through "nodes". The "nodes" are all of the people using MUTE. To first connect you need a list of "seed nodes". This is just a few people using the MUTE network that you connect to that can relay your incoming/outgoing search requests and inbount/outbound file transfers. You connect to a few seed nodes and each of those connects to a few nodes, and so on.. connecting the whole MUTE network. We'll talk more about them later.

So how does this keep your identity sealed? It uses methods of encryption to hide your host. Instead of seeing your IP address (ie. 123.45.678.9) you'll see a "virtual address", something like this: HA3D3DSKXME3654DSAD35DSD. It's almost impossible to decypher your real hostname. The only people in the MUTE network that see your actual IP address are those "seed nodes" that we talked about earlier. These seed nodes are the only ones making a direct connection to you, therefore all searches and file transfers come from those seed nodes. They have to know your IP address to be able to connect to you and send you information. However, these seed nodes do not know your virtual address. Therefore there is no way for anyone to connect your IP address to your virtual address on MUTE. There is on one exception however; that is if every seed node you connect to is owned by them, however this is a very unlikely scenario as the seed nodes you connect to are chosen in a pseudo-randomized way.

Now if this sounds like something you'd like to try out head on over to http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/ and download the newest release.

Okay after it's installed and you run it for the first time there are a some things you'll want to know. When you first run MUTE a box will pop up asking you to "Enter Some Randomness". What in the heck is that for? Well, it's to get a random key to use in the encryptions MUTE uses. All you have to do here is type in a bunch of random numbers and letters. Okay then, once you've done that, you may be asked to choose what type of encryption to use. Just use the default there unless you have reason not to.

Now we've got mute up and running, almost. You can't do anything without some seed nodes first. You can get your own from people you know who are using MUTE already, or you can find some from a list online. Head on over to http://www.crimsonreport.com/mute-net/ to find a list of seed nodes. Now, how many seed nodes you want to add to your list is entirely up to you. I personally use about 30. You on that website you'll want to click on >> View All Hosts. Now this is a list of currently known seed nodes. The newest ones are listed at the bottom of the page. So scroll all the way to the bottom and select as many nodes as you want (just click and drag up) then copy them to the clipboard (ctrl+c or edit->copy). Now go to your start menu and select MUTE->Settings->seedHosts.ini. You can also find this by opening the settings folder in the directory you installed MUTE. By default this will be empty, so just paste your list of seed nodes from your clipboard (ctrl+v or edit->paste) into seedHosts.ini and then save it. Now you have a list of possible nodes to connect to. Go ahead and close mute and then re-open it, so that it will get the seed nodes from seedHosts.ini. This may take some time. click on the Connections tab in MUTE and wait until you get connected to some nodes. If you have trouble getting connected to nodes, try replacing the nodes in your seedHosts.ini.



Okay, you're connected.. now what? You'll probably want to search for something to test it out. Go ahead, click on the search tab and search for something, I chose Adam Sandler. When you search it will list the name of the file, the size of the file, the "hash" of the file, and the virtual address of the person sharing the file. What's a hash? A hash is a bunch of letters and numbers that identify that file. So that you can verify what you are getting is what you want. So, if you want to download a big file, but want to know that it is what it really says it is, you find someone who has downloaded the file before and have them give you the hash, that way you know you're downloading the right thing. There is a forum set up to do just this at: http://mutehash.hopto.org/.



Once you've found what you want to download click on it and then click on the download button in the lower-right corner. This will start the download. Now click on the downloads tab and you can view the progress of the file you are downloading.



Remember it's not perfect, it's in its very early stages. Don't get frustrated, watch http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/ for future updates which will fix bugs and add features.