Top 5 BitTorrent clients for Linux

Jared Moya — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:50:44 +0000

A list the five best BitTorrent clients available for Linux so that you can download your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and more.

Long ago BitTorrent surpassed direct connect-style downloading to become the preferred method of file-sharing because of its speed and ability to share large files, especially video. Now that I've already given you a roundup of the top five BitTorrent clients for Windows and Mac it's time to compile a roundup of the top five BitTorrent clients for Linux.

1. uTorrent

uTorrent is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. It’s simple, easy to use, and sports a low memory footprint. Features:

Streaming: Watch videos within seconds with progressive downloads – no need to wait. Especially great for previewing a file before committing to the full download.
Remote Access: Start, stop, and monitor torrent downloads on the go. Access your client from any Web browser, or download our Android app.
Ratings and Comments: Leverages the collective wisdom of the community to ensure the quality and security of downloaded torrents.
Drag-and-Drop Sending: Easily send massive personal files – e.g. home movies, cell phone videos and hi-res photos. Select a file on your computer, drag it into the µTorrent “Drop files to send” box and a Web link is yours to share.
Portable Mode: Run your µTorrent client directly from a USB key and take it with you anywhere.

uTorrent also sports the App Studio. Launched last November, the App Studio enables one-click downloads of content and features right inside uTorrent. Offers downloads of music, movies, and books as well as social media apps like TorrentTweet or antivirus apps like BitDefender’s VirusGuard. Moreover, it’s built for speed and you can leave it running in the background without having to worry about it slowing down your other tasks. If you’re looking for a guide on how to set up and use uTorrent we have one HERE.

2. Transmission

Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client with a focus on being lightweight yet feature-filled. Features:

Uses fewer resources than other clients
Daemon ideal for servers, embedded systems, and headless use
All these can be remote controlled by Web and Terminal clients
Local Peer Discovery
Full encryption, DHT, µTP, PEX and Magnet Link support

Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat.

3. Deluge

Deluge is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows. It uses libtorrent in it's backend and features multiple user-interfaces including: GTK+, web and console. It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the BitTorrent activity. The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform. Features:

Web UI
GTK+ UI
BitTorrent Protocol Encryption
Mainline DHT
Local Peer Discovery (aka LSD)
µTorrent Peer Exchange
UPnP and NAT-PMP
Proxy support
Global and per-torrent speed limits
Configurable bandwidth scheduler
Password protection
RSS (via Plugin)

Deluge features a rich plugin collection, and was created with the intention of being lightweight and unobtrusive. Deluge is not designed for any one desktop environment and will work just fine in GNOME, KDE, XFCE and others.

4. KTorrent

KTorrent is a BitTorrent program for KDE that is Ktorrent is an incredibly simple program if you are used to using torrent clients. Features:

Upload and download speed capping / throttling & scheduling
Internet searching with torrent search engines using KHTML part.
Support for UDP trackers.
IP address blocklist plugin
Port forwarding with UPnP (Universal Plug and Play)
Protocol encryption
DHT (mainline version), and support for trackerless torrents
µTorrent peer exchange (PEX) support

KTorrent also features file Prioritization, the ability to import partially-downloaded files, RSS feed support, a Web UI, IPv6, and SOCKS v4 and v5 support.

5. Vuze

Formerly Azureus, Vuze was the first BitTorrent client to offer a wide variety of features and plugins. The downside is the relatively high memory usage, but for those where this isn’t an issue Vuze offers a far more compelling BitTorrent experience. Features:

Vuze Meta Search offers aggregates results from a variety of top sites.
Automatically adapts to optimize for your network.
Watch in Full Screen HD (1080p).
Can play virtually any type of video file – AVI, XVID, Quicktime, and more.
Offline playback (on planes, trains, automobiles)
Drag-and-drop content to play back on the device of your choice: iPhone, iPod, iPad, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PSP, and TiVo.
Vuze Remote: control your Vuze client from any computer or smartphone with a web browser.
RSS Feed support

Moreover, Vuze is the BitTorrent client to choose if you wan’t a more robust downloading experience. . What's your favorite BitTorrent client for Linux? Stay tuned. jared@zeropaid.com

KTorrent exploits revealed

Jared Moya — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:33:31 +0000

For you Ubuntu users out there, it’s just been revealed that earlier versions of the KTorrent BitTorrent client server are vulnerable to attack. A malicious remote peer could send specially crafted messages to overwrite files or execute arbitrary code with user privileges.

It has been reported that versions of the open-source BitTorrent client server KTorrent earlier than 2.1.2 are vulnerable to a pair of hacker attacks.

According to the bug report on the Ubuntu site, the first vulnerability can enable a hacker to cause the application to crash, and also allows them the ability to inject executable code onto a system.

More specifically:

chunkcounter.cpp in KTorrent before 2.1.2 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and heap corruption via a negative or large idx value.
CVSS Severity: 7.0 (High)
Range: Remotely exploitable
Authentication: Not required to exploit
Impact Type: Provides unauthorized access, Allows partial confidentiality, integrity, and availability violation , Allows disruption of service

The second vulnerability is reported to allow the deliberate overwriting of arbitrary files on a user’s system. The problem apparently occurs because the KTorrent BitTorrent client server does not correctly validate the destination file paths or the HAVE statements sent by torrent tracker peers. Inserting the string sequence “..” into the torrent filename is said to be all that is needed to break out of defined directories. A malicious remote peer could send specially crafted messages to overwrite files or execute arbitrary code with user privileges.

More specifically:

Directory traversal vulnerability in torrent.cpp in KTorrent before 2.1.2 allows remote attackers to overwrite arbitrary files via “..” sequences in a torrent filename.
CVSS Severity: 5.6 (Medium)
Range: Remotely exploitable
Authentication: Not required to exploit
Impact Type: Provides unauthorized access, Allows partial confidentiality, integrity, and availability violation , Allows disruption of service

In any event, KTorrent version 2.1.2 has been released and addresses both of these critical issues.
digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/linux_unix/KTorrent_exploits_revealed’;

SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

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