anonymizing emule??

anyone tried it?? and how did you do it??

thnx

 

i havent tried it myself but this thread has some info

it possible to run emule thru tor but its generally not advised/recommended.

 

emule and tor do not work....i tried it and it did not work...thnx

 

As eMule user, AFAIK there is no viable way for anonymizing it. Also, the network itself is not designed for anonymity.

P2P in that scale (as in eD2k/eMule) in secure manner is likely not gonna happen very soon. If you want to download warez, you take and accept the risks involved. Be they malware or authorities...

 

I've been using Emule for years now and a member of the forum, and have read many posts there about security. The end answers are always the same. Follow my steps here and you will be better protected using Emule:

Emule 47c does have a new feature called Protocol Obfuscation:

"Protocol Obfuscation is a feature which causes eMule to obfuscate or "hide" its protocol when communicating with other clients or servers. Without obfuscation, each eMule communication has a given structure which can be easily recognized and identified as an eMule packet by any observer. If this feature is turned on, the whole eMule communication appears like random data on the first look and an automatic identification is no longer easily possible. This helps against situations were the eMule Protocol is unjustly discriminated or even completely blocked from a network by identifying its packets.
It is however important to note what Obfuscation is not intended to do: It will not increase your anonymity, it will not make you "invisible" in any way and it will also not protect you effective against eavesdroppers. Also if your network admin has a good legal reason to block eMule (for example a restricted company network), bypassing it may cause you other unwanted consequences."

This feature has some security - at least the packets are 'hidden'.

Also, when using Emule, only connect to certain servers - Donkey Servers 1-6 ONLY - most of the other servers are not safe, so delete all of them (sounds drastic, but this is very important). If you are concerned about your identity, then don't connect to any servers at all and use the KAD network of Emule instead - you will still get your files.

Another tip is in the Security options, make sure that 'Nobody' is selected where it says 'See my shared files/directories'. We don't want everyone looking at what files you have!

Finally, install Peerguardian and use it's P2P filter, but Emule does have it's own IP filter, too. Keep these filters updated! The official forum has its own IP filter.

Check on the official Emule forums for support - they are very helpful.

You may never be totally anonymous using Emule, but by using the IP filter, connecting to the servers mentioned above only (and/or KAD), adding Peerguardian and ticking the 'Enable Protocol Obfuscation' option in Emule's Security options, then you will be much safer than before.

As lordpake says, there is always a risk with file sharing, but just doing what I've suggested above will take you closer to being as safe as you can be using Emule.

Hope this helps a little.

 

I thank both of you for this kind and informative response. I appreciate that a lot.

I have some questions:

1. I did disable UDP in emule, and yet I noticed that emule makes some UDP connections! So I made a rule in outpost to block any UDP traffic originated from emule, then I was not able to connect.

2. You suggested using Kad only, does that mean my IP will not be revealed in that case if I disabled the usual ed2k network and used Kad instead?

3. Do you think obfuscation will help emule to bypass tor's restrictions?

 

Kad does not hide your IP address. Using Kad only will merely allow to avoid fake servers. IP filters help with this. I'd advice using both Kad and server.

Protocol obfuscation will likely not help. It is only designed to help avoid bandwidth throttling by ISP. Besides, Tor by itself is already very slow. Should obfuscation even work, you would only make the situation for legitimate Tor users worse. I'd suggest finding out more about Tor and how it actually works before you seek to impair its performance in this manner.

Tor is not intended to make P2P anonymous!

 

Indeed not! Tor is not meant for file sharing full stop. It will just drain Tor's resources if everyone uses it for Emule and other software that need multiple connections.

Also, as lordpake has said, using KAD only will not hide your IP address but it will cut out the need to connect to a possibly 'bad' or fake server. It's a separate, server-less network for Emule. I always connect to both KAD and one of the Donkey Servers - you will find more sources for files quicker (although you will still find the sources eventually).

Good luck, but don't use Tor with Emule - it will slow everything down from both sides. Emule's IP filter will filter out the bad guys - not just fake servers, but also companies who want to find out what you are downloading.