Reverse BitTorrent for Apps is Expected to Cause Huge Surge in App Store Piracy

A huge surge in App Store piracy is expected as the Hackulous community plans to release a 'reverse BitTorrent' system that will leverage millions of users to supply apps, according to TorrentFreak.

In the past, owners of App Store apps would have to crack the software using something like Clutch then patch, test, upload and submit it to Apptrakr in order to grow its database and enable others to download. Not surprisingly the learning curve dissuaded all but a tiny minority from even trying.

Described by Dissident as a kind of 'reverse BitTorrent', Mobile Hunt is a clever way of utilizing an existing network of millions of peers to provide a solution to the app supply bottleneck.

"Essentially what will happen is when you're using Installous you'll get a little pop up that says 'Hey, you have an application that Apptrakr doesn't. We will add the application to a queue in the background (if you say yes) and it will start uploading tiny pieces of it, kind of like a torrent, up to the cloud'," Hackulous admin Dissident explains.

The tiny pieces from each person’s device will then be combined to make one final copy which will then be available on Apptrakr for anyone to download.

Hackulous has also announced that it's already cracked the security of the unreleased Mac App Store. Using a new product called 'Kickback' they plan to offer free downloads for Mac Apps. Dissident notes that Kickback won't be released until the Mac App Store is saturated with "tons of crap".


"Most of the applications that go on the Mac App Store [in the first instance] will be decent, they’ll be pretty good. Apple isn’t going to put crap on the App Store as soon as it gets released. It’ll probably take months for the App Store to actually have a bunch of crappy applications and when we feel that it has a lot of crap in it, we’ll probably release Kickback."

*Please note as developers ourselves we do not encourage pirating applications in any way.

Read More [via AppAdvice]