catnap napster proxy

hi. you've reached the home of catnap, the scrambling napster proxy. you can grab the application or source for catnap here:

catnap installer for windows 98/me/nt/2000 (zip file contains setup exe)

catnap c++ source for win32, unix

what does catnap do?

catnap is a simple napster proxy. the connection between the napster server and your napster client go through catnap. catnap scrambles the names of your shared files (techies, see details below). the napster server only receives a set of nonsensical words. any other catnap user can find your files and download them (without having to understand anything about the scrambling system). the proxy allows you to use napster as you normally would.

what is the point of this?

the reason for doing this is to ensure that napster servers truly and honestly do not know what files they are listing. this places the burden of the file content solely on individual napster users. further, this prevents users from having to do silly things (like rotate their file names) to keep clear of possible snooping or filtering technology

help, how do i use catnap?

to properly run catnap with napster you must:
download and install the napster client (or compatible client) and create an account.
disconnect and exit napster
download and install catnap
follow the instructions in the catnap readme!!! (read the readme)
If you run CatNap and still can't get it to connect, add the line 127.0.0.1   server.napster.com to your hosts file (usually in c:\windows\ on Win95/98, or c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\ for Win NT/2000)
run catnap
run napster as you normally would.*

*note that while catnap is running in scramble mode, you will ONLY be able to search the files of other catnap users. to search "normal" napster files, set catnap to passive mode, by right clicking on the catnap icon in the system tray and choosing "passive mode". when done, you should return catnap to scrambling mode, so that other users will be able to download your files. (it is safe to to switch between scrambling and passive modes when a file transfer is in progress. switching while a download is initiating may cause that download to fail.)

give me the technical details

for now, it's a pretty simple system. the filenames are rot13'd when exported to the napster server, and the same for search requests. search results and downloads are rotated back. download connections are currently directly between clients.
why is this a separate application, instead of being integrated into an open-source napster client?
- because then the the vast majority of napster users (win32 napster software) will not be able to use it.
why isn't this using sha1/md5/[my favorite hashing or encrypting algorithm]?
- because rot13 is reversible, and works quite well for this release. if and when rot13 is no longer cutting it, we will proceed with more interesting solutions.
what license is the code available under?
- the code is distributed under the GPL. if you wish to inherit the code under the BSD or other license, please contact us.

- why dont you include some special characters so you can tell if the results are scrambled or not? (i know you were thinking about writing an email about this...)
because then anything having that string would be automatically filtered. if you're looking for something scrambled, you're gonna get scrambled results (sure, there are a few random errors). it's not that hard to switch modes.

known bugs

the tray icon does not apprear in some windows 98 systems. the application still runs properly, but there is no way to switch out of scrambled mode or to exit it. for now, exit by hitting ctrl+alt+delete (ONCE ONLY !!!), choosing "catnap" from the menu that pops up, and selecting "end task".
lots of others. small memory leak somewhere. minor stuff not implemented. some connection dropping bugs. need ability to run on machine other than localhost (for bonus firewall bypassing feature). get rid of ugly icon. if you find a bug, fix it (or you can email us about it).

changelog

2001/03/12 12:19pm PST - Compiles and runs on linux. Hosts stuff not in STL anymore (smaller binary size).
2001/03/08 9:53pm PST - Automatically sets up the hosts file
2001/03/08 1:56pm PST - Whoops, the menu could only come up once. Fixed.
2001/03/08 1:02pm PST - Menu items to switch between Scrambled and Passive (normal) mode. Thanks drizzt.
2001/03/08 5:30am PST - Initial release

credits

zip - network code and multiple bugs
zonnend - protocol handling, installer, and windows-specific code
drizzt - hosts code
thanks o for the lex and o for the support.
thanks all you guys that helped us test.