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If a BitTorrent tracker is placed on an arbitrary server, will the people hosting it be able to access the files it is tracking? (Given that they are not able to obtain the .torrent files).

As far as I can tell, they cannot. But it would be nice to be sure. Thanks for your input.

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Yes, they can very easily download the files if it is a public torrent by making a magnet link
(magnet:?xt=urn:btih:[torrent hash]&tr=[tracker url]) and using any torrent client.

If the torrent was not marked as private when it was created (public), the important part (the info dictionary) of the torrent file, can be obtained through the Extension for Peers to Send Metadata Files - BEP9

Even if it was marked private there is a small risk of leakage, as there is a few clients that don't deactivate BEP9 on private torrents. Example: Vuze <=5.1.0.0

It is also possible by using a modified torrent client to download the torrent without access to the metadata as a 'blob' by using trial & error and guess the piece size and the number of pieces. The 'blob' will contain all the files in the torrent concatenated together and will miss the file names.

They don't even need to have access to the server. It is enough to have access to the servers internet connection and listen to the (unencrypted) traffic to get the torrent hash.

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