Distributed Computing Program Hidden in Kazaa

The_THOMAS writes: "A federal securities filing Monday revealed that the hugely downloaded Kazaa P2P (file sharing) software contains a piggyback program which will create a second, new, network controlled by Brilliant Digital. They plan to awaken the software, already on millions of computers, within the next four weeks. The program will be used to host and distribute other companies' content and may be used for distributed computing. Read the details here."

Comments

sad but true - it's real AND messy

[ted danson]

It's legit, irritatingly enough.

The program hides itself in different locations all over your hard drive, including copies of itself in your OS root and /system32 folders (if you're running Windoze)

It's a bitch and a half to purge. There's no unistaller, and it's got dozens of registry entries to manually erase.

(Search for 'bde' and 'b3d' on your HD and your registry to make sure you get it all.)

I can only imagine the looks on people's faces when a gigantic 3D Cameron Diaz appears on people's computer screens and commandeers their system.

Re:what a joke!

[0xB]

I'm not sure if this is an april fools joke or not

It's in their annual report and I don't think the SEC like jokes.

Fighting sneakware

[Sheetrock]

I'm currently fed up with what I'll call sneakware, that's pre-installed software on my 2 yr old laptop which has woken up and installed software and changed default settings. I caught Adobe Photo Deluxe changing itself when I went to edit some photos. I can't even figure out how to stop it, short of yanking the phone cord out of the modem when it goes to connect to websites. Bastards.

You might have tried something like this already, but if not download or buy a package that monitors programs that try to access anything through TCP/IP and warns you when a program is trying to do something you haven't authorized over the network. Tiny Personal Firewall has worked out pretty well for me and is free for home use. It works in most cases, unless the application has a legit reason to use a particular port and also uses it for something you wouldn't expect. Adobe Photo Deluxe doesn't sound like it'd fit into that category, however...

Re:The USA PATRIOT Act to the Rescue!

[Sancho]

If you're using Kazaa, you did consent. Read the EULA sometime.

4. Upgrades and Access.
(a) You acknowledge that BDE may from time to time provide future programming fixes, updates and upgrades to you ("b3d Updates"), including automatic updates to KaZaA and other software bundled with KaZaA, through automatic electronic dissemination and other means. You consent to such automatic updates and agree that the terms and conditions of this Agreement will apply to all such b3d Updates.
(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.

Of course, EULAs have yet to be stress-tested in our court system, but are *you* going to have the money to win the court case?

Erik

Re:You forgot two things...

[Jouster]

Except (from the EULA displayed when installing the Kazaa software):

(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.

You hit "I agree" on this thing in order to install the software. Thus, they are not exceeding the rights you have explicitly granted them.

Jouster