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Kazaa Lite: spyware-free version
Pig Hogger writes "According to this VNUNET article, KAZAA-Lite, a new hacked version of spyware-ridden KAZAA file-sharing software is being circulated, sans spyware. The new, improved version has apparently been hacked by a russian programmer, as a matter of course."
A program used primarily for copyright infringement has been reverse-engineered and redistributed. Does this mean that the DMCA has officially cancelled itself out? :)
Spyware, reason #84 to use free/open source software.
- Eric
Founder, monolinux
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
software thats been hacked by a friendly neighborhood russian hacker. its new kazaa light, with new and improved spyware, and a few extra trojans as an added bonus!
I ate my sig.
Every time there's a Kazaa-related article, everyone posts links to the free, sans-spyware version. I think most people already have it if they want it.
I guess now that it's got the ".com" instead of ".tk" it's official and thus gets its own Slashdot story...
::rolls eyes::
The site for the KAZAA without adware/spyware is chock full of pop-ups for "free cellphones" and the like.
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
Been using it for 2 weeks now.
Boy is life good without tons of popups.
And my firewall hasn't busted Kazaa Lite doing anything funky either.
Low popups, low funk, all good.
yummy.
"a new hacked version of spyware-ridden KAZAA file-sharing software is being circulated, sans spyware"
soooo... you're trying to tell us that its spyware-free?
</sarcasm>
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
There are some mirrors at http://www.kazaalite.tk/ when kazzalite.com crumples under the slashdot effect.
I'm at 50, so I'm not karma whoreing.
has anyone have any sucess running this under wine? since this is now the lite version, i doubt that it needs IE and should therefore work?
my blog
Is this some sort of CPM joke? This thing doesn't run on my computer. I tried doing chmod +x and downloading it multiple times, but it still doesn't work.
Besides that, the files are 10 days old. That's old software. How do I know that there hasn't been any bitrot?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I have tried it and it seems to use less resources, probably because it doesn't run those wierd ads that use up extra computer resources, and popup windows.
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
...that I read slashdot several (dozens of) times a day, and this is the first time I was even made aware of the existence of a spyware-free Kazaa! So in summary; I am one of those people who want it but don't already have it.
Just more evidence that just because you visit a website religiously, you can still miss something right under your nose.
I'm gonna check it out now.
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Kazaa Lite is 'spyware free' says creator
By James Middleton [19-04-2002]
Hacked version of file sharing software Kazaa users can now get hold of a hacked version of the peer-to-peer file sharing software which claims to be spyware free.
Earlier this month Kazaa users discovered that the client software includes what is effectively a Trojan program which connects to another network called Altnet and taps the user's processing power and storage space.
Brilliant Digital Media, the company behind the stealth peer-to-peer software, plans to activate the software on users' machines in the next few weeks and sell the resources to be used for distributed computing.
But recently released Kazaa Lite software is a hacked-up version of the Kazaa client without the third party software or banner adverts.
Created by a Russian programmer known only as 'Yuri', the illicit Kazaa Lite was developed as an alternative 'non-misleading' version of the software.
Kazaa Lite has also caught the attention of Sharman Networks, the developer of the original Kazaa software. Sharman said that it will vigorously defend its rights but has not said that it will take legal action against Kazaa Lite.
It would be difficult to block Kazaa Lite clients from accessing the Kazaa network simply because of the openness of the system which lets millions of users log on simultaneously.
KazaaLite.com has reported over 80,000 downloads since the program was released and no interoperability problems with the Kazaa network.
More info can be found at Kazaalite.com.
Instead of Kazaa et al I have switched to Gnucleus. This is one of the only real Open Source Gnutella network clients for Windows. For Linux there are so many great Open Source Gnutella clients.
It works great. No spyware or addware, and since the Gnutella network is an open P2P network it can be expected to exist when all the other proprietary networks have been closed.
According to this this article Sharman Networks is planning on taking action against Kazaa Lite...i figure it wont be long till their network wont work properly with the program (much like Morpheous).
Oh well im sure those fun-loving Russians will fight back when it happens, should be fun to watch
For the DIY-crowd, ad-aware will clean up the mess Kazaa leaves behind without too much hassle. Grab it here. It's quite nice package, too. I have it running at every startup and it's not that rare to get a "visitor" regularly. In fact, it's so nice I've been thinking of investing the $15 for the plus-version.
This is something I've been wondering about this Kazaa controversy. Sure, an unwanted program designed to take up your hard drive space and CPU cycles is "bad"-ware. It is certainly "undisclosed"-ware and "unwanted"-ware. I would even go so far as to say it is "Flushing Kazaa's reputation down the toilet"-ware. However, is "spy"-ware the right term? While a distributed computing program probably does report a fair amount of information back to the main server, it isn't usually designed to spy of the user.
What I find very strange about this whole thing is why Brilliant Digital Media wasn't more upfront about their program. Would the average computer user totally reject the upfront trade of "You get to use this neato-keen file-sharing network for free, and all you have to give us is a little bit of the computer time and space you aren't using"? I guess it would have just killed them to be honest and straightforward about the deal users were making. To paraphrase a saying "The respect you give is the respect you'll receive".
Dude, when you borrow Billy Gates comdex speech like that, you're supposed to give him formal credit for it by citing him in a footnote, at the very least. Otherwise, you're plagiarizing. It may be no big deal on slashdot, but when you go to highschool, and yes college someday... they'll expel you for that. So it's best not to make any bad habits. Here, I'll help. Add something like this to the bottom:
** Portions of this slashdot post were originally authored by William Gates, CEO Microsoft Corp., and presented orally at the 2001 Comdex convention. This post may contain both verbatim speech, and approximations of the ideas he attempted to convey.
It's been awhile, and your english teacher may give you red marks, but he/she won't be able to accuse you of turning in work that isn't your own. (Note: this won't get you off the hook, if the assignment was meant to be original, and not a research paper).
What is it lately? They are all over the web in many different areas. What has caused the russian boom?
Fellowship 9/11
I loaded Kazaa onto a computer of mine and used etherpeek to check the incoming and out going traffic. It turned out that at certain times the spyware traffic was enough to clog a standard 56K modem. If this hacked version works, I'll be more glad about the increased bandwidth that is freed up than who gets to look at the webpages I visit.
is it ironic to anyone else that the same folks that are fighting the good fight by making powerful and useful peer-to-peer information technology are the same ones that fsck us by selling their souls to advertising schmoe's just to make a buck, causing them to give us exactly what we want, and exactly what we hate at the same time??
Just ironic.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I have also come in contact with a similarly hacked version, called KaZaa Spyfree, which is basically current kazaa, with cydoor dummy files, shopping/license agreements/buddy/introduce a friend/ads(yes there is a way to cut them all out without killing the app) as well as all the other recent spyware found inside
"spyware-ridden"...
"sans spyware"
Isn't that just a little repetitively redundant?
I can't stand the irony- an ad-busting version of Kazaa, being distributed from a site rife with popups!
If you want Kazaa without Spyware, why not use Gnucleus? Gnucleus is the open-source client that Kazaa and Morpheus are directly descended from. Get it here.
I've noticed two common misconceptions - that the people running Kazaa (Sharman Networks?) can block this client easily. And also that they can stop the client being hosted on websites.
First, it's not that easy to block the client because the client is the same as the one you get from the Kazaa website, it's just had all the spyware and other crap removed. So basically the only way Kazaa could block it is by releasing a new client version and blocking all old versions.
That'd mean all users would need to download a new client (not just the users of Kazaa Lite). Plus the guy would just remove the spyware from the new version and put that up as Kazaa Lite again.
Secondly, if they somehow get the guy to stop allowing people to download from the website the guy can just go and stick it on Gnutella or another P2P service and magic - suddnely it's on 1000s of computers out there.
Basically, as someone else has said, the cat's out of the bag.
WTF? I mean, are we going to see front-page links to warez copies of AutoCAD here soon, just because we don't agree with the way Autodesk wrote their software?
It baffles me, because the link is obviously to a piece of software that is not legal, no matter what license agreement or personal feelings.
For a site that is supposed to be so Open Source aware this seems especially strange. Open Source does not condone piracy. Instead it allows for alternatives. So why not have an article about a good Open Source alternative, instead of linking to illegal software?
(Yeah, I don't like spyware either, but if people are stupid enough to install it, then that's there bad. It's an other thing for the company to make it clear that the spyware exists, but these are law-technical issues. Which should be dealth with seperately.)
No, they're opposites.
dictionary.com says:
I'm looking at the Kazaa search interface
m l
and hauntingly reminds of The Registers recent story about the Windows XP search companion. I am not a code head, but it appears to me that Kazaa's search functionality is based on something native to Windows. If Kazaalite propagates, and if it is in fact based on this parasitic search functionality, would MS get to see any of what is searched?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24815.ht
If you were intelligent enough to compare file sizes, however, you'd notice that the cd_lint.dll is different than the cd_lint.dll that comes with the bloadted and user-abusive version of Kazaa.
Now why would you suppose that is?! Perhaps it's because Kazaa checks for the cd_lint.dll and won't run without it? Yup. That's it!
So the cd_lint.dll that comes with Kazaa lite still has all the components that Kazaa checks for, but it does nothing.
No trojans for Kazaa Lite, but I think the world would appreciate if you would continue to use them. You're not ready to breed.
I did this a few months ago. Instead of hacking KaZaA, I hacked the CyDoor DLL, replacing the old on with my version that simply does nothing.
You can get the code at: http://www.bakedbeans.com/cydoor/
I haven't used Kazaa in months, before they started adding the spyware. But is the spyware part of the Kazaa application or a separate app loaded by the installer?
If it's a seperate program then it should be easy to update the hack everytime they change anything on the server side.
If it's an integral part of Kaaza then it's impossible to separate them - just like IE is part of Windows - just ask Micro$oft.
it even says during install "kazaa lite will put a dummy cd_clint.dll in the install folder, this is a harmless version that does nothing, although older ad-aware versions mark it as spyware. this is not true and please choose 'ignore' on this file when running ad-aware"
so we can safely assume that this person cannot read. if microsofts EULA has text like "bill g. is allowed to rip your still beating heart out of your chest if you refuse to burn your linux box" he wouldn't even notice...
I wonder if Sharman Networks would have bought Kaaza if they knew their profit could be so easily hacked away.
from smcv:
>No, they're opposites.
>dictionary.com says:
>ridden Pronunciation Key (rdn)
>...
>adj.
>Dominated, harassed, or obsessed by. Often used in combination: disease-ridden; grief-ridden.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
from Z4rd0Z:
>Isn't your own statement a little "repetively redundant" as well, or are you just trying to be ironic?
Isn't that just a little repetitively redundant?
(Taken in the original context of course...)
P2P must be OpenSource - all else is the same old crap in new clothes only. Hacking it doesn't make it any better - it's still hidden source from my point of view.
I'm not going to run anything 'free' on my hosts which is not OpenSource. Full stop.
Meant as a joke. Maybe a bit too long, could have been 4 or 5 lines shorter, I'm sure. Do they hand out free crack with the mod points, or what? I hope someone with half a clue m2's this.
No, you are correct. Slashdot posters need to properly credit their sources. Also, the editors need to take journalism 101. Also, the moderation system is broken.
So what else is new?
It took a while to realize what kind of spyware kazaa was, even with lots of people using it for a long time.
Now we have this 'hacked' version with the spyware apparently removed. I don't know the author, there is no company behind it, it is not open source... and nonetheless we all jump over it, trusting it does what it says...
How do I know it doesn't contain some extra spyware?
I have not any indication that kazaalite is not a legitimate software, but again, I have not any indication on the contrary... I think there is something very wrong in the way we accept and instantly trust new software.
My question is WHY should I trust this more than kazaa?
What happened with Linux version of Kazaa client? Are there plans to make it back?
As it stands, I dont have a firewall/bridge in my house, but soon I will, and £10 says there is a way to ensure the malware in Kazaa doesnt call home. Or does kazaa not like being masqed in the first place? Its nice to see Kazaa Lite, hope it stays available.
loply.com
P2P-networks (all of them) cannot compete with good old ftp-tranding anyway. :)
First, they are too slow, and second... what's up with all those movies etc. that is renamed to something other than what they are.. does anyone think they get more credit if they spread more GB's on these networks... ?
How hard can it be to make some friends on the net and download from them, and for mp3 there is only one: Audiogalaxy never let meg down
"If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
Just a thought: Given that Russia does not have a DMCA-type law,
how motivated would they be to extradite these guys to the USA?
(Given, of course, that they figure out whodunnit)
It seems to me the russian police have a bit more important things to do..
Any russians here who'd like to comment on this?
i read it on CHIP (!) already. And this is like CNet, yesterdays News today in german. But i gotta admit this works and i use it.
Kazaa really sucked and when im running Win2k (yes, its a dualboot machine) i keep it open, much less performance greedy than the official Kazaa, what makes me believe in the spyware-free promise. I am writing redundant silly stuff?? Yeah, no wonder just got back from a weekendlong LAN, and had no sleep at all...
gnite,
Lispy
It's a dummy dll - to fool some routine in the program that checks to see if it's there. It
doesn't do anything.
Well, if you had bothered keeping up with P2P at all, you would see that:
a) Morhpeus was Kazaa, now is Gnutella
b) Gnutella sucks ass
c) WinMX isn't quite as good as Kazaa
and
d) Kazaa-lite is specifically spyware-free.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
The point of this is to make it easier for us lazy-ass bastards who don't want to fiddle with our registry manually.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
...they probably moved all the adverts from kazaa to popup windows on their webpage :)
It's already exists since one month, it's in french and it's named Omega. http://membres.lycos.fr/bakamx/
what they mean is freespyware ,not spyware-free...
i mean come on, they wouldn't post it if it weren't somewhat better on the matter of spyware than the original is, now would they? right? then again...
--tzan
I'm pretty sure that was on the EULA for Visual .NET, but I just clicked-through as usual.
If he has nothing to hide, why not open source the project? That way we could see all the trojans he didn't put in. oh yeah, and then I could port it to BSD!!! I say we email the author and start a petition!!!
danceanthems@kazaalite.com
If you like this free version, I'd click on those links, even if they are "annoying", and "waste valuable seconds of your day you could be using to look up photoshop'ed naked jpegs of the cast of Enterprise".
No irony, really.
-- The unsig...
I think this does fall in the realm of "stuff that matters".
Whatever one's personal feelings are regarding the P2P "community", the simple truth is that it's eventually going to change the way we buy music, movies, and probably everything we purchase in digital form. Personally, I find the whole thing fascinating.
Another truth is that while we can make all the ethical arguments we want, we (the geeks) are the ones to blame. Who creates the technology to make pirating so ridiculously easy? We do. Who dreams up and builds P2P networks that are nearly impossible to shut down? We do. Of course on the flip side we are also building the measures to prevent such copying or at least make it extremely difficult, but for every talented person doing their best to stop piracy there is another equally talented person ready to take on whatever challenge the other dreams up.
My point here is not to endorse anything, but rather to say that whatever you personally may think about the whole thing, the repercussions will effect us all.
So what happens when people start distributing K-Lite over Morpheus? Will Sharman sue StreamCast for copyright infringement?
(ring ring)
"Hello? Pot? This is Kettle. Yo' black!"
You should be careful, you could have split personalities like in fight club. One a nice guy another an evil spyware producing hacker!
Veramocor
Be careful of saying things like "the only way Kazaa could block it is...". There is always another way. In fact, I thought of one while reading your post:
Imagine that one of the pieces of spyware is designed to send out an "I'm alive!" message to a central server, to let it know that it has an activated client. This isn't too hard to imagine, I don't think. Suppose Kazaa blocked access to its network to any host that did not send an "I'm alive!" message. There you go, it's blocked.
Now, the Russian folks could combat this with two different techniques: modify the Kazaa client itself to send out the "I'm alive!" message, but this will likely cause CRC/integrity checks to fail.
The other possibility is to create a new process that sends the "I'm alive!" messages to the spyware servers. Problem with this is, it isn't much better than the spyware it replaced, in terms of system and network resources.
Thats one of the main reasons why people do warez. How are they otherwise going to get the latest stuff? The stores are slow so its easier to just warezed it. Ok, most of the time its just a money issue. But I for one warezed Quake3 as soon as I could to get some extra practice, then I bought the game when it eventually hit the stores where I live.
Warez are a lot more convenient than actually buying the products. Maybe not so much in the US and other countries where broadband or adsl isnt as common as Sweden. Here the p2p underground has a real stronghold. Whatever you want, its probably the fastest way to get it on Direct Connect. If you have a phat pipe (10 Mbits or so) and some 50-100 Gigs worth of movies/progs you can access the best hubs. 6-800 users and 15-20 Tbytes of data, that will keep you busy for a while. And thats just one hub of many.
Quite a few comments mention the availability of this software over the Kazaa network itself, should the main server be taken down or slashdotted.
Could someone with an "official" file from the website please post the MD5 signature of this file, giving everyone who intends to download over Kazaa a small measure of security against downloading a trojan?
Congrats, sir!
;-)
To celebrate, why don't you just hop over to the US and we'll let you explain how you did it at a conference
-twb
This explanation is available within the installer file (v1.6.0, english). All in all, this sounds very reasonable and plausible to me:
Jakob Breivik Grimstveit
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."
Easy. None of the damn things scale.
Napster was great untill too many people used Napster. Then it was Gnutella, but soon too many people used that too. Then Morpheus, then Kazaa... Each emerges, gains popularity, and is destroyed by it's own popularity.
Here's a clue - any network where a message from a client is supposed to perpetuate to every other client is doomed to failure as the number of users increase. No amount of CPU or bandwidth that we will see in the near future can save it.
Who is starting the next P2P sacrifical network? Might as well get on board before it becomes popular and the honeymoon ends.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I uninstalled kazaa v1.5 and installed kazaa-lite v1.6 a week ago and it is great. No ads or popups. Edited the registry to get rid of the bandwith limit for mp3s. My firewall hasn't detected any unusual traffic. Adaware isn't able to fing anything. And packet trace is clean. Looks good.