Slashdot Mirror
Has the RIAA Wormed 95% of P2P Networks?
DancingSword was one of many to submit links to a strange story about
the RIAA hacking back by sending a worm through the major peer-to-peer networks, supposedly with a 95% infestation rate. Hoax or not?
No mention of whether this affectes Windows clients/hosts or not. Any idea?
Forget the RIAA bashing, the Gobbles guys know what they do. That said, this is very un-gobbles from what I've seen from them in the past. Not the technology, but the comments in the source, for example. Then again, they're supposedly a large group.
From the little info that is available, I'd give them a 50-50 chance that it's true. That would be interesting.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Indeed. The Berman Bill has not become law, and under the USA Patriot Act, Hacking can be considered terrorism. One thing we sould all do is boycott the recording industry.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Currently, systrace is available for OpenBSD and NetBSD, but work is going on to make it available for Linux as well.
So, any program you have that opens untrusted content (xmms, mplayer, mozilla, etc) can be run with systrace, and you can selectively enable certain types of activity all the time... disallow certain activities allways, and be prompted for selective approval or denial of everything else.
Even though I believe this to be a hoax, it's certainly true that it could be done, and something like systrace is needed to guarantee a bug in a program you run can't be used to take over your system.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I take back what I said--ok, so the RIAA may not have the brightest lightbulbs, but they can outsource.
:Peter
BUT...
Unless I am mistaken (already happened once today), this is just a buffer exploit. By the end of the work day, there should be patches for mpg123, xmms, and any other open source mp3 player affected. Then what is the RIAA going to do? Bang its collective shoe on the table and scream "Kill them! Kill them!"?
Ya know what pisses me off? If this is true, then users like myself have been illegitamately hit.
I have a copy of Metallica's Kill Em All on tape. My tape is pretty worn out. So I hit the Fastrack network to download the songs. Now under Canadian law, this is perfectly legal as I own an original copy of the album.
But now my PC is infected by a worm/trojan because a cartel ^H^H^H^H^H some 'company' believes that everyone who downloads MP3s are doing so illegally. Nice when a company thinks that everyone is a criminal. Congress really needs to wake up and start protecting the people again, and not mega corporations. And other countries need to shove back when the US tries to push it's own laws onto them.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
The scary thing behind what was posted to Bugtraq is that it explicitly states that all digital media on the system is cataloged, and the list is sent to the RIAA. This assumes all digital media on a system is an illegal copy.
Yes, it does. And it shows what criminal, despicable, disgusting excuses for human beings work for, or with, the RIAA.
Sure, if the worm comes into your system over a P2P network, there's a good chance that at least *some* of your mp3s are pirated, but there's no way to differentiate pirated mp3s and those you ripped/encoded from your own CD collection.
All of my mp3 and ogg files are ripped from my own rather large, but no longer growing CD and Vinyl collection (because now I do not buy CDs, ever, nor will I, ever again). All of my avi's are recorded from my own television, my own animations, or my own media, and are not traded, ever. Indeed, none of my stuff is traded, ever.
However, I did install gtk-gnutella in order to download the hiliarious fan fiction Star Trek episode "Savage Empire", because the web site distributing the files had been slashdoted. A perfectly legal download, for which, if this story is true, these unlawful thugs have infected my machine.
I have enough money, and the will, to persue a very harsh lawsuit against these fucks if this story has any veracity, and if I am infected, and I will not hesitate to do so.
"In Corporate Fascist America You and Your Data Belong to the Copyright and Media Cartels. Bend Over and Enjoy the Ride, Consumer."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't pretend to know much about the gory details of how it works, but P2P has never struck me as the best way ever invented to ensure the integrity of your system.
Last week a client asked to bring his PC into the cybercafe to download some files using eDonkey. After a couple of days, my observations were that
So I told him to take his eDonkey elsewhere... is there any way to know what you are really connected to with this sort of system?
Virtually serving coffee
If you read the artical, you'll see that they code they released was for a UNIX Mp3 player, which means they certanly have the capacity to infect Unix machines using mpeg123, I doubt windows programs would be much harder, and I DID just upgraded winamp to cover up a buffer overflow problem in the id3 tag...
An MP3 based virus is possible these days, and it could easily spread to all your mp3s once activated. (even on unix, since obviously your mp3 player is going to have access to those files, unless they are read-only)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I download many mp3s via p2p, easily putting me in the 95%, I ahve zone alarm running on my P2P, and have never had any hits attempting to go outbound, with the latest versions of zone alarm, they can't merely mimic application names to get through, wouldn't this BS be provable by someone out there monitoring outbound network traffic....I'm calling HS hoax
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
Yes, it *is* the artist's choice. Artists get to choose from one of three options:
(a) sell yourself to the RIAA,
(b) spend wads of cash letting people know you exist, or
(c) wither into oblivion.
Do *you* have wads of cash? No? Well, don't ever try to write music and expect anyone but your friends to hear it, then.
Some artists get lucky and get their name out via the Internet, or sign with an independent label.. but 90% of the artists you hear all the time are formerly-no-name guys that the RIAA noticed and invested in.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
First, every time we buy a blank CD, DVD, VHS, or even audio cassette tape we are helping them out. There is a tax which we, in the US, pay every time we purchase any of the above. We also pay it every time we buy a radio, TV, or even a computer. So - we lose.
Every time we rent a CD, DVD, VHS, or even game cartridge - we are (again) paying this tax. So we lose there also.
Should we buy a book, a script, magazine, newspaper, or the like we are probably still paying this tax. So we've lost again.
Finally, even if everyone in the US refused to have anything else to do with the RIAA or MPAA they are still powerful enough to have new laws passed. As in "Atlas Shrugged," by Ayn Rand, if they can not take our money legally - then the thing to do is to change the laws so they can take it legally. After all - laws are nothing more than rules by which we play and those who have the money usually get to make the rules.
Sorry if this shocks anyone but the truth is that it is only because we respected each other, had a unified common sense approach to things, a scrupulous populus, and the knowledge that if you did wrong you would be held accountable for it - that we have made it this far. The "Anything goes" way of looking at things, not holding people's feet to the fire for doing something wrong, and (as bad as it might seem) not being willing to put to death those who really are doing terrible things to others (like Enron's execs who have ruined hundreds if not thousands of people's lives) that has caused us to come to this. What these people are doing is, IMHO, treasonous. Look it up. The act of "Treason" is where two or more groups (whether they be people, organizations, corporations, or whatever) attempt to remove the rights of their fellow citizens. According to the texts it is their "intentions" which merit this stamp So ask yourself this - what are their intentions when they attempt to force upon you their yoke of slavery? What are their "intentions" when they try to sneak, like theives, laws into Congress which remove our rights and preserve or expand upon their rights. What are their intentions? Those intentions are to take away your rights.
Now, someone will probably say "You don't go around killing people just because they are trying to get laws passed." That's true. You don't. Normally. But this is different. It is different because they are not trying to get laws passed for the betterment of mankind or to right an injustice. No. They are trying to twist the laws and our country (Heck! The world even!) to their needs. To enslave it. To enshackle it to their beliefs. Just like some religious cults have tried to enslave others to their will. It is an evil thing to do and it will have terrible consequences if it is allowed to endure.
Even if they were only brought up on charges it would shake up the corporate world enough that many things companies are beginning to attempt to do through the rewriting of our laws would be stopped. Companies would think twice about trying to change laws so they benefit only them and remove our rights. Which brings up - why do groups think they can get away with this? The answer is - they have in the past. The difference is the internet. Whereas before there was this huge time lag between when something happened and when we knew about it - now it only takes hours or minutes for word to be sent and a transgression found out. The problem is still though the complancey of many of the people in our country. "Oh! I might get involved." some whine. "I don't have the time." another chats. "It's not my place." a third comments. If you don't stand up and write your congressmen/women then you are already shackled. You already bear their mark. You already curl up at their feet, lick their hands, and eat the crumbs they throw to you.
So as always the question is - what are you going to do about it? Wallow in the filth on the floor or write and demand that these groups stop trying to infringe on your god given rights!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.