Slashdot Mirror
Earthstation 5 Claimed to be Malware
Rob from RPI writes "You may remember the announcement about a company, or program, or both called Earthstation 5 who recently 'Declared War' on the MPAA. Well guess what? Turns out that it's got code in it that allows anyone to delete any file on your computer. I suggest that you un-install as soon as possible!"
Because the link is on geocities it's sure to be
Don't trust code from sources you don't know. I only provide these for the inevitable geocities
We'll be more than glad to hear your comments or questions at:
Ras Kabir 121 Gaza Gaza, Palestine
phone: +972 673 51065
fax-no: +972 673 51065
e-mail: ras@earthstationv.com
For General Sales and related questions,
contact: sales@earthstationv.com
If you are a member of the Press,
please contac us at: press@earthstationv.com
For Suggestions on ways we can improve our software, please contact us at: suggestions@earthstationv.com
As of this writing, I haven't seen a single follow-up post.
Is it true? I don't know, Is it a hoax? I don't know that either. It has more than a few caveats about using the exploit, that's for sure.
What I do know is that that Geocities site with the exploit code will disappear bandwidth constrained faster than snot. :)
Link to Zeropaid discussion with the actual code http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/1002200 3i.php
This is a good example which shows again and again that any closed source is inherently not trustable. When you are installing a proprietory software, you are basically trusting them not to screw you up or put any back door. Nobody has any guaranty that windows or any other closed source software is free of this issue. Safe bet is to stick with open source software exclusively.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
I heard about this yesterday from a posting by Random Nut (the individual that discovered this exploit as well as earlier security holes in Kazaa) on Zeropaid.com (forum link: http://www.zeropaid.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=15259 ).
3 23)
f =40&t=5645&s=1ec6bf29bb73061ed185cbc3018f04b8) . Registration required to view forums, but it is worth it! The ESV forums are interesting since they make allegations of other site's involvement with the RIAA, MPAA, etc. yet have included a questionable exploit in their own software. These forums are rife with rhetoric and double-talk of Orwellian proportions.
The security exploit is being tested by members of the p2p community and has been shown to be a viable exploit (forum link: http://www.p2pforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=20323#20
The operators of ESV have been slow to directly answer questions regarding this exploit:(http://forums2.es5.com/index.php?act=ST&
Please check your history before you post. The Palestinians did not come into existence until 16 years after the British handed over 1/3 of what the UN resolution required to form present-day Israel.
That's either amazing ignorance you've got there, or just the most blatant bit of lying I've seen on Slashdot for days. The "protectorate" of Palestine existed between the two world wars, and was effectively a colony of the British Empire. Jewish immigration increased dramatically during this period, a result of increased interest in Zionism, itself largely a result of anti-Jewish activity in Europe.
Palestine may not have been an independent nation state, but the Palestinian people had existed as a distinct race since biblical times when the Semitic tribes split along religious grounds. Remember that Jews and Palestinians are both Semitic races.
Israel was created following the even bigger influx of Jewsih refugees after the Second World War. Many of these refugees brought bitter memories of the concenration camps with them, and a willingness to use force to gain a nation state. The British were unable to control the situation, having been effectively bankrupted by the war, and eventually pulled out after increased bombings of their official buildings, etc. The result was bloodshed, as the Jewish militias ehnically cleansed large parts of Palestine. Pretty ironic considering the background to the Jewish desire for a nation state.
Chris
You're too right about the price staying where it is. And having been a recording artist, I can say that a run of a brick of CD's (1000) costs about $4 per when you want it to be nice and professional. That's just the material costs. Also, there's a $0.015 (unfairly low.. they haven't had a raise since the 50's) per song fee to songwriters, the artist generally get's close to $1 per cd sold (that's fair I think). The rest goes to the label for all their "hard work."
For expected gold-platinum cd's, $8 is probably fair, but for those that are only selling 1k-10k, that might be a stretch. Of course, you could argue that they should be selling for that, maybe breaking even, just to get their music into the hands of the public, who will pay to see them live.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
I'm curious - how can it be determined without the benefit of source code for ES5 that the exploit isn't just a horrendous oversight instead of a malicious pre-meditated function of the software?
Well, I'm curious - what more proof do you want?
The FD post made it clear that a particular function of the ES5 software ("0Ch, sub-function 07h") caused the behaviour. That's a completely separate function that seems to have the sole purpose of deleting files remotely. The likelyhood of such code ever getting near the network/command interpreter accidentally is rather slim.
Maybe if it occurred as part of another function I could believe it was accidental, but not when it's on its own. If that makes any sense ;)
While I too disagree with the 'conspiracy theory' story behind all this, it seems to me from the information given that they've got blood on their hands.
You're obviously not a coder.
A buffer overflow involves, guess it, overflowing a buffer. Putting a different byte in the command field of a packet -- without any changes in length -- is absolutely not a buffer overflow.
Jumping to a delete routine based on what's in that byte is not a "deliberate mistake".
As nice as it would be to do a bit of wishful thinking -- as a professional coder, I can state this behaviour was clearly intentionally added.
And where can you get such a feed for such a low cost?
clicky for instance. ok ok, $9.95/mo :)
I do not advocate for either side of this conflict, but the Palestinians WERE NOT a race descended from biblical times. The modern Palestinian "race" was a hodge podge combination of immigrants from various African and Middle-Eastern countries during the 1800's and 1900's. The are virtually no Palestinians who can claim any more historical right to that land than the Israelis.
Once again, I think they are both wrong, but you cannot make the claim that you have. The historical record is incontrovertible in this respect.
Are the people here history-challenged, or what? A bigger bunch of baloney has never been posted.
There may have been a territory called "Palestine" for years, but there were no "Palestinians". There are Arabs happening to live in that territory.
WRT the "ethnic cleansing", I note that no evidence is provided. That would indeed be hard, since there cannot be any as none occurred.
I don't get it, how can you fake the WHOIS registry? I thought there was some follow up needed?
Man! All this time I've been putting my real name and address on like a sucker. Which is a pisser, b/c it really bothers me that people can look me up if they find something offensive on my website.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
But normally, during the mandate, the British tended to refer to them as 'Arabs'.
The *maintainer* of Earthstation V's domain record is fom Israel. I do not know what this signifies.
To see this, go here and click on the mnt-by ("maintained by") link.
This just goes to show that you can not trust closed proprietary code. It is pretty weird that these ES5 guys would come out the way they did with big mouths. Either they work for the RIAA/MPAA or they *wanted* to be a target. I think it is the first one. If you are going to share files, make sure that you
1. Use open source applications only.
2. Share files that you have the legal right to share.
3. If you do share some illegal file, see 1.
There are 1,000's of songs out there that can be legally shared, and there are tens of thousands of files/applications out there that can be legally shared. Share those and dump the RIAA/MPAA all together. There is a good Open Source P2P app out there called giFT. It can connect to OpenFT, Gnutella and Kazza (FastTrack). giFT
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
"Palestine" and "Palestinian" are names that were given to a particular group of arabs by the Romans between 100BC - 200AD. This name came from the latin-ization of "philestine," which was one of the tribes. The only problem is that the people that were labelled such were not members of this tribe! The Romans just didn't know what to call these people, and so called them Palestinians. Palestine never existed before the Romans, although Israel definitely did.
I can't stand it when people insist that there is a Palestine. It doesn't exist on the map, and the members of this "nation" are really just arabs with their head-wiring done wrong.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
Easynews.
Palestine may not have been an independent nation state, but the Palestinian people had existed as a distinct race since biblical times when the Semitic tribes split along religious grounds. Remember that Jews and Palestinians are both Semitic races.
ROFLMAO,
The Palestinian "race" started as a mixture of ancestral Jews who converted to Christanity, Hellenistic Greeks who converted to Christanity, and smaller ammounts of assorted semites who converted to Christanity during the later stages of the Roman Empire. The Arabic Conquest added the Arab language and Arab Genes to the mix, and in most cases a conversion to Islam, though there remains a fairly large percentage of Palestinians who are Christians. Palestinians are an ethnic subgroup of the arab culture, NOT a race.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The person who posted this advisory is definitely not a Joe Schmoe.
:)
This is Random Nut. THE Random Nut. You may have heard of him? No? Does KaZaA Lite K++ ring any bells at all? That's him. He knows what he's talking about. If you don't, try the exploit for yourself. Works as he says it does. Or decompile ES5 on a sacrificial machine.
Warning: ES5 is very obviously a crock of shit and I've been saying so since release; alarm bells were ringing for me, frankly, as soon as I saw the website, especially the amusing comments (I'd link, but it's Flash) about Freenet, which is anonymous - ES5's "anonymity"? Well, you can download using overloaded, possibly monitored public web proxies. Streaming movies? From a Dutch web server via mms. Free porn? Thumbnail pages. Notice, though, no special features regarding music. Odd, that. Odd, isn't it?
The alarm bells rang loudly enough for me that when I tried it out, I tried it out on a sacrificial machine. About thirty minutes later I dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda'd the machine from a LiveCD - I'd seen enough.
I'll say again now what I said then, only with the hunches of the K++ creator backing it up as well as my own hunches: EarthStation5 is probably an RIAA-linked sting operation.
Plus, it doesn't even fucking work.