Earthstation5 Responds to Malware Claims

Zip In The Wire writes "Random Nut, AKA Shaun Garriok, the Author of Kazaalite, has been a vocal critic of Earthstation5 because of a continual online insult war between himself and some rowdy Earthstation5 fans. This has motivated him to be extremely critical of Earthstation5." (We reported yesterday Garriok's claims that Earthstation5 contains spyware.) "We at Earthstation5 desire and request criticism at any time in fact we demand it as we believe that is the only way to make software truly superior." Read on for the rest of Zip In The Wire (Filehoover, ES5's lead programmer)'s explanation, in which he also points to an updated version of the software, and challenges all takers to find spyware within it.

"We at Earthstation5 are not perfect, but we acknowledge that Shaun Garriok might be and thank him for helping us root out bugs.

The problem with the Earthstation5 software that Shaun Garriok found truly exists; however, the sordid motives he attributes to Earthstation5 are incorrect. The following functions were put into Earthstation5 to allow automatic, remote upgrade of the Earthstation5 software.

These functions are:

1. Reload Earthstation5
2. Shutdown Earthstation5
   
3. Delete a File

All of these functions are necessary to perform when upgrading software.

We have long been admirers of Shaun Garriok's ability to superbly investigate even a fully compiled program. We believe that he is capable of finding ANY sort of trojan, worm, or bug inside a compiled program. We are relieved that all he could find was these remote upgrade functions. He didn't find any bugs that send user data anywhere, no spyware, no adware, nothing, in fact, that gives away any personal information about the user using Earthstation5.

It is also a fortunate fact that since Earthstation5 protects you from the RIAA lawsuits and hackers by hiding your ip address, the exploit program he wrote can only be used against your own computer, which he states in his exploit. If you want to delete files from your own computer, we feel you have the right to do that.

We are glad he found this bug and pointed it out. We completely removed the automatic software upgrade code because as it turns out automatic upgrade is no longer popular as it once was because it gives people an uneasy feeling and rightly so.

Since Shaun Garriok seems to be concerned about everyone's security, and is not on a personal quest for revenge, we would be grateful if he would download the latest Earthstation5 (version 1.1.31), and verify that we have truly removed the remote-update function which his exploit program accessed. We think his dedication to the good of all concerned would motivate him to do this. Anyone else who is concerned can do the same; download the latest Earthstation5 and test the exploit code against it.

-- Filehoover, Lead Programmer of ES5."