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Finnish Firm Claims Fake P2P Hash Technology

Posted by timothy on from the spy-vs.-spy-isn't-even-to-frame-2-yet dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As reported by The Inquirer, a Finnish company known as Viralg Oy claim to have developed software that can create a junk file with the same hash as a genuine p2p download. This, according to the company, can altogether stop the sharing of copywritten files by flooding p2p networks with corrupt/junk data, which then spreads through the network, causing less and less of the original file to be available. However, with the resolve of the p2p userbase, is this software really going to 'beat all Peer 2 Peer pirates at their own game,' or simply prove a minor annoyance?"

7 of 748 comments (clear)

  1. Allow me to be one the first to say... by Ann+Elk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bullshit. "Virtual Algorithms" my ass.

    1. Re:Allow me to be one the first to say... by bigberk · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Bullshit. "Virtual Algorithms" my ass.
      You called it. They can either do proper MD5/SHA1 collisions with unchanged filesize, or they can't. My guess is, they can't.
  2. Re:They have cracked strong hashes, huh? by martok · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Indeed. In order for example to do this with
    BitTorrent, they would need to be able to
    generate colisions in sha1 hashes. The
    implications of which would go well beyond p2p.

  3. Only The Whole File? by TheFlyingGoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't most P2P programs use MD5? I was also under the assumption that P2P programs do a checksum on each piece of the file they receive, and if it's inaccurate it automatically re-downloads that part of the file. I've had pieces of a bittorrent download fail due to corruption and the client has just downloaded that part again.

    Seems like this company's setup would only work in very specific circumstances, meaning it won't have much of an effect at all.

    --
    You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
  4. Re:They have cracked strong hashes, huh? by CharonX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And the best:
    You cracked SHA-1. Oh well, time to switch to SHA-256

    --
    +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
  5. Re:They have cracked strong hashes, huh? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure that they just found some P2P client that has a weak hash and managed to make a generator for that. Then they are either morons that don't know there's more than one hash algorithm, or they do and are just pimping it to try and get money.

    Either way, I give it about a 0 chance they figured out how to quickly find collisions in a strong hash space. If they had, they'd be talking to the NSA, not the RIAA.

  6. This is so stupid by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If the copyright issues were not present here and someone built a program that did something like this, they would be universally reviled as a malicious hacker. Hey! Here's a program that creates phony web pages with false information masquerading as legitimate pages! Here's one that copies Excel spreadsheets on the web and subtly pollutes the database with phony information, then stores multiple copies around with the same name! This handy tool attaches to a photocopy machine and randomly scrambles the words on the page you are photocopying!!

    P2P is a technology. Yes it can be used for copyright violations, just like a photocopy machine or tape recorder. But it also has amazing possibilities in terms of creating a universal organic archive. Crippling like this -- and through using lawsuits -- is an unnecessary attack on a system in its infancy.

    The copyright issues will work themselves out -- until the 20th century human art and ingenuity survived for thousands of years without the ability to make millions selling recorded music and video. If p2p has a major effect on the entertainment industry's ability to profit (and I'm still not convinced that it really will), human art and culture will survive. And people will continue to find ways to make a living creating art.