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MediaDefender's BitTorrent-Based DOS Takes Down Revision3

Posted by timothy on from the well-that's-certainly-reasonable dept.

Sandman1971 writes "Over the long Memorial Day weekend, Revision3 was the target of a malicious Denial Of Service Attack which brought R3 to its knees. After investigating the matter, it was discovered that the source of the attacks came from MediaDefender, the famed company hired by the MPAA and RIAA to try and stop the spread of illegal file sharing. The kicker? Revision3 was taken down for running a bittorent tracker to distribute its own legal content."

9 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Criminal investigation? by mrbah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks to me like MediaDefender is in clear violation of at least two subsections of 18 USC 1030. Where is the federal criminal investigation?

    1. Re:Criminal investigation? by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Hella nice! (TFA is 404'd here too).


      So... how long until we see MediaDefender's board get perp-walked? (too much to hope for seeing the RIAA board getting arrested, but hey...)


      *sigh*... I know, I know. MediaDefender will likely claim that some poor (scapegoated) bastard employee of theirs did it without authorization, yadda yadda... then said poor bastard will get to watch in horror as his entire life goes down the toilet.


      Then again, if it does go down like that, it would stand as a prime example of how one should always give priority to personal ethics before accepting a job offer...

      /P

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    2. Re:Criminal investigation? by provigilman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Even worse though, Media Defender allegedly committed a crime in response to a perfectly legal activity. The only thing on that torrent tracker, prior to Media Defender injecting all sorts of nastiness into it, was just their own videos and podcasts. Basically, it's no different than an RSS feed you'd get from some place like /., they just used BitTorrent to do it.

      --
      "Life's short and hard, like a body building elf." -- The Bloodhound Gang
    3. Re:Criminal investigation? by ePhil_One · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Your argument contains one common fallacy. Corporate executives aren't even remotely normal. The executives aren't being sued, the company is. This sort of "Take-down" company is treading on thin ice legally, one such misfire as this and they can lose the company.

      Trick is, they are well aware and have likely structured the company to allow a simple simple collapse w/ minimal loss, after which MediaProtector will be reborn from the ashes, a completely different company w/ the exact same staff and an identical client list.

      Best bet is to go after the company that hired them; prove they paid this company to break the law for them. The RIAA/MPAA will have a harder time collapsing and reforming...

      --
      You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
    4. Re:Criminal investigation? by NotBornYesterday · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Best bet is to go after the company that hired them; prove they paid this company to break the law for them. The RIAA/MPAA will have a harder time collapsing and reforming... Didn't Tanya Anderson sue them under RICO laws? What you describe is the kind of shell-game asset preservation that RICO was designed in part to thwart. IANAL, and can't say whether those particular laws would apply in this case, but I'd love to see the poetic justice of the mafIAA brought down by laws designed to take down the original mafia.
      --
      I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
    5. Re:Criminal investigation? by mishehu · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, the corporate shield doesn't provide complete immunity. This being a criminal offense being committed by the company, I highly doubt that the heads of the company could simply say "oh gee, so and so wanted us to do it, and we have this agreement with them that absolves us of all wrongdoing." IANAL but my lawyer has advised me of such in the past when I was asked by previous employers to sabotage clients' networks to generate more income for the company - I would have no legal shield saying "my boss said to do it so I did like a robot." He also reiterated that the same goes for the officers and board of a corporation along with its employees.

      The more likely scenario is that they had some patsy of theirs perform this attack, and they'll feed him straight to the feds to save their asses.

  2. Re:smells like... by scubamage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not to mention any discovery in this matter can and WILL be used by states who are currently investigating mediadefender for performing investigations without proper licensing.

  3. Re:god save their souls by scubamage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its doubtful that anyone will hack into any of those closed systems for the most part. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see mediadefender start getting nailed VERY hard bandwidth wise. I wonder how many syn packets or christmas tree packets it takes to fill up a 9gbps pipe?

  4. Re:Good point. by mollymoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That wasn't the greatest deal ever. Alan Sugar[1] sold Sinclair's existing stock of Spectrums for more than he paid for the company. Clive Sinclair hasn't made billions since then, I'm not sure if he even made millions, but Alan Sugar has made billions[3] - though not all of the back of that purchase.

    [1] Who happens to be the boss in the UK version of The Apprentice - the UK's Donald Trump[2], in that sense.
    [2] When initially writing this post I couldn't remember his name, so it originally read "that guy with the tall buildings and bad hair".
    [3] In US dollars at least. His net worth was a bit shy of a billion quid last time I looked.

    --
    Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News