Trojan Found At Torrent Sites Insists "Downloading Is Wrong"

NoisySplatter writes "Ernesto, founder of TorrentFreak, reports that a new trojan, 'Troj/Qhost-AC,' has been distributed on The Pirate Bay. The virus was disguised as a serial key generator, and the offending torrent has since been removed, but the source has not been identified. Troj/Qhost-AC makes changes to the user's hosts file that redirects The Pirate Bay, Suprbay, and Mininova to 127.0.0.1. In addition to making three popular torrent sites inaccessible, the virus also plays a sound file that says: 'downloading is wrong.' It looks like someone has finally stepped up to the plate to challenge Madonna for the title of 'Most Obnoxious Anti-Piracy Stunt.' Of course, this could just be the software industry's attempt at outdoing the RIAA and MPAA."

Comments

Re:Please explain to me

[mumblestheclown]

See, in slashdot's fucked-up universe, my post gets branded 'troll' for asking a simple question while yours gets modded as 'insightful' for calling my proposal 'illegal', which it isn't (i can certainly put whatever software that i own the rights to on p2p file sharing networks -- or, at least, what i am proposing here falls well within those bounds). immoral and unethical? Please explain to me how it is. really.. i dont see it at all. To answer some of the other repliers here: 1. yes, i am the boss and owner 2. yes, our software costs $10,000+ furthermore, yes, we do have thousands of legitimate users. those who pirate our stuff tend to be businesses in china and elsewhere who can in theory afford the software. there's absolutely no chance that a legitimate user would go looking for it on a p2p network, since every legitimate user has a rep that he can call, plus 24/7 access to support. and if somebody repackages our malware as linux-iso or somesuch (as you said - again, you failed to read my post), they certainly wouldn't run it three times and makes the mistake. it would be obvious that they were not running linux-iso at that point. at any rate, if somebody does that, any 'immorality' (if you want to call it that) is clearly at that person's feet just as if somebody took a piece of adult material and put it on a children's website.

Re:Please explain to me

[mumblestheclown]

I'm not being facetious here. We are not based in the USA (where duty of care in most states typically extends, to, say, physical trespassers). In our country, there is no such duty of care to tresspassers (and it's not at all clear that even in the USA that software pirates are the same as virtual tresspassers and would therefore be subject to be given equivalent care).

I have no contract or agreement whatsoever with those 'strangers', and furthermore given the warnings that i said we'd include in our material and the fact that the 'damage' we'd cause is purely virtual, that few judges would view our response as anything but justified. IANAL, but in the country where my country is based, there is a much less pussified view of the rights of criminals, especially here.

this is not shooting a criminal with a shotgun connected to a tripwire - this is just doing something to his PC. there is a big difference, and people (in this thread) who try to equate the two need to step away from the keyboard for a few hours per day. In other words, I strongly suspect that our response would meet the standard of 'proportional and appropriate response', if not in the USA, then at least here.

that also said, i say what i say with the full knowledge that i'd open myself to suits by legitimate customers who might be hurt by such a scheme, and, given the nature of our software and customers, let's say this is a risk i'll happily take. again, i don't want to tell you exactly what we do, but i'll draw a parallel product - highly complex statistical analysis for some back-end accounting. if the instinct of a serious customer of ours' tech guy is to run to a p2p site to download a replacement copy of the software which they get on disc, have the right to access via our secured website, have 24/7 tech support access to, and so forth, then that tech guy's the one who is the idiot. this is not 'EA sports NHL 2009' we're talking about here.

Furthermore (responding to other posts here), i'm actually quite sure that our existing customers would be happy if we included such provisions. what do you call somebody who pays a lot of money for software that others get for free? a sucker. nobody wants to be a sucker - certainly not our customers.

Conspiracy to commit IP infringement?

[nurb432]

So what if instead of a re-direct it phones home to the BSA with your IP and intended software.

Get a country wide 'search warrant' so the above is admissible in court ...

Arrest 100000's of people and remove all their rights.

Black list these 10000's of people and create new democratic voters living on handouts.

Profit! ( if you are a politician )

Re:Running as admin is fun

[glitch23]

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc>cacls hosts
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(ID)F
BUILTIN\Administrators:(ID)F
BUILTIN\Users:(ID)R

Far out. I'll slap the next person who tells me Unix is hard to use, if that's Microsoft's idea of user-friendliness.

Right. Because you were born with the knowledge to know that rw below is for the owner of the file, the middle r is for the group owning the file and the last r is for everyone else. Quit acting like Linux is easy just because you know it better. You aren't born with the knowledge of understanding Linux file permissions just as you aren't born knowing how to understand Windows ACLs. For that matter, at least Windows has ACLs compared to Linux in this example. Any Windows Administrator is going to know what BUILTIN\Users and BUILTIN\Administrators means as well as the hidden NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM UPN.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1061 2007-04-05 12:18 /etc/hosts

Re:Another possibility

[mistahkurtz]

The funny thing is that the only other people that seem to be able to act like that and get away with it are governments. So if you are not the government or Big Entertainment you go straight to Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison when you do act like them. Isn't that just hilarious?

no.