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

Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

There once was a man who could boast
that due to his low latency host
when blog posts went down,
he was always around
to sit down and type swiftly "FIRST POST"

Re:Nice

[ciderVisor]

Whatever you do
Don't become a poet
That was dreadful. For real.

Worst. Haiku. Evah.

Re:Nice

[Opportunist]

Worst. Haiku. Evah.
You could have done this better?
Then why didn't you?

Re:Nice

[Crizp]

A haiku should have
ref'rence to winter snow or
some other season

Re:Nice

[Opportunist]

A haiku should be
In Japanese to make sense
else it can't be good

Re:Nice

[Crizp]

naninaniyo
anatanobakayo
urusaiyo

Sorry. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Re:Nice

[Reziac]

Some Haiku express
Depths of insight and beauty
But this one does not

Re:Nice

[Mozk]

While we're on the subject, haikus are not intended to have 17 syllables. They have 17 hyoon moji or morae, which are different from syllables.

Re:Nice

[Ihmhi]

My two favorites:

I hate all haiku
Because they can only have
Seventeen syllab

Haiku's are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator.

Holy fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

127.0.0.1 turns out to be *my* private IP address. So everyone with that virus is connecting to my Internet. That would explain why my connection has been so slow lately. I sure hope they find the bastard who did this to me. I'll gladly add my own lawsuit to the pile.

Re:Holy fuck

[ushering05401]

Stay right where you are, we are coming for the downloaded bits now, bitch - don't struggle.

Re:Holy fuck

[Chris Daniel]

Do you, by any chance, live in Tuttle, OK?

Re:Holy fuck

[value_added]

Do you, by any chance, live in Tuttle, OK?

LOL. Re-reading those transcripts was like hearing a good joke being re-told. The only thing that could have made that situation funnier would have been a city named Buttle.

Re:Holy fuck

[KDR_11k]

Man, that IT guy could've tried being a bit more understandable. Yes, we all know what an OS is but he was talking to a politician, can't use complicated words like operating system there, he should have tried explaining what it means in simple terms like you would explain it to a child.

Re:Holy fuck

[TheSpoom]

Maybe, but then the politician said he had "22 years of experience with computers," not to mention repeatedly threatening the guy at CentOS with an FBI investigation.

Personally, I would have waited for him to report it to the FBI so we could laugh at him together with the agents.

Re:Holy fuck

[PaladinAlpha]

Bollucks. That politician was being hostile, openly threatening, accusatory, and pretty much as NON-helpful as they come. I think the 'IT guy' was being more than reasonable. He made considerable effort to help even though he was being accused and threatened. Personally I would have just marked the crap as spam.

Re:Holy fuck

[Captain Splendid]

Personally, I would have waited for him to report it to the FBI so we could laugh at him together with the agents.

No kidding, that guy had the patience of a saint. I would've lasted a quarter of the time before sending nothing but "SEND THE PIGS ALREADY!" emails.

Re:Holy fuck

[mdwh2]

He was bending over backwards to be polite and helpful, referring him to someone who would be able to fix the problem, and using his own time to do so, free of charge. This was in response to someone who was harrassing and threatening him, all the while using his software free of charge. It isn't the job of random open source developers to provide education for incompetent politicians - especially when those politicians are refusing to listen, anyway.

Another possibility

[EdIII]

This could be the piracy groups themselves throwing this out there to stir up sentiment against the RIAA, MPAA, etc.

Of course that's like adding a few cords of wood to the fires of HELL, but it is a possibility.

P.S - This is not nearly as bad as the Sony Rootkit.

Re:Another possibility

[Firehed]

It's a trojan - you have no idea what else it's doing. If all it does is screw with your HOSTS file and play a stupid audio track I agree, but it could be doing all sorts of other unknown fun stuff to your machine with the root access it has.

Re:Another possibility

[ILuvRamen]

or since you figured that out, maybe they were anticipating it and the RIAA and MPAA are behind it because they want people to think that file sharing sights put it up there to frame them. Anyway, back in reality, I don't think they'd block their own websites from people just to prove a point. As for Madonna, she should have just said "you're an ass" then played a 1000 Hz tone at full blast. That's arguably the loudest sounding tone to humans in general and also quite annoying. Btw they didn't mention if the voice was a real person or a synthesized one. If it was real, you just listen for them to stop in the middle of the statement and take a bite of a hot pocket and you know it was the file sharers all along! If you hear a faint "okay, cut" then it was the RIAA in a recording studio :P

Re:Another possibility

[EdIII]

It's a trojan - you have no idea what else it's doing. If all it does is screw with your HOSTS file and play a stupid audio track I agree, but it could be doing all sorts of other unknown fun stuff to your machine with the root access it has.

Actually you are factually incorrect. As you can see in the summary and article itself it is referred to as, "Troj/Qhost-AC" by Sophos. That would seem to indicate that at some level it has been reviewed by a Anti-Virus company and I believe they would have tried pretty hard to determine the full capabilities of this Trojan. One could even say it is highly likely.

Even so, it may have been better for me to say, "This does not at first glance appear to be nearly as bad as the Sony Rootkit turned out to be".

Let's also remember that the origins of this trojan virus are unknown at the moment while the Sony Rootkit has it's origins WELL DEFINED. Those origins being the Sony board members that have yet to receive prison terms for their actions. For those that think that is a little melodramatic, consider what kind of reception any other corporation or private citizen would have received for releasing the same type of rootkit onto the populace.

If this does turn out to lead back to the feet of people working for the interests of Big Entertainment it will have been done for the same reasons the Sony Rootkit was put out. Their absolute and firm belief that YOU (the customer, citizen, etc.) have ZERO RIGHTS to any privacy or control over your own electronic equipment when their intellectual property is anywhere near it.

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?

Re:Another possibility

[poetmatt]

Umm don't you remember the phrase?

"Don't steal. The government hates competition."

Meanwhile, people sure seem to know exactly what it does, and that is something easy to trace. If they have found the virus and how to remove it, they know the rest. All you need to do is intentionally infect a virtual sandbox and watch what files are modified.

Re:Another possibility

[mpe]

If this does turn out to lead back to the feet of people working for the interests of Big Entertainment it will have been done for the same reasons the Sony Rootkit was put out. Their absolute and firm belief that YOU (the customer, citizen, etc.) have ZERO RIGHTS to any privacy or control over your own electronic equipment when their intellectual property is anywhere near it.

Whilst at the same time being perfectly prepared to infringe on the intellectual property rights of anyone not in their club/gang.

Re:Another possibility

[Culture20]

I wonder if the ever agenda driven Slashdot would get a little butt hurt if somebody took one of their open-source programs or Linux; they closed sourced it to make it proprietary and hosted it on a torrent website.

What, like BSD network stack and Windows? I think the BSD people are happy that Microsoft chose to use good code.

Jail time for a rootkit, geez and here I thought the RIAA might have been a little psycho.

Yes, jail time for a rootkit. If it makes more sense, it's jail time for hundreds of thousands of rootkits, several hundred in low-security government computers.

Re:Another possibility

[alc6379]

Actually you are factually incorrect. As you can see in the summary and article itself it is referred to as, "Troj/Qhost-AC" by Sophos. That would seem to indicate that at some level it has been reviewed by a Anti-Virus company and I believe they would have tried pretty hard to determine the full capabilities of this Trojan. One could even say it is highly likely.

One "cool" thing about Windows, if you can say that, is there are tools and hooks in the OS to monitor EVERY transaction on the system, from registry edits to disk reads/writes. You are totally right here-- Sophos probably used a tool like this on a "clean" system, installed the trojan, then generated what amounts to a diff of the system using such monitoring tools. Not much can get past such a tool when you have reference systems like they do for malware studies.

Re:Another possibility

[blueg3]

That really depends on the quality of the malware. There are some fairly low-level hacks that are difficult to interrupt via the Windows APIs. A downside of the APIs is that if you trust them too much, you'll discover that once a rootkit is in place, it's quite capable of circumventing nearly all API detection mechanisms.

If you have a clean system and a piece of malware, though, and the malware is fairly unsophisticated, figuring out what it's doing is pretty straighforward. (Most operating systems have these kind of hooks, too -- it's how you build device drivers and do low-level debugging.)

Re:Another possibility

[Lars T.]

. Anyway, back in reality, I don't think they'd block their own websites from people just to prove a point.

But would it be beyond them to block their competitors?

Re:Another possibility

[techprophet]

Well lets look at that. Which torrent sites weren't blocked? Better get started, that list'll take you awhile.

Re:Another possibility

[symbolset]

I think the BSD people are happy that Microsoft chose to use good code.

It was good code when MS got it. I doubt the coders who wrote it were happy when they saw how MS "improved" it.

Re:Another possibility

[EdIII]

LOL. I can't believe you got modded as troll. I thought it was it was a very brief, but +insightful worthy post. Some of the moderators around here lack any insight or sense of humor.

Running as admin is fun

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Ahhh, windows, gotta love it.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Hal_Porter]

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

So only SYSTEM and Admin can write. On Vista with UAC enabled I can't write to it, even though I'm an Admin.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[BrokenHalo]

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.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[dov_0]

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.

From someone who runs a PC repair business, XP makes Unix look like childs play... Man it even makes doing a Gentoo install look easy.

Give me a nice clean bash terminal any day.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Bacon Bits]

Of course it looks complicated.

a) You're not supposed to manage file permissions from the command line.
b) NTFS permissions are far more customizable and have far more features than POSIX style. It's the same reason PostgreSQL is more complex than a flat text file.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[calmofthestorm]

Well if you want to go there, most modern linux filesystems support ACLs as well, they're just not generally needed since programs only ask for root if they need it...

Re:Running as admin is fun

[hvm2hvm]

Yes, in theory, the permission(security on the whole) system of NTFS + XP/Vista is better. It's more customizable and has a complete GUI interface. Still, it doesn't work nearly as well as is could. Many things aren't put in the right default permissions which makes a lot of stuff fail when not having admin privileges (I know I stopped using a limited user account when winamp didn't work well).

Also, a more complex problem is that Windows users don't know about all that stuff and can't be bothered to learn something they think it doesn't help. Yes, now with the rapid expansion of Ubuntu and other distros too there are quite a few computer illiterates using Linux. It will be fun to see if Linux will still manage when(if) it will become the main OS and all the malware is directed to it.

I guess we could say that the real problem would be that malware/viruses/trojans get created in the first place but then we would wind up in philosophical territory and many of you have probably stopped reading my post already.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Hal_Porter]

Well you could right click on hosts and open the GUI permissions editor too. However if I did that, I wouldn't be able to post the results here.

Incidentally note the way different groups/users can have different permissions. ACLs have more flexibility. E.g. for device drivers only the TrustedInstaller can write, everyone else only gets read only access.

So maybe the Windows system is a bit harder to understand than Unix's 30 year old user/group/others rwx bits, but it does offer more security if it used right. And Vista has been criticized quite rightly for being bloated, but it does finally use the Kernel/NTFS ACL based security properly.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[marcosdumay]

Try to open regedit someday.

Anyway, "easy to use" is jargon to "works like Windows" nowadays. So, obviously, Windows is "easy to use", you can't contest that.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[gzipped_tar]

a) Are you saying all the system admins are not doing the job they are supposed[sic] to do?
b) Apparently you haven't been using POSIX ACLs, Linux xattrs and SELinux contexts.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[flooey]

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.

Because "-rw-r--r-- 1 root root" is so self-explanatory?

Re:Running as admin is fun

[TheSpoom]

From someone who's done many, many, many installs of both XP and Gentoo, you're overstating this. XP installs are usually pretty easy, assuming you have a slipstreamed SP2 / 3 CD. Gentoo installs need some decent skill, or at least the willingness to learn and follow directions from the website.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Sir_Lewk]

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 30 years, then yes.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Blakey Rat]

1) Normal human beings don't use the CLI to check file permissions; you can do it, but as you've griped, the UI sucks.

2) The Unix equivalent is a string of like "rf-r-x-rfx" or some shit. It's no easier to read or use.

3) The NTFS permissions system is a lot more powerful than the (standard) Unix permissions system, so even if using it over the CLI is more complicated, that's just because it does more.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[Blakey Rat]

Still, it doesn't work nearly as well as is could. Many things aren't put in the right default permissions which makes a lot of stuff fail when not having admin privileges (I know I stopped using a limited user account when winamp didn't work well).

So WinAMP is coded by idiots who didn't read the documentation, and it's Microsoft's fault? Good to know.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[techprophet]

But you can build and store the packages and just reuse. Kernel too in most cases if you use genkernel. If all machines are identical use dd with a large external drive.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[techprophet]

And then some parts of the APIs have no docs or at least not ones that tell what a function does.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[techprophet]

True. But imo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root is much less cryptic once you learn it (file-(owner)readwrite-(group)read-(all)read)

Re:Running as admin is fun

[silverkniveshotmail.]

I wish I would have put more effort into linux, because now it seems too frustrating to really get into. I mean, I can operate a linux desktop and install a package but I find some aspects of securelinux to be more frustrating than UAC, I don't understand the lack of a standard for packaged ready open-and-go binaries that Mac Windows have managed and I find the user involvement in things like installing a 32bit x86 package while running AM64 to be a bit much, it doesn't feel impossible, it just feels unnecessary. I don't mean that linux is bad or anything and I really was surprised by how faster Firefox was with 64-bit fedora vs 32-bit Vista. I would much rather use Linux at work, but not at home.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[silverkniveshotmail.]

by more effort I mean more effort when I was living in my mother's basement and didn't have work or bills or anything.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[dov_0]

Installing XP is ok. If it accepts the valid ID number you give it that is. Working with XP and configuring it or transferring settings etc can be a nightmare.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[BrokenHalo]

Because "-rw-r--r-- 1 root root" is so self-explanatory?

I always thought of that notation as being unnecessarily complicated, but it does make sense. But I never really did get the hang of it.

chmod 644 filename can achieve the same effect (depending on your umask). Once one has learned the basics of the numeric approach, it actually is simpler. I don't think I should make this post redundant by elaborating, since the most cursory googling will bring up a useful link.

Re:Running as admin is fun

[flooey]

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 30 years, then yes.

So you're saying that it's self-explanatory once you've been exposed to it :)

Expect the reverse

[KDR_11k]

A virus that instead plays "Downloading is right" and redirects the homepages of big software, music and movie companies to piratebay, mininova, etc...

Re:Expect the reverse

[eebra82]

In that case, expect a reverse-reverse: a virus that redirects piratebay to a site that downloads Troj/Qhost-AC for you.

Re:Expect the reverse

[cliffski]

I never get this. Pirates would be totally untouched if they were a tiny minority. Why the insane evangelism to persuade everyone around you to pirate?
Its actually totally illogical. piracy is only possible due to the free-rider problem, and the fact that everyone else is paying for the content to get made. You would think any pirate with brain cells would STFU about how they get their entertainment.

Re:Expect the reverse

[ThatGuyJon]

That's what the proper pirates do. The organisations which actually crack the games like to keep it to themselves.
However, it only takes one pirate to leak it to a P2P system, and when it's there, the more people downloading it the faster it downloads. Hence people trying to get more people into the swarm.

http://www.aboutthescene.com/thescene/hierarchy.html

Re:Expect the reverse

[Zironic]

This is because you're silly and somehow think that humans act in their own best interest. Like most people pirates feel the need to tell people about what they think is a great thing, in this case downloading entertainment for free.

Re:Expect the reverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading is wrong. That's why I always aim to upload back at least as much as I download to offset the badness of downloading.

Re:Expect the reverse

[Anonymous Coward]

Safety in numbers. The more people pirate stuff, the less chance you have of it being actually *you* that gets caught.

Re:Expect the reverse

[jackharrer]

You forgot "In Soviet Russia..."

Re:Expect the reverse

[Nazlfrag]

Just get them to play this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-grdpKVqg and they should change their tune.

Re:Expect the reverse

[camg188]

That's the way BitTorrent works. The more people, the more accessible and faster the downloads.

Re:Expect the reverse

[fuliginous]

I would argue people do act in their own best interests but qualify it to the limit of their understanding. At least mostly people do, some people are just lunatics.

Keygens

[Metapsyborg]

It's pretty crazy to be running keygens on your system. Every time I do it, I think to myself "what are these guys getting for all their hard work?" The same thing with cracked software - you run an installer yourself how could the cracker pass up that type opportunity? I just assume most of them infect your computer with some spyware and trojans.

Re:Keygens

[Anpheus]

Virtual machines baby, boot it up, run the keylogger, run the install up to the point where it gives you whatever you need to install, and then reset the hard drive state.

Re:Keygens

[Vadim Makarov]

It's pretty crazy to be running keygens on your system. Every time I do it, I think to myself "what are these guys getting for all their hard work?" The same thing with cracked software - you run an installer yourself how could the cracker pass up that type opportunity? I just assume most of them infect your computer with some spyware and trojans.

I rely on feedback from other downloaders on TPB. If the installer or keygen do bad things, many people will scream in comments. For popular torrents that are more than a month old, that catches malware pretty well. So far, I've no visible problem on my machine with this approach.

Re:Keygens

[timmarhy]

it's a called a virus scanner.

Re:Keygens

[synthesizerpatel]

While we haven't seen it yet, I think it'd be a twist worthy of a Gibson novel to have an author of a useful program intentionally infect computers, granted, it'd destroy their reputation but nobody would see it coming.

Imagine if Putty were backdoored on purpose?

Re:Keygens

[Hal_Porter]

I rely on feedback from other downloaders on TPB. If the installer or keygen do bad things, many people will scream in comments. For popular torrents that are more than a month old, that catches malware pretty well. So far, I've no visible problem on my machine with this approach.

I checked out your machine from here and it seems ok. A bit slow though, makes me wonder what everyone else is running on there.

Re:Keygens

[GFree678]

Virtual machines baby, boot it up, run the keylogger, run the install up to the point where it gives you whatever you need to install, and then reset the hard drive state.

That works. My tactic is also to write the serial that is produced by a keygen into a text file so that in a future install I don't have to re-run the keygen, I just copy/paste the data safely from the file. Doesn't work for the more advanced keys which are based off a unique hash of the system's architecture, but for every else the text file is perfect. Heck, sometimes a key or keys are listed by someone in the comments of the torrent so that you don't HAVE to use a keygen, which is nice.

Re:Keygens

[AngryBacon]

The authors of Norton Anti-Virus did this already, but most people don't really notice.

Re:Keygens

[Belial6]

I don't know where you've been, but that is just plain common. From the sony root kit to the toolbar that Java keeps wanting to install.

Re:Keygens

[Joce640k]

This is already in most closed source/downloadable programs. Good luck in not gaining an extra toolbar and having your homepage hijacked.

Re:Keygens

[Tubal-Cain]

Good one, sir!

Re:Keygens

[Vadim Makarov]

Seriously, I don't think there is any. If there were, I'd have my CC and passwords stolen long ago, would see extra traffic on the net connection, processes running, registry keys added, etc. There is none.

Re:Keygens

[calmofthestorm]

It's about as likely to infect your computer with spyware/trojans/viri as a legally purchased copy.

Re:Keygens

[cheater512]

Actually I find that Wine does a wonderful job of keygens.

The actual generator works perfectly and all the nasty stuff simply dies quietly with a wimper. :)

Re:Keygens

[Opportunist]

It's pretty crazy to be running Linux on your system. Every time I do it, I think to myself "what are these guys getting..." and so on.

There are people who write software for the sake of showing they can. Not everyone has the goal to get rich or die trying.

Re:Keygens

[Opportunist]

If you consider copy restrictions mechanisms that mess with your driver setup (CD/DVD drivers especially) malware ("software that lowers the efficiency and/or the reliability of your system, or is installed against the intentions or the interests of the computer's user"), your chances are almost 100% for computer games from large game manufacturers.

Re:Keygens

[Anonymous Coward]

That is actually a very bad idea. Many default installs of Wine offer access to your entire filesystem (including your home directory). Wine is not a isolated environment like most VM's are. It lets you run Windows applications as native binaries, including viruses and trojans with many of their effects still intact. It is very possible to infect a Linux machine with malicious Windows binaries running in Wine.

Personally I have never seen a real keygen that did anything other than it was suppose to. There are some flat out trojans like this article is talking about but I have never seen a working keygen that was malicious. With that said, there is always a first time. I would only run them in a VM and with networking disabled too. Wipe/reset the VM back to a known state afterwards of course.

Re:Keygens

[KDR_11k]

I believe you need an introduction to the gaming industry then...

Re:Keygens

[Opportunist]

The discussion at hand was why someone would go out of his way to create software without any direct revenue from it, not whether the software is being reviewed.

Re:Keygens

[howman]

Whuts t'is vah rus scanner y'all talkin bout? I dont need no vah rus scanner I ain'ts gots no dezeeze... I justs wants to rahn mah auto cad so I can fish while drivin.

Re:Keygens

[Hatta]

It is very possible to infect a Linux machine with malicious Windows binaries running in Wine.

How? I'd like to try this in a VM.

Re:Keygens

[geekboy642]

http://www.linux.com/articles/42031

Infect? no. It would have to be a custom targeted virus. You're fine as long as you don't have that exact setup, and run random .exes in wine, and piss off some bored geek.

Re:Keygens

[Siridar]

A bit slow though, makes me wonder what everyone else is running on there.

Yeah, sorry, that was me. All sorted now. Man, this guy has a lot of porn!

Re:Keygens

[cliffski]

or better still, actually... I dunno... buy the product you are so desperate to use, and then get a valid key?

Re:Keygens

[hairyfeet]

Or you could just use SandboxIE, which lets you run any program in its own little sandbox that can be tossed whenever you like. Easy to set up and use and 100% free. Why not give it a try?

Re:Keygens

[techprophet]

Except that ASM in windows is different than in linux. ASM for windows *might* run on linux, but likely not without being recompiled at the very least.

Re:Keygens

[techprophet]

Ever written a sub-500byte virus? The virus scanners will likely not catch it. Even with a definition (I wrote one such virus and submitted it to AVG. The definition came a couple of days later and only caught a couple of instances. I *did* write it in a cleanroom VM with no internet connection which was running windows over linux to prevent it spreading. As far as I know it never made it out of my jail or AVGs, and even if it did it had no payload)

Re:Keygens

[techprophet]

I don't think he reviewed it.

Re:Keygens

[Tacvek]

Your sig, is that a program that repeatedly forks (IIRC fork is syscall 2) itself, with each of those duplicates repeatedly forking themselves, resulting in exponential process growth?!? Evil!

Re:Keygens

[AmberBlackCat]

I used to run keygens and then use GoBack. I've also tried "Run As" and just ran them as a user without administration status. Now I just buy my software. I personally think, of those three options, the "Run As" option is best.

Re:Keygens

[cliffski]

the demos end when they have given you a taste of the full game. It not some evil conspiracy to trick people.

You are fully aware there was a demo, and that it is illegal to take the full version, and yet you just blatantly ignored this and did it anyway. The arrogance is staggering. You then come here and brag about it, in an attempt to justify it.

Do you shoplift and then go brag about it to the store owner too?

Re:Keygens

[petermgreen]

The default wine setup on most linux distros makes it trivial for windows apps to using the standard windows APIs find your homedir and dump some stuff in there to run on login and do malicious stuff.

Even if you restrict what parts of the filesystem that can be accessed through wines implementation of the windows API there is still nothing stopping the app running under wine making direct system calls.

Re:Keygens

[Kalriath]

Yes, but AVG sucks. Try it with a real Antivirus vendor (and no, that isn't Symantec. Norton runs so slow the virus has enough time to complete a whole infection cycle before getting caught).

So who was it?

[Rs_Conqueror]

Does anyone know what it was claiming to be a keygen for? That would be a likely lead as to who is responsible for the virus, assuming it was the software industry who released this.

But....baby....

[Weaselmancer]

<barrywhite>
But baby....how can it be wrong...when it feels so right....
</barrywhite>

Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's not.

[HumanEmulator]

From everything I've read (the slashdot summary excluded) this isn't really a virus -- it's a straight trojan. That means you would have to be trying to download a serial key generator in order to get it on your system. (ie. It doesn't spread to you from other people's machines.)

I'm all against nefarious software creeping onto my system, but this is like complaining that the guy you tried to buy drugs from turned out to be a cop.

oops, downloaded this web page

[Anonymous Coward]

..which of course according to the recording is wrong. Oh, I'm in the middle of downloading packets of data for TV since I'm using satellite TV, which is also wrong I guess. Where did I go so wrong in life.

Please explain to me

[mumblestheclown]

I'd like somebody to please explain to me why my company should not compile versions of our software for torrent that do horrible and terrible things to the downloaders' PCs after say, the third run. We have no duty of care nor contract with such downloaders and due to the nature of our software, it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers. Furthermore, because of the way our software is licensed and its data is accessed, we can be 100% sure that none of our legitimate users are using pirated versions. No really. I'd like you guys to tell me why not. it's something I've fantasized about. We'd even put noticed at the beginning of the software telling the user quite explicitly about the horrible things that the software would do, and we would not hold the users "hostage" to purchasing our software in any way. Of course, we could open ourselves up to retribution attacks, but, imagining for a moment if that was not an issue, i'd like to hear some opinions. As you can see by the responses here to this article, many slashdotters have abandoned even the pretense of soome pseudophilosophical justification for their piracy and are just concentrating on the technical tricks involved in being better pirates ("virtual machines, baby", etc.)

Re:Please explain to me

[MrMista_B]

Well, for one thing, it's illegal, immoral, and unethical. Fighting crime by being a criminal... well, you see where I'm going with that.

Furthermore, do you want your company to get the reputation of a malware maker and distributor? That's not likely to increase your sales.

Beyond even that, say, for example, someone repackages the malware you release as a 'linux-iso' or somesuch. Then you would be to blame for destroying the computers of innocent people.

Y'know, based on this, if I were your boss, I'd fire you, because you're clearly lacking in ethical stability, and making threats such as you have marks you as a company liability. Hmm.

Re:Please explain to me

[Craevenwulfe]

if you can guarantee that zero legit customers would be affected then rock on.

Re:Please explain to me

[timothyf]

Bad PR, mostly--see the Sony Rootkit. Even if you're right, it's hard to sway the court of public opinion. And honestly, it could even be illegal to retaliate against pirates in such a fashion, though IANAL so I couldn't say for sure.

Also, you say you're 100% sure--but what if the malware code got activated by accident somehow and damaged a customer computer? Are you willing to take that sort of risk? Besides, do you really want to stoop to the level of a malware author? Really?

I don't think pirating is right, but technical solutions to the problem just don't seem to work, or harm legitimate customers more than the pirates, and I'd say that it's not worth the effort to try to fight this social problem with technical solutions that don't work or actively harm the wrong people.

Ultimately though, if you want to do it, go ahead. I'm almost curious to see what'd happen myself.

Re:Please explain to me

[Buttink]

IF WE COULD CLONE STUFF.... That would be like making a hamburger with razors just so that when they pirate it they die. Granted some people might deserve a punch to the face, but still that might be a bit extreme. There is software that will die after a few minutes of use if its pirated. I believe C&C games used to do this. At the same time, I get what you are saying. However, at the same time if you made your software unpirateable something would just take its place. Take Photoshop for instance, if you couldn't pirate Photoshop, you would simply download gimp. I think people blame pirating for there problems rather then look at why. Photoshop .... to expensive for the average user. Multiple copies of software to run on diffrent devices(Left 4 Dead XBOX and PC). At the end of the day, yes stealing the software is wrong. However, that doesn't mean he would have bought it anyway.

Re:Please explain to me

[Hal_Porter]

I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell I'd put something in the EULA saying that the company is not liable for data loss due to running cracked versions of the program, or copies downloaded illegally. I read some Atari games would detect they were cracked but play right up to the end. At the last minute final boss would, instead of fighting, give you a lecture about how piracy was killing the industry and then the game would exit.

The best possibility would to release false crack, i.e ones that let the program start but then fail in an irritating after it has been played for a long time, like hanging and corrupting saved games. Hell you could put some hard to find bugs back into the cracked version and rely on the fact that the cracking scene doesn't QA effectively.

Re:Please explain to me

[Firehed]

Some Mac software developer claimed to do this a while ago on his small commercial product (a completely harmless dialog box saying something to the effect of "pirated key detected, erasing your hard drive"). He had to open-source the product - thereby completely killing its revenue stream - just to save face, and suffice to say a lot of people that remember the incident better than I avoid any software from this developer.

I assure you, NOT all publicity is good publicity, despite sayings to the contrary.

So go for it, but don't be surprised if it ends up completely killing the product. It sounds like you've got some sort of enterprisey product, and I guarantee that no sane company would even risk continuing to use your product (never mind getting any future business) if there was even the slightest risk of that happening.

Re:Please explain to me

[im_thatoneguy]

"
3 pages of legal crap... blah blah blah blah.....

Warning this product is designed to delete all of the data on your hard drive and corrupt your MBR. This product should only be run in the event that you desire your data all deleted since that is its intent. Thank you for using our product and we hope it meets your file deletion expectations!"

I don't see how that's illegal or unethical. You release a product onto a site with the same name as your product. Which performs a different service. OBVIOUSLY the pirate was looking for the version of your product which deleted all his data since the one sold in stores doesn't offer the same feature set.

Re:Please explain to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how that's illegal

Fair enough.

or unethical.

Ah- he's retarded. Nevermind.

Re:Please explain to me

[rxan]

Well, for one thing, it's illegal, immoral, and unethical. Fighting crime by being a criminal... well, you see where I'm going with that.

I'm pretty sure that in the USA if someone is robbing your store, it's OK to pull a gun on them. Why should the internet not have an equivalent?

Re:Please explain to me

[Dunbal]

Possibly for the same reason that you can't shoot random people in the head, even if you don't have a signed contract with them and they will never be your customer.

If you don't understand that two wrongs don't make a right, then perhaps there was a lack of effective parenting in your childhood.

Re:Please explain to me

[rastilin]

Unless your product is worth $10,000+ then you stand a solid chance of doing far more damage than you could possibly claim your product was worth. Not to mention people will rename and pass along your software to bystanders. Mind you I don't have any complaint as such, if they make the choice to avoid the law, then stepping into a claymore placed to catch thieves is part of the risk.

I'm only saying that I doubt these people have thought through all the possible consequences of their actions. The reason the big software companies don't do this is that they have more to lose than they stand to gain.

Re:Please explain to me

[Craevenwulfe]

The Sony Rootkit affected people who bought shit legally. Where's the fucking relevance?

Re:Please explain to me

[Tom9729]

Because boobytrapping your software would be the equivalent of having a robot shoot the person on the other side of the register when the silent alarm was triggered.

Works great, but once it's triggered it doesn't differentiate between customers and criminals.

Say there's a bug in your software that causes it to format the customer's computer because it mistakenly thought they were a criminal. That's a big "oops".

Re:Please explain to me

[rxan]

There is no way you would win this case, and nor should you. You deserve to lose everything if you think even for a second that you have rights over everybody elses data.

I could say the exact same thing about software pirating.

Re:Please explain to me

[spathi-wa]

It's OK to pull a gun on someone who is robbing your store only if local and state laws specifically say so.

Downloading and using software without a valid license is not covered by laws that allow the licensed distributor to do anything to other people's data.

Being other people's data, which the distributor or developer do not and cannot have any rights over, it is unlikely that any such law will be passed.

Re:Please explain to me

[gzipped_tar]

> if I were your boss, I'd fire you, because you're clearly lacking in ethical stability, and making threats such as you have marks you as a company liability.

I think that's why you'll never become a boss, because it appears that your moral compass is not damaged [1].

[1] http://dilbert.com/fast/2008-07-21/

Re:Please explain to me

[GFree678]

if I were your boss, I'd fire you, because you're clearly lacking in ethical stability

Lacking in ethical stability?

At my place of work this would be cause for a promotion!

Re:Please explain to me

[drx]

Because the internet is not the USA?

Re:Please explain to me

[JamesTRexx]

it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers

Don't be too sure about that. We've bought and are going to buy tools based solely on working with a cracked version for a while.
It's not that different with software like games etc., just that the scale is much less.

Re:Please explain to me

[rdnetto]

Simple - because no matter how you hard you try, there will always be false positives. Watch your software total a few major customer systems and then try to explain that it was to combat piracy. Microsoft uses some of the most stringent antipiracy mechanisms around, and they face heaps of crap for it (plus its not even effective).
Your best bet is to make the program dependent on a dongle, and even then there are no guarrantees.

Re:Please explain to me

[pandrijeczko]

I actually defend your right to protect your own software from piracy by whatever mechanism you see fit, just so long as you make it clear to any legitimate user of that software exactly how that protection affects their fair usage of that product.

But the real problem you have is that once news get out about your software trashing the PCs of pirates, then you will worry your legitimate user base also - which in turn means that Open Source software, where code can be scrutinised by the users, will gain share over your product.

Re:Please explain to me

[MosesJones]

I'm assuming therefore that you wouldn't be in favour of the "right to defend yourself" as it applies to physical assault. After all if someone tries to rob you and you smash them over the head/shoot them/batter them with a baseball bat then you are becoming a criminal because if you did that normally then it would be unethical/immoral/etc

Get down off your high-horse and stop seeing piracy as a right. Its theft and in the same way as if you break into my house I have the right to defend myself then why don't I have the right to defend myself when you steal my software?

Re:Please explain to me

[zwei2stein]

due to the nature of our software, it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers.

Indeed, due to nature of your actions, it would be 100% certain they would have no interest in becoming your legitimate customers ever.

Along with lots of people who actually would be your customers ... you just dont buy software from people who wreck are prone to wrecking your workstation if they don't like something. You go to more reputable competition.

due to the nature of our software, it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers

It seems like major part of you focus group are actually pirates. Why are you suprised and angered that it is getting pirated?

What about NOT making software for pirates?

Re:Please explain to me

[Tarrio]

Because even if the software was copied illegally by the victim, you are still liable for any damages. The "NO WARRANTY" thing is rubbish, and more so when you caused damages knowingly.

Re:Please explain to me

[cliffski]

I sympathise with you 100%, although I think the answer you are looking for, is there is a non-zero chance you will screw up the PC of a legit buyer who lost their installer file, the CD got scratched, etc etc.

A lot of people think it's ok to use torrents as demos. they are totally and utterly wrong an unjustified in doing this, but the fact remains some people who will buy your software still do it.
As a result, its commercially a bad idea to do this, I'd never do it and neither should you.

That's not to say that you have to ignore the torrent problem. Nobody will stop you uploading a demo of your software to a torrent site, and of course the less bastard-righteous torrent sites actually abide by the DMCA and will remove content when asked. These are far better routes than what you suggest. The ideal is to get people to like you company and support the software you make, not consider you the enemy.

But I sympathise massively. I have to spend maybe 30 minutes a week sending out DMCA notices because people think they are entitled to my work for free. Both me and my customers would prefer that time was spent making better games...

Re:Please explain to me

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how're you finding life at Microsoft?

Re:Please explain to me

[Ash-Fox]

I can't find anything supporting your claims on Google - a little help, please?

Re:Please explain to me

[Ash-Fox]

He had to open-source the product

Rubbish.

just to save face

Absolute non-sense.

I guarantee that no sane company would even risk continuing to use your product (never mind getting any future business) if there was even the slightest risk of that happening.

Ever used Lotus notes? That loses information, has data corruption issues etc. And that was when it was working normally.

So companies wouldn't use software that didn't have the slightest risk of losing their information etc? Complete utter jibberish.

Re:Please explain to me

[Zironic]

You have the right to defend yourself, you do not have the right to beat someone to death, the proposed software would be equivalent to the latter.

Re:Please explain to me

[gnasher719]

I'd like somebody to please explain to me why my company should not compile versions of our software for torrent that do horrible and terrible things to the downloaders' PCs after say, the third run. We have no duty of care nor contract with such downloaders ...

"No duty of care" is not the same as "criminal vigilante actions are illegal". I recommend you talk to your manager, and if he can't convince you, talk to your companies legal department. If they can't convince you, I'd say it is safest for your company to let you go.

Re:Please explain to me

[kramulous]

Well, for one thing, it's illegal, immoral, and unethical. Fighting crime by being a criminal... well, you see where I'm going with that.

He's not in right now; Perched on top of some building wearing his undies on the outside, fightin' crime.

Re:Please explain to me

[gnasher719]

Hell I'd put something in the EULA saying that the company is not liable for data loss due to running cracked versions of the program, or copies downloaded illegally.

You can put into the EULA what you want, your company is liable for criminal damage that it is causing intentionally.

Re:Please explain to me

[Zironic]

You're aware that EULA's are not solid contracts right? In the same way you do not actually get the right to my first born just because you write that, you do not actually get the right to destroy my computer just because you say so.

Re:Please explain to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for one thing, if I was your legitimate paying customer and you pulled off stuff like that I'd soon be your ex-customer.

It doesn't matter that it hurts only pirates. Your priorities are clearly messed up and that's an indicator of other things being wrong too. Better do business with people more concerned about their customers and less concerned about pirates.

Re:Please explain to me

[Opportunist]

I can see why you'd want to do that. But let's be sensible here, what would you gain out of it? You said yourself, someone downloading your software is almost certainly not going to buy your software. So what is lost when he downloads it as a torrent? From a commercial point of view it makes no sense to create a poisoned download. This would make sense if you could "scare" people into buying. If this is not the case, creating a malware version is expense without revenue.

Re:Please explain to me

[ciderVisor]

The Sony Rootkit affected people who bought shit legally.

Mod +5 Insightful.

Re:Please explain to me

[Hal_Porter]

Who do you sue if a crack messes up your computer?

Re:Please explain to me

[Hal_Porter]

It's OK to pull a gun on someone who is robbing your store only if local and state laws specifically say so.

Downloading and using software without a valid license is not covered by laws that allow the licensed distributor to do anything to other people's data.

Being other people's data, which the distributor or developer do not and cannot have any rights over, it is unlikely that any such law will be passed.

I reckon we got ourselves a chance in Texas.

Re:Please explain to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Equating copyright infringement with stealing is quite wacky, but comparing it with assault and murder is quite another!

And then there's the problem, that breaking and entering into a computer system is a whole other league than copyright infringement. Your 10, 100 or even 1000$ program doesn't even come close to the worth of my data, so such vigilant actions are, at best, hugely excessive.

Third, talking about rights. You have the right to unauthorized computer manipulation as I have the right to kill you when you steal a candy from me. As in none at all.

Re:Please explain to me

[drsmithy]

I'd like somebody to please explain to me why my company should not compile versions of our software for torrent that do horrible and terrible things to the downloaders' PCs after say, the third run.

For the same reason you can't kill someone - then also go out and kill their family, friends, associates, etc - for picking your pocket.

Re:Please explain to me

[Hal_Porter]

Checkout the x-fry/x-bender headers: echo -e "HEAD / HTTP/1.1\nHost: slashdot.org\n\n" | netcat slashdot.org 80

http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi?URL=http://slashdot.org&REQ=HEAD

HTTP/1.1 200 OK(CR)(LF)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:36:49 GMT(CR)(LF)
Server: Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_perl/1.31-rc4(CR)(LF)
SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml(CR)(LF)
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.005001236(CR)(LF)
X-Fry: Robots don't go to heaven.(CR)(LF)
Cache-Control: private(CR)(LF)
Pragma: private(CR)(LF)
Connection: close(CR)(LF)
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1(CR)(LF)
(CR)(LF)

if you refresh it changes

X-Bender: Fathero!(CR)(LF)
X-Bender: Shooting DNA at each other to make babies. I find it offensive!(CR)(LF)
X-Bender: nogoodlawsprotectingtheinnocent--(CR)(LF)
X-Bender: Alright! Closure!(CR)(LF)

Re:Please explain to me

[kramerd]

I'll bite. You either havent brought this idea to a lawyer (IANAL), or your lawyers are dumb as bricks.

I assume you are throwing the explanation into a EULA, and not into the product title. If you put it in the title, no one is going to bother to download it, much less install it, so you are wasting time and money. However, if you throw it into a EULA, you have changed your offer within the software, without giving me a real option to return if I don't agree with the changes (which in this case most certainly would not be immaterial, and since I'm not a merchant, goods have to conform exactly anyway), which would make this a tort.

"We have no duty of care nor contract with such downloaders"

Yes you do. Your company is a merchant, and therefore is under the UCC. When you are in the business of selling a product, and someone obtains a stolen version of that product, you still have strict product liability. If I weigh 200 lbs, and buy a chair (sorry, this isnt a car analogy) that says it holds weights up to 300 lbs, and it breaks while I'm sitting in it and I break my tailbone, guess who is liable? Thats right, the manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer. It doesn't matter if I receive it as a gift from my grandmother or if I buy it on the subway (except that neither of them are a merchant, so I could only sue the manufacturer and wholesaler). Here's the fun part: Since you are knowingly releasing a product that is designed to be damaging to a consumer in a specific way (after all, you programmed it to do so), while the customer is relying on it to work in a specifically different way (and remember, the price of your product is irrelevant), you have committed a fraudulent tort. This opens you up to punitive damages beyond that of reasonably expected damages resulting from the use of such software.

Then again, you want to be in a wonderful magical mystery world where retribution attacks dont exist.

Legal issues aside,

"it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers."

This isnt even remotely relevent from a legal stance, only from an ethical one, and quite frankly, who gives a fuck. Who are you punishing if pirating users will never purchase your software? Do you really believe that people who download the malware versions released by your company will become legitimate users? If not, why bother at all?

"As you can see by the responses here to this article, many slashdotters have abandoned even the pretense of soome pseudophilosophical justification for their piracy and are just concentrating on the technical tricks involved in being better pirates ("virtual machines, baby", etc.)"

While I can agree that most /.ers might focus on the technical tricks involved in piracy, I would think that most /.ers would focus on the technical tricks of most things. 'As you can see by the responses to this article, many /.ers have abandoned even the pretense of some psuedophilosophical justification for reading the article or summary and are just concentrating on the technical tricks involved in writing better trojans.' See, this makes the same point yet without even resorting to an offtopic tagline.

Re:Please explain to me

[drsmithy]

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.

What you are proposing is nothing more than crude vigilantism. I sincerely doubt your legal system - assuming you're not living in some backwards third-world hellhole - takes anything but an incredibly dim view of such behaviour.

There are several big reasons why you would be crucified by the legal system in any remotely civilised country for your plan:

* You have malicious intent. You are seeking revenge, not reparations or prevention.
* It is a calculated and premeditated action.
* It is disproportional. Stopping your software working is one thing. Nuking someone's entire computer (which could have all sorts of irreplaceable data from tax returns to family photos) is a different scenario entirely.

Sure, if someone who _has_ pirated this sued you, you could sue them for copyright infringement, but the punishment for premeditated and malicious damage and destruction of property (likely criminal, not civil charges) are going to be - as they should be - far, far higher, so overall you'll lose. If it ever misfired and hit any legitimate customers, the resulting lawsuits would - justifiably - almost certainly put you out of business (and if they didn't the destruction of your reputation would finish the job).

Re:Please explain to me

[KDR_11k]

Self defense is limited to physical assault and must be proportional to the threat, you can't just shoot someone dead without warning unless he is clearly a threat to your life (that means weapon drawn and prepared to kill you, not a drunk using his fists). Also boobytraps are illegal, you can't place a deadly trap in your home that would go off if a robber broke in.

Re:Please explain to me

[drsmithy]

Ever used Lotus notes? That loses information, has data corruption issues etc. And that was when it was working normally.

There is a vast gulf of difference - especially in the eyes of the law - between data loss from buggy software and data loss from software deliberately programmed to do it with malicious forethought.

Re:Please explain to me

[KDR_11k]

There's a bit of a difference between damage through errors and willful damage. Mens rea.

Re:Please explain to me

[Stormwatch]

Piracy would be theft if copyright was a natural right. IT IS NOT. It is a temporary monopoly granted by the government, with a specific purpose:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Copyright extensions raped the spirit and purpose of the law. What's the incentive to create in copyrights that last 70 years after the author's death? Make it something sensible - say, a decade from publishing date - and we're talking.

Re:Please explain to me

[Indefinite, Ephemera]

I don't know about his legal theory, but presumably the people writing moralityware like the program in this story tell themselves they're doing it to bring people back to the path of righteousness. So that's their duty of care taken care of.

Re:Please explain to me

[Lehk228]

unless core program functionality is carried out by said dongle, it's really no better than online activation,a CD key,a CD in drive check, or a "turn to page 7 in the manual and type the 5th word".

if anything a dongle is easier to bypass because accessing a piece of hardware is not something your code can do on the sly, so a cracker or crack team can look for code that accesses the dongle and bypass that code.

a dongle will work ok if you use complicated self-modifying code to hide your hardware access calls. but making your software incompatable with modern OS security to fight piracy is kind of like using a pistol to kill a mosquito that is biting your face.

Re:Please explain to me

[Ash-Fox]

I'm aware of these facts. Sometimes you can get a Leela header.

BTW, nice fork bomb.

Re:Please explain to me

[neomunk]

I find it amusing that you can see the damage YOU do as "virtual" but the theft being perpetrated against you as real. Think about that, you're saying that destroying what could possibly be the only copies of data on a persons system is somehow more moral than making a copy of some existing data.

Doesn't this seem like burning someone's house down because they tape recorded you singing in the kitchen?

Oh, and BTW, I don't know where you live, but in my home country copyright violation is a civil offense, while actively destroying someones data on their computer without permission is both a civil AND a criminal offense. Civil vs Criminal+Civil. Yeah, you might wanna re-think this whole strategy of yours, you're entirely likely to come out with the short stick, and the potential gain (satisfying a sense of revenge?) from such an action couldn't possibly be seen as worth the risk, hope you're the sole shareholder.

Re:Please explain to me

[Cillian]

I believe malware/spyware vendors have tried things similar to this, and if I recall correctly, didn't get away with it.

Re:Please explain to me

[Ash-Fox]

I always thought Lotus notes was intentionally written that way. It's a form of torture.

Re:Please explain to me

[Hatta]

I think you should do this. Please do. The unintended consequences would be hilarious.

Re:Please explain to me

[Ash-Fox]

The guy talked about a chance of it happening, not whether it was intentional or not. Lotus notes is known for losing information, I doubt this false positive rate even reaches the frequency that Lotus Notes would lose your information at.

Re:Please explain to me

[ColdWetDog]

Furthermore, do you want your company to get the reputation of a malware maker and distributor? That's not likely to increase your sales.

Dunno about that. That modus operandi has been used by Symantec and McAffee for years.

Re:Please explain to me

[ColdWetDog]

Remember mumbles

The first rule of moderation:
You don't talk about moderation.

Re:Please explain to me

[Draek]

Leaving aside the idiocy of comparing copyright infringement with theft or physical assault, I find it interesting that you advocate such vengeful options, given the quote in your sig. Hypocrisy, or simple "left hand/right hand" issue?

Re:Please explain to me

[Draek]

I read some Atari games would detect they were cracked but play right up to the end. At the last minute final boss would, instead of fighting, give you a lecture about how piracy was killing the industry and then the game would exit.

Funnily enough, piracy didn't kill the '80s videogame industry, it was Atari themselves who did it.

The best possibility would to release false crack, i.e ones that let the program start but then fail in an irritating after it has been played for a long time, like hanging and corrupting saved games. Hell you could put some hard to find bugs back into the cracked version and rely on the fact that the cracking scene doesn't QA effectively.

Except that since the videogame industry *also* doesn't do QA effectively, such an action would only reflect badly on the original developers with most comments on the torrent websites going along the lines of "thanks for this crack, too bad you wasted your effort on this buggy piece of shit though, could you do a decent game next please?". Definitely not good for PR.

Re:Please explain to me

[cliffski]

so what do you recommend? social solutions? how do they work. Show me where people refused to copy something because the author behaved nicely?

Its all very well telling people who are losing money that they shouldn't act to defend their business in a certain way, but people have to defend their livelihood. I wouldn't stoop to this either, but I would feel a lot of sympathy for people who do find themselves tempted to do so.

Re:Please explain to me

[Mashiki]

Sony already decided you were a criminal.

Re:Please explain to me

[Blakey Rat]

Ask your salespeople whether they have ever had a customer accidentally running the unregistered version of your product, even when they owned a valid registration code. I think that'll answer your question.

Re:Please explain to me

[Kethinov]

I hope you realize your belligerence in trying to enforce your copyright is, for better or worse, only going to result in more people circumventing it. With the internet, it's impossible to stop noncommercial copyright infringement. Look at the RIAA's miserable litigation campaign.

You're going to have to learn to compete with free instead of fight it. Because you won't win. And if that means you won't make games anymore, then so be it. Somebody more willing to work with the economic realities of the internet will take your place while you scream "get off my lawn!" til you turn blue.

Re:Please explain to me

[techprophet]

You are right. People make this mistake a lot. (I live in the USA and am annoyed as much as you are)

Re:Please explain to me

[techprophet]

But you could write the software to erase all copies of itself detected on the HDD and attached drives.

Re:Please explain to me

[techprophet]

But the pirated software downloader didn't break in. He paid in full for the version that the pirater put up (which is $0). The pirater on the other hand may have broken in, in which case I would say nuke his HDD then his CPU. Good piraters pay for the game.

Re:Please explain to me

[techprophet]

Your best bet is to make the program dependent on a dongle, and even then there are no guarrantees.

I can just dd the dongle or disk image it in Windows, and then put that with the torrent.

Re:Please explain to me

[techprophet]

That would be the only reason I would do this :D. And of course I would quit my job and flee to Canada next.

Re:Please explain to me

[masterzora]

I don't care what your country's opinion on criminals is, since that's unrelated. The only criminal in a case like this would be you, assuming your country has laws against computer tampering and all of the related (which I'm willing to assume it does, since you haven't disputed this point elsewhere). What's that? The downloader is a criminal for copyright infringement? Actually, you're authorizing the copy by uploading it in the first place, so the downloads are non-infringing. If you ever implement this, prepare for your company to lose everything.

Re:Please explain to me

[Kalriath]

Uh, no. You and I both know you should not have to compete against your own product being offered for free. And that there's no way for a game developer to compete with free, because you simply cannot have a value added component without someone nicking it too.

Case in point, Starcraft. Pretty much zero copy protection (the CD key 123-456789-012 was actually considered valid!) and Blizzard's way of making you pay was to actually validate your CD key when connecting to Battle.net. What happened? Someone wrote a server emulator so you could create competing networks without that CD key check.

Now, Fallout 3 (collectors) had the value added bonus of an actual physical object (a figurine, about 9 inches high or so). BUT, a small company couldn't hope to procure any items such as those and have a margin high enough to pay the bills.

Stop rationalising piracy. It isn't right, and it isn't moral.

Re:Please explain to me

[Kethinov]

[Y]ou should not have to compete against your own product being offered for free.

Should and shouldn't plays no part in this. The internet and internet piracy are never going away. Thus, you will always have to compete with piracy whether or not you consider it moral. People will always be doing it. On top of that, more and more people do it every year. This is an economic reality. Smart businesses compete against economic realities instead of bitching about them.

[T]here's no way for a game developer to compete with free[.]

This is the fallacy in your and cliffski's argument. The fact is, there are any number of business models capable of subsidizing development which would effectively allow the product to be offered to consumers for free while still paying developers a living wage.

And don't forget, piracy shows no signs of slowing down. So it follows that one day, people who run businesses like cliffski's will suffer so many losses to piracy that they'll simply go out of business. But as I said, someone with a better business model will take his place.

That's our free market doing exactly what it was designed for. I know, it's hard to deal with. But life is hard. Tough. Deal with it.

Just to spite them

[s-whs]

Just to spite those who uploaded that trojan, I will start downloading FreeBSD 7.1 later today.
Here it is:

http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=freebsd

Ha!

It's not just big companies that don't like piracy

[synthesizerpatel]

Synthmaker, a music DSP authoring utility which allows 'full version' owners to export VSTs (virtual instruments) which they can then redistribute / sell had an interesting post a couple months ago from one of the users talking about how a VST they had offered for something like $10 ended up being posted with a crack on usenet.

Stuff like that happens all the time and directly affects the little guy even more than it does the big faceless corporations.

So it's tough for me to think that any company would take the immense risk of doing something as stupid as distributing a virus, whereas a disgruntled independent developer with spare time and a personal axe to grind against piracy might not care as long as some homebrew justice gets metered out.

Beware the BM trojan

[Anonymous Coward]

It replaces all your audio files with Barry Manilow songs. The initials refer to the users reaction when they realize they now have 30,000 copies of "Mandy" choking their hard drive.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[Warhawke]

You're assuming that the keygen downloader does not have the authority (i.e. ownership) of the program in question. Apparently you've never accidentally tossed or misplaced a CD-key.

So really it's more like the guy you were trying to buy medical marijuana from turned out to be the naggy guy behind the Above the Influence campaign.

Ha ha!

[LoudMusic]

Aside from a ridiculous audio message I think it's pretty funny. If you're downloading software from an unsecured and anonymous source and executing it on your computer what do you expect to happen? At least they didn't go hog wild and destroy the OS.

Ha. I like it (: But it needs a better recording.

Re:Ha ha!

[value_added]

If you're downloading software from an unsecured and anonymous source and executing it on your computer what do you expect to happen?

Have the MD5 checksums match?

Oh, wait ...

It literally kills its own spreading method

[postmortem]

As soon as happy user loads the trojan, he/she won't use torrent anymore (or at least he gets rid of it), thus how can this thing spread?

Re:It literally kills its own spreading method

[scream at the sky]

Mod parent up. If you can't get to thepiratebay.org anymore, you're gonna reinstall your OS.

<cynic>
if you can't get to thepiratebay.org, where are you gonna get your OS from?
</cynic>

Re:It literally kills its own spreading method

[rdnetto]

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Re:It literally kills its own spreading method

[scream at the sky]

Agreed, I am a long time Debian user who switched over to Ubuntu about 2 years ago when I got a new laptop (easier wireless support (read: i'm lazy) ftw.), but that doesn't change the fact that people who are getting hit with this kind of crap, are the same people who are downloading and installing pirated versions of windows, and are simply not going to change to something new.

Ubuntu is great, I love it, but it is not going to solve the problems that this kind of bullshit create, simply because the average sheeple is too resistant to change.

2c CDN

Re:It literally kills its own spreading method

[Erikderzweite]

This way we can finally drag the user kicking and screaming into the year of Linux on desktop! :)

Yah, clue-passive, non-malicious Trojan...

[Klootzak]

I'd like to give the Author of the Trojan a +5 "Magnificent Bastard" Moderation

Clue-Passive, because those with clue will remove it in 2 seconds...

"L33t Script-Kiddie" hax0rs will say: "The site was removed, argh I'm being tracked!!!" (and hopefully either stop, so SysAdmins don't have to de-virus their machines constantly, or learn enough so they understand a little bit more about what they're doing).

All in all, a clever combination of Technology and good understanding of Human-Computer Interaction.

Disclaimer: No, I didn't write it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[evanbd]

Or like complaining that instead of office chair, package contained bobcat.

Just wait 'til...

[CarpetShark]

Just wait 'til you get a dumbass letter from the RIAA saying that the IP 127.0.0.1 has been identified as a computer uploading copyrighted material. Then the shit will really hit the fan ;)

Re:Just wait 'til...

[dmsuperman]

They would get halfway through the trial before realizing they're sitting on both sides of the court. Incompetent jackasses -_-

Re:Just wait 'til...

[BlueStrat]

They would get halfway through the trial before realizing they're sitting on both sides of the court. Incompetent jackasses -_-

And how much do you want to bet they'd still try for a conviction or settlement? :D

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Just wait 'til...

[Opportunist]

How much do you want to bet that they have no problem finding a judge that lets this actually into his courtroom?

I'd love it if it happened, though. I really want to see who wants to get out of this suit more desperately, the RIAA or the court, just to avoid looking utterly clueless.

Re:Just wait 'til...

[moniker127]

This just in: RIAA sues RIAA to death. RIAA expected to countersue.

Re:Just wait 'til...

[Kingrames]

They'd convict themselves, get a twenty billion dollar payout, and use it as a basis for future lawsuits.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[mqduck]

I'm all against nefarious software creeping onto my system, but this is like complaining that the guy you tried to buy drugs from turned out to be a cop.

What, you don't get pissed when that happens to you?

Re:It's not just big companies that don't like pir

[im_thatoneguy]

Yep disney is relevant to this discussion because I'm SURE that these applications being cracked are at LEAST 16 years old.

Re:FiRsT PosT!!!!

[MrNaz]

Pics or it never happened!

Re:Why did the piratebay take it down?

[Spliffster]

What I want to know is WHY did the piratebay take it down?

Maybe because it was editing the hosts file and therefore blocking thepiratebay.com? Where is your freedom of information if you can't access the infromation?

Re:First?

[kdemetter]

Well , the trojan has been removed , and i'm sure the user uploading has also been identified and banned.

If it changes the hosts file , it's easy to identify, and remove.

We get trojan and virus uploaders all the time, and they are removed at first sight, so this is nothing new, and nothing TPB can't handle.

Re:Taking this down from the bay is WRONG!

[sraviik]

they care not about legality but about the users OS meaning reported Trojans that block access to ThePirateBay get deleted. also i would assume their definition of hurt is selective. takedowns will occur for torrents that damage users files. however torrents that damage revenue of greedy companies will remain.

Interesting artistic action

[drx]

Actually i think this is an interesting action. As a communicative act, this trojan shows several things, e.g. that the internet stays an unstable place where everything is mostly determined by convention -- even with pirates -- AND that TPB is taking down torrents they don't like, despite being a stronghold of free speech. Of course "malicious software" is the argument here for removal of the torrent, but who defines what is malicious? In the end TPB caters to the needs of its community, by filtering "content" this community doesn't approve of.

Re:Interesting artistic action

[Opportunist]

That's the prerogative of people running a webpage. Detach yourself from the idea that "the internet" is a place without rules. It's not an anarchy, it's a collection of tiny dictatorships, with every server admin being a little dictator.

The nice thing about the internet, compared to reality, is that you can simply walk away if you don't like the taste of said dictator and create your own little dictatorship.

Re:Interesting artistic action

[Kindaian]

I do believe that changing hosts file without consent is enough malicious... ;)

Re:Interesting artistic action

[drx]

For some types of communication you cannot reveal what it is, for example satire and parody. If you have to ban satire and parody to a place where everybody is expecting them, they don't work anymore.

The same with a trojan, as soon as you know it is a trojan it is not a trojan anymore.

This sort of limits what can be done with TPB.

Re:Interesting artistic action

[Blakey Rat]

If people would stop running randomly-downloaded .exes on Windows XP while logged into administrative accounts, this would be ... a cute WAV file and nothing more.

Say what you want about Vista, but at least it protects all users from stuff like this. Well, assuming you haven't removed that protection because some keep on Slashdot thought it was slightly annoying.

Re:Interesting artistic action

[LackThereof]

TPB is taking down torrents they don't like

This is not the new news you seem to think it is. TPB has always been quite active in removing malicious content, along with every other torrent site that wants to stay relevant. It's quite a necessity, as cleverly disguised trojans and bootable DVD images of Goatse are constantly being uploaded.

Of course "malicious software" is the argument here for removal of the torrent

I would argue this point. The main argument for removal of any torrent is usually "misleading description". Tricking people into downloading/viewing something they don't want is easily the most common form of internet pranksterism, and sites that allow users to post download links have to be ever vigilant. I suspect that a clearly, accurately labeled trojan would be allowed to stay on TBP. "Download and distribute! Infect your friends! Build your own botnet!"

But that raises the question, if it's clearly labeled is it still a trojan?

Cough..

[way2trivial]

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2123077/anti-blaster-worm-spreads-patches

Re:Taking this down from the bay is WRONG!

[cliffski]

Wow, people belirve that shit?
TPB believes in generating advertising revenue. Everything else is bullshit. You really think they are about freedom?

Any malware is bad

[Opportunist]

First, it takes a lot of time to find out what it really does. And even if you manage to hack it to pieces in a dis, you are never really 100% certain. Disassembled Assembler code tends to be unclear if anything. It's easy to overlook a branch that seemingly never gets executed... until something happens. If it's done creatively, you can hide the real bomb fairly well in something that, let's say, self encrypts itself and only reveals its function right at the moment when it hits.

A piece of malware on your PC is a foot in the door. Unless you wrote it yourself, consider it harmful.

Re:Any malware is bad

[EdIII]

The poster I was replying to made it sound like we only knew the more prominent effects of this trojan and there has been no study. Granted it has not been that long since this trojan was released into the wild but I think we can both agree that anti-virus companies take as many steps as possible. It's highly likely that a bunch of anti-virus companies have this being studied and we will know with an acceptable degree of certainty what it really does.

I never said it was not harmful. I only said that it could (probably will) turn out to be less disruptive than the Sony Rootkit. That's all.

tomato, potato...

[Opportunist]

I long ago dropped the idea of discriminating between virus, worm, trojan and whatever other type of malware we tried to classify in the earlier days. Today, you have usually so many functions rolled into one that it's hard to really find a suitable classification for a certain piece of malware. And while this is maybe the most classic definition of a trojan (malware disguised as something else), maybe it's time to get rid of the idea to classify and qualify malware.

Malware is something you do not want in your PC, that is brought there against your intentions and that has negative and often harmful effects on your PCs reliability, stability or security. It's already hard enough to explain to people what malware is without confusing them with conflicting terms. They distract from the real problem more than they explain it.

Re:tomato, potato...

[NoisySplatter]

I wrote the summary. I used the word virus as a synonym for malware mostly because I hate the word malware. I concede that it's technically the wrong use of the word since the trojan doesn't appear to spread itself but I just hate the word malware. It's difficult to say and sounds silly.

They're leeching from the warez network!

[argent]

OMG! They're leeching from The Elite Warez Network! YRLY!

rickbot

[argent]

Patches your flash player so that everything you look at on Youtube gets replaced by Mr. Astley's stellar performance.

It's the warez network

[argent]

It's not just this trojan, the whole Elite Warez Network is leeching your porn.

Re:Taking this down from the bay is WRONG!

[Opportunist]

Now, I hope that's understandable. Like every good "businessman", TPB cares about its customer and not about anyone else. What do you think the average person going to TPB wants, a trojan that infects his system or some software for free that he'd normally have to pay for?

Don't spit on the free market theory, the system works!

Here you go

[temcat]

You have said it yourself: "it is 100% certain that those who download pirated versions will never become legitimate customers." Ergo, the real damage (loss of profits) from those pirates incurred by you is exactly zero. On the other hand, you are going to inflict some real, very non-zero damage to these people by your hypothetical actions. Therefore these actions would be wrong even if we are to disregard all PR and legal reasons already cited by others here.

Re:What happened to Slashdot?

[Yetihehe]

This is natural cycle of evolution of such sites. First they are small sites with quality content for friends. Then friends are inviting friends and there is more content. Then content number is enormous, so you are very known site with quality content, anyone will join, many very stupid. You have many moderators, but they eventually can't cope with all that stupidity and it's not funny for them anymore, so they quit leaving only stupid people. Thanks to slashdot's moderation system it has thriven very long, but it's so known, there are millions of stupid users now. Now slashdot community is facing loss of quality users. It will be slow and painful death.

OT thead

[totally bogus dude]

Somewhat relevant quote from Clientcopia:

In my previous life as a fed agent I was often asked to assist with some "undercover" sting operations all over the Northeast US. One of the most memorable was a op in northern Maine. I was to play the brother-in-law of our source whose co-worker had recently asked him if he knew of any good dealers of crack.

Long story short, they brought me in to sell him crack. We met the "Client" as planned and you should have seen this kids eyes when I pulled out this giant bag of crack we had obtained from a previous bust. He looked like he was going to start crying, like he had just come to know Jesus or something... anyway he wanted to buy it all, every last gram of it, but he had only brought $150.00 bucks with him.

I thought for a second and asked him if had his checkbook on him and he did. I asked him how much money he had in the bank, he told me and I told him he could just write me a check for the total. This kid didn't think twice about it and started writing the thing out. As he was writing he asked me all the usual questions, correct spelling of my name, confirmed the date, then stopped writing for a second, put his pen down, and I started to panic.

He looked me straight in the eye and he stated that he always wrote down "the reason" in the little space provided in the lower left hand of checks for that purpose. Before I could even speak he picked his pen back up again and started writing, then folded the check in half and handed it to me. Before I handed him the crack I wanted to see what he wrote, so I unfolded the check and read aloud; "For Illegal Drugs", the second I read that out loud we could all hear very loud laughter coming from the room next door. You see I was wired and 6 agents were in the next room, hanging on every word. They knew they had alerted this guy and without delay came charging into the room to arrest him, but what a strange sight it was to see 6 armed feds tearing into a room, guns drawn and laughing so hard they really could not even speak in complete sentences...

Re:Let's not forget:

[Hal_Porter]

...for Windows.

But no...no reason to consider alternatives.

... where the programs people are pirating don't run.

Its a shame they took the virus down.

[plasmacutter]

A virus that instead plays "Downloading is right" and redirects the homepages of big software, music and movie companies to piratebay, mininova, etc...

Its much easier to modify the existing virus with a disassembler.

Shame they took it down. Anyone care to put it up on google code? : )

Darwin Award Nominee

[Waxwing Slain]

Can we have the name of the person who downloaded the "serial key generator" and found this trojan? What did it claim to generate a serial key for, Duke Nukem vs Predator 2?

Indeed.

[plasmacutter]

There is no reason to run a keygen on your system, period.

There are sites out there which will run a keygen server side and carry lists of serialz.

The parent is not a troll so mod up please.

[gatkinso]

Even though it was probbaly intended to be a troll, it is worthy of discussion.

As a responsible software development shop, you should know that you absolutely do NOT want any version of your software floating around that attacks a users machine.

All I need to hear is that your Application 2.1 will say, format a harddrive and delete all partitions... and I woould not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

So. If you want to completely destry your customer base - go ahead and pull such a stunt.

Re:What happened to Slashdot?

[hairyfeet]

Thank you. Your answer is logical and makes sense. And as for the anon coward telling me to go to /g/ because I read at -1, WOOSH! Kind of missed the point, but may have hit the nail on the head by complete accident.

The point was you didn't HAVE to cruise at +5, because the only thing you found at -1 was the occasional heated argument or sock puppet battle. And as for how you may have hit the answer by accident: I don't go to 4chan. I think it is stupid with way too many loli freaks. But since you brought up /g/ I'm guessing you're a channer. Slashdot didn't seem to have lousy trolls until 4chan got DDoSed awhile back. So in addition to the above poster's answer I'm willing to bet some of the 4chan trolls(which frankly suck. Learn how to write good trolls 4channers) have decided to sleep under the bridge here at Slashdot. Which is really a shame, since this used to be such a good site. But at + viewing there frankly isn't enough posts to bother with and at -1 it is nothing but trolls. Damned shame.

Downloading is wrong?

[nurb432]

Tell that to SourceForge.

If these people are caught with ties to any industry the FTC needs to come down on them, hard.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[nurb432]

I'm all against nefarious software creeping onto my system, but this is like complaining that the guy you tried to buy drugs from turned out to be a cop.

Not all agree with you, and some feel that mis-representation is wrong too.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[nurb432]

Very few 'viruses' are technically viruses as almost all need some level of human interaction.. But its the term the media uses.

Re:Surprising

[cjjjer]

Like you I am actually surprised people are surprised by this. OMG!! a Trojan in a downloadable file from what is pretty much a hub for sharing warez. I guess there are naive people out there that think because it passed through a BitTorrent network the BT fairies and pixies have cleaned the files from all that is bad.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[Hatta]

I'm all against nefarious software creeping onto my system, but this is like complaining that the guy you tried to buy drugs from turned out to be a cop.

That's a very appropriate analogy, considering that both drugs and keygens should be legal. What goes on between consenting adults and their computers is nobody else's business.

For the Japanese-impaired

[TheoMurpse]

What what!
Your idiot! [yes, the possessive]
You're annoying!

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[Crizp]

I meant anata-wa (anata-ga?) but nvm as I said I'm stupid :v

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[TheoMurpse]

Well, you don't need anything other than "baka yo" to say that.

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[pxlmusic]

there once was a girl from nantucket...

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[Tolkien]

You tried to mow her grass but couldn't cut it?

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[pxlmusic]

something like that.

too tired for limericks this morning.

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[BoothbyTCD]

Well, naninani in this case is probably more like 'something something' or 'whatever' or 'thingamajig'. 'What what' is not a very good translation, though that is what it literally means.

Re:For the Japanese-impaired

[TheoMurpse]

That is true. I typically translate "blah blah" to "nani nani" when writing scripts, stories and the like. E.g., "All I hear from her is 'nani nani'!"

However, I don't think you would typically say "nani nani yo" if your intent was to make "nani nani" mean "whatever." Of course, I'm a non-native Japanese speaker; there's always something I don't know!

I welcome corrections. How will I ever attain native fluency otherwise?

Madonna has new strategy

[fuliginous]

Madonna has since adopted an even nastier tactic, that of producing such lousy crap no one will want to pirate it (specifically her most recent album!).

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[TheSpoom]

Let's celebrate the nine heroes who have actually given this feedback on eBay. :^D

Now all we need...

[Alari]

Now all we need is a torrent download of a sound file that says viruses are wrong. =)

Keylogger

[phorm]

Just to clarify,a keylogger is different from a keygen. The former being used to record what keys are being pressed on a user's keyboard, etc, while the keygen creates serial #'s etc for various software.

Thanks - didn't know about suprbay

[Werrismys]

well, I didn't.

Re:Summary makes it sounds like a virus but it's n

[Technician]

CD keys were always written on the CD with a sharpie. It fixes that problem.

Changing to Ubuntu made life even easier. I don't see CD keys anymore.

Re:listen up retards

[Technician]

edit hosts file and make a back up

Better is to use an OS where only the Admin account can edit the hosts file.

User programs should not edit the hosts file.

Oh cool other good torrent sites

[fireheadca]

I've heard of the piratebay before but never Superbay and Mininova. Awesome! I have to tell all my friend.

---
Yes, I know.

Freedom of Information??

[drx]

Where is your freedom of information if you can't access the infromation?

Where is your freedom of information when you can't access malware?

Re:Freedom of Information??

[techprophet]

Do you want to access malware? If you do I say give up on your prank/revenge or find some pron sites.

Trojans don't work by this definition

[drx]

So this definition excludes Trojans because you cannot say "this is a trojan". When you know it is not a trojan anymore.

Re:Speaking of pirates

[FrostDust]

...Life jackets mandatory with every .torrent file?

Trojan.JS.Agent.js

[phalse phace]

Kaspersky detected this yesterday:

detected: Trojan program Trojan.JS.Agent.ja

URL: http://savelocity.com/form43810aas.html

and all I did was type in Gran Torino into the search field on the Bay. Crazy.

Re:Taking this down from the bay is WRONG!

[Wildclaw]

The pirate bay removes torrents for several reasons, but not because of the content. Here are a few things they do remove:

* Child porn when the police tells them to take it down.
* Torrents distributed for commercial gain.
* Torrents with incorrect name/description (It isn't the content that matters, but the fact that name/description doesn't match up with the actual content. One of the principles of the piratebay is that you should know what you download)

If you want to distribute a trojan via a piratebay torrent, just clearly state it in the name/description.

"Troj/Qhost-AC" - Trojan that prevents you from accessing the piratebay and several other torrents sites. Hidden inside a key generator for the Game XXX. To install, simply make sure the key generator is run on a machine with appropriate permissions.

If you did it like that, I don't see why the piratebay wouldn't let it remain.

VMs and Sandboxie don't always work

[cciRRus]

Some keygens query Windows for certain unique system identifiers (e.g. MAC address, C: Volume Serial Number) which are used to generate the key. Hence, the key generated by the keygen that ran the VM or Sandbox would only be valid for the application installed in that operating environment.

Re:It's not just big companies that don't like pir

[Doctor_Jest]

Thanks for missing my entire point. Public school graduate, I presume? :)

The secondary point is how copyright has gotten completely out of hand. But suffice to say, most people have enough of a bias that they miss the point entirely. Did I endorse piracy? No. Did I condone the trojan? No. But, thanks for reading anyway. :) I don't want to put forth the wrong expectation, but I do think that every salvo in this war of ideas should be halted until we can at least agree that Copyright in its current form is _NOT_ what the Founders were after. If we can at least get that far (we know the *AA's and copyright holding houses like Disney won't budge), maybe we can get some sanity back into this and stop trying to stamp these things out with viruses, trojans, legislation, criminalization, and excessive litigation.

Re:It's not just big companies that don't like pir

[Doctor_Jest]

Vote Monkey! :)

You insensitive fool! Stop waking up Cthulhu!

[freaker_TuC]

You just woke up Cthulhu and his 5 servants ! Better make up now!

Bow to your new summoned overloard!

You sure seem to be missing all points! ...

[freaker_TuC]

With that kind of stupidity this guy sure doesn't deserve drugs!
Do something illegal? Don't get caught!

How is drugs even remotely comparable to food or handicapped people?
Drugs is a choice; being handicapped and (often) having no food isn't!

Even when the choice can be difficult to get rid of, it's still a choice where you can change your life.
Try that without arms or legs.