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AutoCAD Worm Medre.A Stealing Designs, Blueprints
Trailrunner7 writes, quoting Threat Post: "Security researchers have come across a worm that is meant specifically to steal blueprints, design documents and other files created with the AutoCAD software. The worm, known as ACAD/Medre.A, is spreading through infected AutoCAD templates and is sending tens of thousands of stolen documents to email addresses in China. However, experts say that the worm's infection rates are dropping at this point and it doesn't seem to be part of a targeted attack campaign. ... [They] discovered that not only was the worm highly customized and well-constructed, it seemed to be targeting mostly machines in Peru for some reason. ... They found that ACAD/Medre.A was written in AutoLISP, a specialized version of the LISP scripting language that's used in AutoCAD."
It's just sharing. Information wants to be free! Remember?
On slashdot, information wants to be free and there's no such thing as intellectual property when it's the RIAA or MPAA. When it's someone we like, then the group think is very, very different. Suddenly, artificial scarcity is fine, it's wrong to copy someone else's creation against their will.
Well in manufacturing you may be correct but in construction AutoDesk is still a top dog.
what the chinese will mostly get is many, many house floorplans, elevations and relfected ceiling plans
OK, don't feed the trolls, but here goes anyway:
There's a bit of a difference: The AutoCAD drawings being stolen were (presumably) never meant to be released to the public. It could very well be theft, as in theft of trade-secret or such. Piracy never enters into it, as it's not a publicly-sold copyrighted work.
You generally don't walk up to a engineering firm and ask to browse their drawings catalog and then offer to buy one. If you somehow did manage to buy a drawing, and if said drawing were copyrighted, and you then turned around and started selling copies of that drawing to others, then that would be piracy (and not theft).
Theft of corporate secrets is indeed theft, since the original owners no longer have the secrets. The "secrecy" part of it is forever gone, even if the drawings remain. The economic loss is easily much, much greater than the corresponding loss due to piracy, namely of one potential sale of a copyrighted work that's otherwise generally available.
The correct description of this is industrial espionage.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone