6,600 emails leaked from MediaDefender

the_syco

OK, didn't see this make the news, so here you go (it may be a bit old). Some time ago, 700MB's of emails from MediaDefender were released to the general public. How, you may ask? Well, that's simple enough. Whomever published the emails, also wrote

"A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account"

so whoever is "Jay Maris", he must be regretting that slight mistake.

For those who don’t know MediaDefender, it’s part of the company ARTISTdirect (OTC: ARTD) and their sole purpose is to disrupt P2P traffic. They try to achieve this ‘noble’ goal by creating fake (decoy) torrent files and spreading these on BitTorrent websites. Their server farm consists of thousands of servers they use to seed and track these fake files. These guys like to refer to their work as “content protection”.

The full scope can be seen here, but 56Kb users may be waiting some time. EVen though it's mostly only text, it's a sh|t lot of text.

Conor108

Hang on, how was the email security circumvented by forwarding mail to Gmail? I'm confused

Cionád

Conor108 wrote:

Hang on, how was the email security circumvented by forwarding mail to Gmail? I'm confused

He works for MD and forwarded all his mails to his gmail account which had a simple password - and was cracked... i think

Khannie

Anything interesting in them?

crianp

There is boat loads of interesting info, like which torrent sites they frequent and monitor, the format of the mail is in mbox so you have to convert it to eml in order to read it in outlook 2007. Once you have done that, it is a treasure trove of information for seeing how the other side works.

the_syco

Khannie wrote:

Anything interesting in them?

MiniNova wrote:

NEGATIVES: Attempted to upload to Mininova using 15 different IPs across various ranges. Was banned on every single attempt.

– Benny Mao, on uploading fakes to Mininova

These are very disappointing results given that people were here over the weekend. I understand that Mininova is moderating heavily, …

– Ben Ebert, on attempts to upload fake “Fantastic 4″ torrents

And I know Mininova is our toughest site to get onto.but we gotta think of something.

– Ben Ebert, on failing attempts to upload fakes

Somewhere in between collecting real torrents and posting decoys, post comments for these files on Piratebay, Mininova and Torrentspy.

– Pedro Cortez, in meeting notes

REMINDER: Next Fox High Priority project - Release July 27th: “The Simpson’s Movie”
Try to post to Mininova and Torrentspy by any means possible.

– Pedro Cortez, in other meeting notes

Also, the emails show that they owned MiiVi, a site which they hoped people would upload their torrents to, so that they could then prosecute said people. This way of catching people is gray area, and possiblt illegal, as it may be considered entrapment.

Jay,

Do you think it would break a lot and take more time than its worth for the MiiVi application/installer also to act like Serge’s Proxy client and spoof on eMule?

-Ben

This means that they'd use peoples bandwidth without them knowing about it.

Stephen

The digg thread on this has some brilliant excerpts... and over 4000 diggs

http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Biggest_Ever_BitTorrent_Leak_MediaDefender_Internal_Emails_Go_Public

ChilliNuts

man, this is a great story - very interesting reading!

/grabs popcorn

RuggieBear

like the way they used the pirated material for market research

B0X

Excellent stuff, a congratulations to the guy who managed this.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Seeding the mailbox torrent:D

Stephen

Haha, they're in damage control mode now:

http://digg.com/offbeat_news/MediaDefender_Damage_Control_Cease_and_Desist

BostonB

Cion&#225 wrote: »

He works for MD and forwarded all his mails to his gmail account which had a simple password - and was cracked... i think

How did they crack the gmail password?

Stephen

The guy's password was a seven-character, all lower-case word. I doubt it would have taken too long to brute force that. Although there was chatter about how the dumbass may have signed up to one of the torrent sites in order to post fake torrents and he may have used the same password there that he uses for his gmail

CptSternn

What bothers me is that these companies are knowingly slowing down the internet and clogging up networks on purpose.

So to stop the people from downloading movies, they have now decided to put many bogus torrents up, in efforts to slow downloads.

This has a few effects -

First, people who download bogus files will try again. It's more like a speed-bump to them rather than a deterent. This means the few that do get the bogus file will hog twice as much bandwidth- or 3-4 times depending on the number of bogus files out there.

Second, by flooding torrent networks, they also flood major hubs and cities.

This group is actively slowing down the internet for everyone, just to slightly slow down movies that are being downloaded.

That would be like making everyone in Ireland drive 15 KMPH just so they can stop a car chase in Dublin.

We pay for a service, which often runs at half the speed or less of what ISP's promise - and the ISP's blame traffic. Then we see companies like this are blatantly abusing bandwidth on purpose in attempts to slightly slow down someone who is violating copyright law.

Personally, I am irked about this. To think of all the times I get crap speeds while trying to surf the web can be directly tied to companies like this that intentionally slow down the net plus release trojans that spread well outside the domain of pirates bothers me.

It's like a small group of American companies have taken it upon themselves to police the net - and have decided to hinder all of us worldwide, without any regard for law abiding users.

By allowing this to happen its like we all are subjected to being treated as criminals and our services half a world away are hobbled, so movie companies in America can save a buck or two.

Fascist, self-centred, egotistical bigots have decided without asking anyone that they can trample on us, just because they want to save some money.