Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance Pwned by Hackers
Written by Ernesto on January 13, 2009The website of the Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance, which represents the MPAA and a wide range of copyright holders in the Middle East, has been defaced by hackers. The entire news section was wiped out a week ago, and it hasn’t recovered since. It seems like this anti-piracy outfit doesn’t even visit its own site.
The Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAA) was founded in 1996 by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), and has turned itself into a profitable business since. In 2007 the company even received a nomination for the prestigious Lloyds TSB Small Business of the Year Award, but unfortunately for them they didn’t win.
The outfit sees itself liaising with the authorities, tipping them off and assisting in raids. Scott Butler, the CEO of the company who’s obviously from the U.S judging from his accent, said in a radio interview last year that his company assists in hundreds of raids a month.
Butler proudly added that, contrary to the situation in the U.S, everyone they catch violating copyrights in the United Arab Emirates goes to jail. “Amazingly, every single copyright case within United Arab Emirates resulted in imprisonment,” he said.
While the AAA might do a good job at protecting the intellectual property of their clients, preventing their own website from being hacked seems to be a real challenge. For days now, the news section of the site has been stripped of all its content, displaying the following message: “hacked by ashiyane security team”.
When it comes to securing websites, anti-piracy outfits seem to fail time and time again. Last year, the RIAA website got hacked, and the IFPI and a Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit both lost their domain names to BitTorrent sites after they failed to renew their registrations. Perhaps they should consider investing a few of their hard earned dollars in a proper sysop.
In the meantime, perhaps the Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance should consider checking their own site every now and again.
Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance Pwned by Hackers
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34 Responses
Brilliant!
rofl at they dont visit their own site
This intrigued me, since I am Arab, and was never aware of the existance of such alliance. But true, I would suspect that most "offenders" would be jailed regardless. Copyright laws are non-existent really in the Arab region.
Apparently they are Iranian hackers…
But then again internet is censored in the Arab states, so pople pwnEd by aaa?
pwn3d!!111
Is it correct to say that the “guilty” would be imprisoned anyway if the leaders wanted, even if they weren’t actually guilty of breaking any laws? If the RIAA’s typical tactics are in play, political pressure on the government would hardly be a new thing.
If this is so, I hope that someone shoots the copyright holders who are using the police apparatus of tyrannical states to squeeze a few extra dollars out of their helpless subjects.
a member of the Iranian hacking team would never link to their own board. It was probably just one of their students which says quite a lot about this alliance's website security.
The 1 word that springs to mind when describing these anti-pirate peeps is "noobs".
See – this is an example of what I was talking about some time ago on here: these small-time commercial pirates are actually providing a service to people in developing countries by providing pirated materials to people too poor to afford internet and/or computers in their own homes.
People here though insisted I was wrong, saying the pirates – and their suppliers – were scum since they're making small amounts of money. Despite the fact that without them people would be unable to pirate…
“Amazingly, every single copyright case within United Arab Emirates resulted in imprisonment,”…
That is just freakin' scary.
The UAE is scary… Dubai is supposed to be the most cosmopolitan but still not even close to western standards, I was there for a short while and i dont think i ever saw so many bastards in one place (the locals… the the foreign visitors)
Here they are walking a very fine line, and because "monetary pirates" give "personal downloaders" a bad name, not many are going to a take your side of the argument.
While I do agree they provide a kind of service, just how valuable that service is… is kind of debatable..
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
how do they hack these websites anyway…isn't it that u got to get the password of the admin to be able to modify the webpages..how naive could the agency be to keep the site so insecure and vulnerable to hackers.
Butler proudly added that, contrary to the situation in the U.S, everyone they catch violating copyrights in the United Arab Emirates goes to jail.
Well, what do you expect from totalitarian states? I guess this person would want the U.S. to be more like the U.A.E.
So someone hacked a web site. Big deal…. And this is only a small portion
of their site too, so I would definitely not saw they were "Pwned". I really do not think this comes down to securing your web servers but rather the security weak software being sold these days.
Yep, shows perfectly what those guys think of democracy.
LOL, you have to admit that is quite funny!
JT
privacy-web.us.tc
You know, commercial piracy used to be the only source (apart from importing from abroad) of software and games for me until early 2007 when affordable unlimited internet plans appeared at my location. So, being dependent on it for years, I wouldn't be bashing it too much whether it is wrong or not, especially when it's presented as a service rather than selling of products. And, of course, the best way to fight it is to improve the availability of internet until commercial pirates are no longer necessary.
Thanks for plagairizing me, Nubcakes. It's flattering. But you got some of the details wrong.
It isn't "small-time commercial pirates provide a service to people too poor to afford internet and/or computers in their homes", because that misses the actual point.
It's "small-time commercial pirates provide a service to people too poor to afford the ludicrous prices demanded by the MAFIAA which oftentimes equates to sacrificing half of ones monthly paycheck just to buy a single fucking DVD".
Nobody really argued then, either. Infact, nobody's really arguing it now. So you can drop the whole "people here insisted I was wrong" part.
Nice try attempting to paint the people here as beind closeminded zealots, though. But next time you should do your homework a little better.
the hackers are know as ashiyane group. Theyre a hacker group based in Iran and take great interest in hacking arabic websites.
I doubt they would ever be satisfied. In the U.A.E. he's probably lobbying for everyone who's alleged of infringing on their copyrights to be immediately stoned to death.
Tell you the truth…i have a bunch of pirated movies and recently just started buying pirated games.. I think this organization isnt even that strong…. everything here at least in my area (Iraq and Kuwait) are definitely sold openly even though its not the legit retail version. So I'm thinking this particular organizaton is simply a face in the region and not taken serious. As 3rd world countries all over the world do not benefit at all from protecting Western empowered intellectual property. I personally dont care though. The third worlders charge much more reasonable prices than the if i were back in the states. $20 bucks for 4 Seasons of Martin or any TV show for that matter. 2 bucks for movies. I mean that 2 bucks thing really works for new releases I get to preview the movie and basically decide if I want to see it in full glory at the theater or buy the DVD. (of course alot of times the 2 dollar DVD is actual DVD quality already….so on those cases…..yea)
We should be kind of worried really, it's things like this that give the anti-piracy companies reason to chase us even more. Just makes them more determined, really.
Cool story though.
Hey!
Good article TF, one small typo:
"In 2007 the the company even…."
Two "the"s in the above.
"Butler proudly added that, contrary to the situation in the U.S, everyone they catch violating copyrights in the United Arab Emirates goes to jail. “Amazingly, every single copyright case within United Arab Emirates resulted in imprisonment,” he said."
What he conveniently fails to mention is the people they catch "violating copyrights" are mostly the ones selling pirated content on the streets, he also does not mention that the never catch the "top dogs"… just the "small fry".
Most of the people caught are from countries like India, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia etc… these poor souls go to the UAE to make some money to send folks back home, find it hard to make ends meet and sell DVDs for the bigger boys on the streets…
Like drugs, the peddlers get caught but the "distributers" and suppliers simply get new people to do the same thing.
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
So there's about 1200 persons thrown into jail each year in United Arab Emirates for sharing culture digitally? Totalitarian states are scary :-(
Oh they wiilll
Lol they should post a youtube video with rick astley on there
telling them they got rickrolled
The hell are you talking about.. Security weak software.. oh what did the sysop forget to update his anti-virus? He didnt buy the latest Norton? I bet you think theres magical 'security' programs that protect you!
Idioth.
YES IT IS CALLED SECURING YOUR WEB SERVER. Learn about what your talking about before commenting.
Your buying pirated games? Please tell me you mean that you are buying games after you pirate them..
If you are buying pirated games that means you support Commercial Piracy and therefor pretty much everyone here hates you.
Commercial piracy is wrong, fuck you.
they dont bother to say how many.. could be.. 2.. lol
You can't shut the real napster!
For great justice Anonixians excellent job
Thanks for information ;)
__________________________
http://www.jugargame.com
That shit aint wrong in a foreign country…. obviously not even to certain government who own the bases that have several shops that sell pirated stuff.
And u know that u need to get off your morality horse. Commercial piracy is just as vice as individual piracy.
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