BitTorrent Tracker Insider Infiltrates Anti-Piracy Lobby

Written by Ernesto on May 25, 2008 

Anti-piracy oufits have gained access to private BitTorrent trackers before, but the opposite has never happened, until now. Over the past few weeks, Unnar Geir, spokesperson of “The Viking Bay”, successfully infiltrated the Icelandic equivalent of the MPAA (SMÁÍS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.

Unnar first arranged a meeting with Snæbjörn Steingrímsson, the executive of SMÁÍS, about a month ago. He told Snæbjörn that he could provide details about the owners and administrators of the BitTorrent tracker, and said he was willing to testify against them.

The sole purpose of the covert-operation was of course to gather information from SMÁÍS on the ongoing investigation on TVB (Icelanders only) and Torrent.is, two Icelandic BitTorrent trackers. “Me and an administrator at TVB were pondering one morning about what Smáis actually got on us, and I had this idea to contact Snæbjörn and set up a meeting,” Unnar explained.

To gain the confidence of Snæbjörn and the other investigators, 15 in total, Unnar led them to believe that the TVB staff was threatening him. “I was called in for another meeting and I told him that I had been assaulted because somebody knew I was going to witness against TVB, I made my friend give me some bruises.” Undy told TorrentFreak.

The investigators fell for it, and believed that they finally had an insider on their side, so they started to share confidential information. The cover story had worked, and this Friday Unnar was called in for a meeting where they showed 1000 pages of evidence against TVB. In addition they told Unnar that they were plotting a criminal case against the tracker, not a civil case as the one against Istorrent.

“I was shown screenshots of admin profiles on TVB, which showed information only available to administrators. I asked how they got this information and if somebody else was snitching, but they replied ‘you can do everything on the internet’,” Unnar said. The most likely scenario is that SMÁÍS used an exploit or some other hack, to gain access to the tracker.

At that point they still thought Unnar was going to testify against the people behind TVB, so they showed him all the info they had gathered on the tracker, and which users they would go after, if it would come to that. “They gave me the usernames of two persons who where responsible for 90% of the Icelandic material on TVB,” Unnar said. “After the meeting I gave this information to those users, so they could take evasive action.”

“The most interesting part about this is that I said at the beginning of the meeting: “No offense, I can help you convict some administrators, but the website isn’t going down just for that,” to which Snæbjörn replied “It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, we will still bankrupt you.” This shows that they are simply using their money to force the trackers to go offline.

All in all Unnar thinks that he has gathered enough information to have a significant advantage in court. This Friday he publicly shared his covert-ops experiences with other users at TVB, but up until now, he hasn’t heard anything from SMÁÍS.

Previously: Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State

Next: RIAA Declares Victory Over AllofMP3, Drops Lawsuit

57 Responses

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1 May 25, 2008 at 20:18 by dpdsbd

Finally someone showed those bastards how to deal with it :>

2 May 25, 2008 at 20:25 by Halldor

Haha. Bad ownage.

3 May 25, 2008 at 20:29 by D4rKr0W

PWND!

4 May 25, 2008 at 20:33 by Gabre

Well I guess it had to happen at one point :O :)

5 May 25, 2008 at 20:41 by port

How much money have those anti organisations wasted trying to fight us so far?

6 May 25, 2008 at 20:53 by skakidd

thats awesome Unnar congrats for being so sly.

7 May 25, 2008 at 20:59 by Anonymous

I really hope the evidence he’s released to his tracker members includes recordings of their meetings audio or video. If they have i would love to see it. Well done for fooling them!

8 May 25, 2008 at 21:01 by bill tcherno

so pirates seem to be real pirates,and i had thought they were only playing pirates.

9 May 25, 2008 at 21:07 by lozer

pwned

10 May 25, 2008 at 21:21 by Dan

Nice work, pwned :D

11 May 25, 2008 at 21:23 by PatriotX

thought it was like 2 months ago or more, anyway he could have screwed them some more over like having them go to court and then bail on them lol that would have been hilarious.

I´m guessing MPAA will not trust anybody so easily after this, so anybody seeking to screw these ppl over some more has to be extra convincing.

P2P brings the future, let MPAA rot in the past.

12 May 25, 2008 at 21:28 by Anonymous

Bout time something like this happened.

Wouldn’t it have been better to not have let the public know about this though and just keep it quiet and use it to their advantage in court? Seems like the element of surprise has been lost for a very small victory…

13 May 25, 2008 at 21:33 by Peter

Doesn’t this just show them that we are as low and devious as they are?
I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been done, but shouting about it here seems stupid!

14 May 25, 2008 at 21:46 by Elliott99

Rofl they got seriously fucked over!

15 May 25, 2008 at 21:59 by Crynsos

Now THAT’s interesting news…
It’s their own fault for getting totally OWNED in the same way they tried themselves!

@13: Well, hitting them once with their own tactics isn’t that bad, I doubt this will be possible much more often… or will it?

But you’re right, shouting it around might be a little… stupid…

16 May 25, 2008 at 22:09 by The Th!ng

:)

17 May 25, 2008 at 22:26 by Unnar Geir

@13 & 15

It might seem stupid to “shout it around”, but its just for entertainment value. I wouldnt say we are sinking down to their levels as our mission is not to bankrupt people that stand in their way. Our mission was just to know what they know.

I believe that staying “undercover” for any longer wouldnt do any good, as we have most of the information we needed, and we also believe that talking about how we got it is both really fun, and does not hurt our cause, though it certantly hurts the cause of Smáís.

We are currently assembling a team to investigate our investigators during their spare time, because its obvious they are using illegal methods to gain some of their information. Our findings will be forwarded to the police.

18 May 25, 2008 at 23:10 by herrag33k

I’m a SysOp @ TVB and if I’ll get interrogated, I’m gonna use my right to an attorney, paid by… Taxes, or Snæbjörn himself!

19 May 25, 2008 at 23:15 by Concerned One

@13 and 15
The difference is that this is a measure of defense from the ones who are attacking you. When people use such tactics against you, they deserve to have such tactics used against themselves.

20 May 25, 2008 at 23:40 by Sickness

I wanna shake that guys hand! lol.

21 May 26, 2008 at 00:40 by :D

Mahaha! GREAT job!

22 May 26, 2008 at 01:19 by 0wnag3

Fuk wi us & we’ll Fukk U back :D

lmao. Time to get hackin

23 May 26, 2008 at 01:30 by anon

This is awesome! IANAIL, but if they can prove that SMAIS’s evidence was illegal, they could probably get it thrown out.

24 May 26, 2008 at 01:48 by Anonymous

So Unnar got the bruises when it should be the other way round, for the MPAA characters. This is exactly the kind of tactics they use. Deception is their art.

This story shows too their only intention is to bankrupt you, and that’s why I always say not to even pay legal fees. Do it yourself, get a lawyer who will work for costs reimbursement for winning, and/or if you win you can apply to have costs awarded, as well as countersuits.

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