BitTorrent Tracker Insider Infiltrates Anti-Piracy Lobby
Written by Ernesto on May 25, 2008Anti-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 (SMÃÃS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.
Unnar first arranged a meeting with Snæbjörn SteingrÃmsson, the executive of SMÃÃS, 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 SMÃÃS 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 SMÃÃS 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 SMÃÃS.
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52 Responses
Finally someone showed those bastards how to deal with it :>
Haha. Bad ownage.
PWND!
Well I guess it had to happen at one point :O :)
How much money have those anti organisations wasted trying to fight us so far?
thats awesome Unnar congrats for being so sly.
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!
so pirates seem to be real pirates,and i had thought they were only playing pirates.
pwned
Nice work, pwned :D
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.
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…
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!
Rofl they got seriously fucked over!
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…
:)
@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 SmáÃs.
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.
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!
@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.
I wanna shake that guys hand! lol.
Mahaha! GREAT job!
Fuk wi us & we’ll Fukk U back :D
lmao. Time to get hackin
This is awesome! IANAIL, but if they can prove that SMAIS’s evidence was illegal, they could probably get it thrown out.
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.
HAHA oh wow, great stuff, Unnar! That must take some balls to do that. :)) Congrats on helping to reveal some of the dirty ways the industry works. The SMÃÃS people are probably PISSED right now. 8D
This guy deserves a medal!
Oh man, Unnar you are my hero. I dunno how you can beat that, that’s just amazing.
Shows what devious scumbags they really are. Never buy their product, only pirated. If you can’t afford a lawyer the court may appoint one. Still, make sure to have your say and don’t let it all go over your head.
In this case it likely won’t even get to court or if it did it’d be thrown out at worst. At best, they’d be found guilty of various offenses instead, and there’d be a solid basis for countersuits.
Awesome news.
Just hope he didn’t let this out too early.
brilliant
Yikes! I don’t know anything about Icelandic law, but I suspect it might be wise for dude to call a lawyer and get the skinny on the legal ramifications of what he has done. While its quite the awesome and ballsy move, he did just pull what might be a borderline stunt. I have a suspicion that it might result in some legal difficulties for him.
Forgive my possible ignorance but attaining that evidence using those means, doesn’t it mean the court may very well discard is as “illegal” evidence?
I know we can compare it to the tactics of any anti-piracy organization but we all know the rules usually don’t apply to them but they do to the P2P defendants or just “normal people” who fileshare.
Just curious about the actual and possible validity of this great infiltration.
“”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 SMÃÃS used an exploit or some other hack, to gain access to the tracker.”
Not good…
So much jail time do you get lying to the cops? Pretty stupid move!
@34 When did he lie to the cops?
WTG, Unnar!
#33 – you fucktard.
HTH,
HAND,
kthxbai…
lol nerds
Hahaha! Thats very very funny!
It is a brave lawyer who would take on a community of Internet users. The most extreme ppl just *could* be inclined to mess with your credit rating as the opening to a vengeance strategy.
If I were the SMIS (and the lawyers) I’d tell my bank not to accept a new credit card or mortgage application and to watch for any unusual activity on their bank accounts.
fuck a van full of cats =]
Is it me or are the comments on TF total shit 90% of the time? Every story, same people writing “pwned” or some other crap completely unrelated to any of the issues. Grrrrr.
Good job dude, going all 007 on ‘em… The way to go!
Such pwnage… he should have documented his findings better tho… recordings, docs ect.
always remember guise, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT!
#40
Yeah, that is correct. When I did the calc. I got 72.7435% but that is close enough, tough it means almost 28% is related and a good read :D
I would love to know what assholes are aiding these groups in their extortion of people.
Feel free to support us.
http://thevikingbay.org/donate.php
We need your help!
OWNED !
sounds like i could conquer iceland with a bic lighter. i wish the mpaa were as dumb as their icelandic sister. well played Unnar. i hope your mission keeps you out of the booty house.
I like this!
Don’t forget the asshole that is doing the work for SMÃÃS, Ãsgeir Stefán Ãsgeirsson, owner of Ljóshraði and Umbra Systems ( ljoshradi.net , u.is , asgeir.is ).
He was working for them in the large DC++ case, Istorrent case, and now TWB.
He is one looser that has to be stopped in any way possible.
Hacking comoputer is illegal by itself so these SMÃÃS does not give a fuck about the law in Iceland.
We haver to do somthing about these parasites from the music industry once and for all whatever it may be.
if you lose just declare BK but keep everything running just to bether them!
lol, pity he didn’t ask for a few payments of cold hard cash. It would have deepened the pain for smais
p2p ent going nowhere cos of guys like unnar!! keep up the good work!!
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