ISP Secretly Copies BitTorrent Tracker Data
Written by Ernesto on July 20, 2008Last month, the prominent Malaysian ISP “Shinjiru” had shut down several torrent sites, following pressure from the government. Strangely enough, after a few days of downtime some of the sites started to reappear, like nothing had happened. However, those sites who did not leave, are now being tapped.
Just when things seemed to cool down in Malaysia, we received a rather disturbing email from one of the sysops of tbkresources.org. The sysop told us that, after a few days of downtime, the server was suddenly up again. “After further inquiries with Shinjiru’s billing and abuse department we were assured that “the coast was clear,” he said.
This turned out to be a false sense of security though, as the sysop explained. “Two days ago we discovered that an external disk was suddenly mounted on our box (in a quite clumsy way, I might add) 24/7 support didn’t know shit about it, until 2 hours ago when a senior admin confirmed that this disk was attached by their legal department and out of their hands.”
The sysop discovered that there was something wrong, because the server load was extremely high. At first, the support department couldn’t really figure out what was wrong, but after a few messages back and forth, they got this worrying explanation.
Hi,
After investigation on your server, we found that your server is involve with an abuse case on copyright/torrent. Your server was accessed by our local legal party for investigation. This is a sudden action by them, and we not informed earlier. Due to legal party we have no choice but to comply. Kindly contact to our abuse department for further information. Thank you.
Paul C.
Level 2 Support
So, it turns out that – without notification – Shinjiru started to copy data from the BitTorrent tracker for investigation, whatever that may be. It is unsure at this point whether the ISP will hand over the data to authorities, and whether they are doing it with other trackers, but it’s not looking good.
“This is important to get out as they are most probably doing this to every site they know about, and users are being recorded,” the sysop said. “We have destroyed the data on their USB connected disk, destroyed our site backups on it and truncated and deleted all tables, to ensure the protection of our users. As I have stated it was done with out warning nor consent.”
It looks like Shinjiru might have been pressured by the Malaysian government again. However, even then it is still a strange move to copy data from one of their clients, without notice. The sites that are still hosted there need to be aware of this, and take appropriate action. To be continued.
update: Shinjiru confirmed to TorrentFreak that there was indeed an external drive connected to the server, and that “authority on copyright infringement” attempted to copy the data.
Previously: Police Arrest Man Camming ‘The Dark Knight’
Next: Most Downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk29)
75 Responses
Possible Shinjiru is not the only one.
Avoid all Malaysian ISPs!
RIAA/MPAA corruption reached Malaysian goverment. Fucking Americans supporting corruption for self benefit again.
ghey tastic
Damn, thats f*cked up.
+1 for corruption which already has a HUGE lead.
Making an educated guess I would say “they” are building/spearheading some sort of case against torrent sites and need some/this statistical data to back up their case.
Perhaps pushing for ACTA like crap?
Either way, like i said… totally f*cked up.
Good, I hope they are going to jail for criminally distibuting illegal criminal copies of illegal piracy movies.
Yes it is fucked up-
@Hm – no need to slander the Americans
the above is true. We have destroyed the site to prevent it from being coped.
Take this warning and run with it-
If you have a box with Shinjiru destroy it !
They will sell you out !
Going in, shutting down the servers, starting the up again and then just letting them being copied by some loser, who doesn’t even guard the process?
How dumb, ignorant and intruding can these damn companies (not the hoster) be?
What people seem to forget is that the sites are search engines for torrent files and the movie files are not held on the sites
Maybe ban google for being a search engine ?
i always find it funny that multi-million dollar agencies/corporations keep doing things so clumsily and blatently un-ethical. you’d think organisations whos main business is chasing ‘criminals’ as #5 would put it would have some skillz on side. I mean it certainly isn’t beyond their reach to recruit some decent hackers who could probably do a far better job of monitoring a tracker than crudely attaching a usb hard drive to it.
i agree with the stance that american money is corrupting many other people.
if anything, i would say the american government is one of the most corrupt in the world when it comes to copyright
@5: You’re obviously some stupid MPAA
troll/shill who has no clue whatsoever
how BitTorrent works.
Torrent trackers do not store any
copyrighted files.
The award for the most retarded statement of the year goes to: No#5
“Good, I hope they are going to jail for criminally distibuting illegal criminal copies of illegal piracy movies.”
If presented with this situation, I would demand a correspondence from someone who speaks English before proceeding. If they do not comply then tell them they need to sort this out or they will lost a lot of customers.
What shitty tracker didn’t move after that? LOL
FTN pwns.
@13
Are you fuucking stoopid? FTN is for jews.
@5
You’re obviously trying to get people fired up as most would obviously disagree with you.
Nice try, but No!
“criminally distibuting illegal criminal copies of illegal piracy movies”
Learn some English before trying to troll TF please.
WTF is a criminal copy of an illegal piracy film.
J.
@16
Those who download illegal movies are criminals and should be given life sentence as soon as possible.
I download torrents and see who’s IP has 100% complete, wich means he/she was the uploader of the illegal movie.
I copy the IP and take screenshot + firewall/WireShark logs and sending them to police and antipiracy agencies so they can monitor the IP. :)
@17
That’s good, Im with you.
/Keep it LEGAL
LOL think the 10 trolls that sat in the sofa jurking eatchother off are back..
@17 I hope they’ve killed somebody too because a life sentence seems kinda long for piracy. Maybe 2-10 years depending on quantity/activity?
Also, who’s to say that the person with 100% was the original uploader? Many people will seed a torrent once it’s done and they all have 100%.
One more thing: what do you do with the torrents you download to get this information?
17,8,5 – you are obviously the same person. please go away.
What possible purpose does the Malaysian government have for shutting down torrent trackers? NOTHING is produced in Malaysia. Unless the RIAA/MPAA is literally paying them (which I would doubt) I can’t see any possible purpose for that.
And at the 17th guy. You think copyright infringement (a civil matter) should be punished with a life sentence? In this state we don’t have the death penalty, so life sentence is what you get for first degree murder. Are you suggesting copyright infringement is as bad as first degree murder?
You’re a jackass.
EDIT: sorry, I meant 17,18,5. Number 8 is a good and decent person.
@17 “Learn to speak English before you attempt to troll TF please”.
When you can speak English I will worry about you. In the meantime, I am 8 terabytes deep in movies. What do you think about that you fucking asshat?
Jack.
Yea thats it go after someone copying a movie and then while you and your department are wasting the tax dollars on that the real criminals are getting away with the real big crimes like murder rape bank robbery child molesting and many many other far worse crimes…that just goes to show you how STUPID our GOVERNMENT & THE POLICE really ARE. I am so ashamed to say I am from america where our own president and his vice aid is so stupid and then the other law enforcement groups under him clear down to the rent a cops at the malls and such just follow the pide pipper and his merry men to the sound of his stupid drum. When are our harvard and yale educated political professonals going to see the big picture of how our country AMERICA is falling into the gutters of the world and worry about the serious stuff…People all around the world that use to fear us and look up to us as a role model are actually LAUGHING there AZZ’s off at us, we are just a joke to them anymore. Heres one for you. We went into afganastan looking for bin ladin and could not catch one yes one guy so we went else where to get another and we screwed that up as well we got him and now we are still chasing our tails in iraq instead of going full force back after bin ladin which we should not have left afganastan in the first place till we had the idiot that actually did damage to our country with his men flying planes into our buildings and killing innocent americans which the idiots in iraq like sadam did not do.So now you tell me why did we not keep a 100% effort on bin ladin and just let sadam be until we got the dangerious one out of afganastan? Yes that is why I call them idiots at the white house and all his pet monkies that are following him around like a bunch of pupets with a puppet master…Jokerman63
In Malaysia, its easy to buy a pirate cd than buying original cd.
Last time I was in Malaysia, they had 3 story buldings full of buy all you want pirated movies, software etc. This sounds like something just to keep the MAFIAA happy. Keep them stupid.
Shinjiru’s toast.
Tag em and bag em.
Well damn man share wif us …..8 terabytes (conts on his fingers just how many that is)OOOOOOOHHH!!!
I meant to reiterate my point above but took note I responded to myself lol.
@30 at 1080p not as many as you would think. ;)
J.
I think it’s because of these scandals that the Malaysian Government deserves to lose their 5 states.
I feel that this whole scandal has reflected badly on the country. Somebody needs to topple the Barisan Nasional, permanently.
This is hilarious. One day you have a story praising the benefits of a seedbox, and a couple of days later, another showing the hazzards of trusting a 3rd party host with your data. HAHA.
@wtf did torrentfreak mention (ever) that you should seed copyright material from your seedbox?
No
Is a tracker a seedbox?
No
Discussion over
@18 If they’re going to get a life sentence for linking to a file then they may as well do something which warrants it and track down and kill a troll, although that deserves a medal.
Does this penalty also apply to all the police types who share files? Coz if you think they’d even get told off for such a “crime” you’re a bigger retard than I first suspected.
@25 are those compressed? I doubt he’d have any concept of a Tb
Don’t want to start the blame game, but could you throw in some names of affected trackers? BS for instance wasn’t called back from the death.
Malaysia is ripe with pirated movies. You can buy any movie for the equivalent of 2USD pretty much anywhere. It’s a huge business that doesn’t produce any money in taxes for the gov. They want to stop the pirates from wearing eye patches sticking their wooden legs up parrots asses. Eat it.
why the fuk all you bitch at Americans. maybe its you naive liberal Europe that allows this kind of shit to spread. we did not vote the mpaa in or had anything to do with it. its all money kids, and everyone loves it.
too much money = corruption
dude ur a faggot.
I’m happen to see most of the comments are just young kids who bash “piracy should be legal!”. oh, let the software developers work for nothing, let them not get paid, just make software free!
okay, i bet if intellectual property goes away, then the biggest soft. companies would shut down as well, and you know the thrill with this open source cummunity – most of the crap they make is CRAP. as well as Linux distros.
of course america pays these countrys why else would they care? even countrys dead against america give in once those dollars are waved under their noses
If Linux is crap, then why does Windows have security holes everywhere? Linux isn’t as user-friendly as Windows I’ll admit, but it’s much safer and you’re not paying 100$ for a name.
And yes, most of the comments will be young kids saying “piracy should be legal!” because the internet is filled with young kids. Look at WoW, you have a population of a couple million and large portion of that is young kids who get full of themselves real fast. There are a fair amount of trolls though who bash “OMG piracy r t3h b4dz0rs! All pirates should be prison for life because companies don’t know how to compete without forcing other companies out of business!”. It’s a two way street.
dumbasses, in a formal letter, they could at least use proper grammar, dumb shits.
“we found that your server is involve with an abuse”
hmmmmm amazing how Shinjiru didn’t quickly release a statement denying any such allegations like they did last time. I think it’s about time tracker owners dropped this host like a bad smell.
British Government want to keep a huge database of all UK communications.
Richard Thomas of the ICO said it would be ‘a step too far’ and suggests a public debate on the issue. His payrise is mysteriously ‘put on hold’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7511671.stm
Gee, don’t you just love nosey ISPs. What a joke man. Keep the warez FREE people! Keep them FREE.
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
Qoute #42 “okay, i bet if intellectual property goes away, then the biggest soft. companies would shut down as well, and you know the thrill with this open source cummunity – most of the crap they make is CRAP. as well as Linux distros.”
Opensource is what I use bittorent for and I take exception to the badly spelt poster, who obviously has never used Linux nor been interested in anything requiring a skill to create (You ever been a coder?)
I personally dont agree with piracy, but that doesnt give me the right to try and force my opinions onto others. #42 You sir, are uneducated and ignorant. If people want pirate goods, they will get it if its legal or not. Infact it could be argued that taking away the underground element of being “illegal” might actually reduce piracy, because Im sure alot of pirates will be doing so more out of a desire to “be a pirate” rather than an actual need for the stuff they are aquiring.
Anyway, Id just like to finish by saying to #42, you contribute nothing to this discussion. Nobody is interested in the opinions of the uneducated and ignorant (just like a certain someone who recently made waves by commenting on something they didnt understand)
Don’t insult Linux and open source, people; I think the quality of the software is often much better than proprietary.
EVeryone should piss off and let me download my Movie :-P
Whateva happen, i will download my movies and watch daily LoL
Who cares illegal or legal.
Copy my @ss or my P E N I S or any sh*t you want. i will still download whateva i want to.
Long Live to Pirate Boys :D
Pirate boys should be k1ll3d :D
How do they copy it?
theyu dont copy
sadfghyjukijhzdf sr srt
I can confirm the Malaysian was long corrupted before the MPAA/RIAA showed up
I meant the Malaysian Gov.
@18
go kill yourself.
“level 2 support”
:D
only a level 2..pfffffffffff I would ask, no, demand to speak to a level 60!
:D
Yes they should be onto bigger, more worthwhile crimes, but a dead kid, starved to death by their own parents doesn’t make any fucking money does it. Fat, fucking greedy corps make money, have to answer to their shareholders and worry about their director’s bonuses, they have the cash to pay the laywers and some cops, the child-abuse charity fighting to save just one life has to get to the back of the police queue, makes my blood boil, it real does!
this will all end with crying
Shinjiru is NOT , i repeat NOT an ISP. Get your facts straight. It’s a webhosting company. I am from Malaysia and there is no japanese named isp here. We have, TM NET (the biggest isp and also they monopolize everything as they’re backed by the gov, They’re good for me but alot of users say they sucks balls) Then we have other providers such as Metrofon and Penangfon (they’re only available in certain areas as they support only fiber optic lines) Then we have Maxis,Celcom,U-mobile,izzi as wireless providers. Wireless is crap….
A simple (in concept) solution would be to encrypt everything: hard drive, all connections, etc. Also use an app that checks for debugger in use , if the host were to install a debugger to ‘read behind’ the encryption with a memory dump.
It would also be a lot safer to store all sensitive data (like IP addresses) offsite.
http://www.extremebits.org/ and http://rapthe.net/ moved as soon as we were notified about the case. We are now back up in Canada! I agree that not moving after the confiscation of your server is pretty naive.
Didnt Quebectorrent just go to Malaysia?
@ #5
Do you know where I can get some illegal piracy movies? They sound good and salty!
What makes me laugh is what they have embedded in their logo
“Building trust online”
I think they now might need to change that lol
@ 67 You can go to SuperTorrents for some “illegal piracy movies” as they have open signups. And while you’re at it, you can help Ersan buy a new Lexus with your donations.
@9: Actually, no. People who are hackers are not going to break a bogus law to stop piracy, so really they are getting the best they can get because all the good people know better than to help them.
Example: if you knew how to hack something, would you sell out the world just to “stop piracy” at one location? hell no.
@x0r Canada! pfft now who is naive !
wouldn’t touch a site there let alone host one there ! In fact wasn’t there a exodus from there ?
To the fool who chooses to slander americans.
It is not just the US that has people that do this crap look at china you retard so screw you and the goat that gave you birth.
Sure seems like a lot of folk have strong opinions, a lot of emotion & not much knowledge… LOL.
Laying the blame on any one,person, thing, country, etc… except money is probably both naive & ignorant (redundant ?) … but …. that doesn’t make the money or the people who generate money bad … the weak link seems to be the people/country/organization/etc. too weak, ignorant or lazy to earn/create their own money, in a meaningful way .. and that accept bad money for doing what they should know to be wrong just to get a share, of the money, they don’t deserve. Sounds pretty much like a liberal type blame game / reapportionment scheme to me. That accounts for all the youngsters espousing their “canned” emotional “lines”.
I certainly don’t mean this as a liberal/conservative issue… just noting the liberal sounding emotional responces, instead of logical, responses regarding the issue. The problem is compounded by the fact that almost every country has differing intellectual property laws .. and … most, including, obviously, USA & Malaysia exercise very inconsistent application of those laws. Could money possibly be an issue in this ?? (sarcasm) LOL
I do find it interesting that although it is very popular to bash the USA … the “States” seem to be the primary producer of a majority of the intellectual materials that the rest of the world wants to purchase, copy, mimic or pirate. It is not an accident that many countries purposely maintain much more conservative intellectual property laws and/or turn a blind eye towards enforcement of those laws. I would want all of these materials/properties available, inexpensively, to all of my citizens, too, if I were them.
IMHO …
Kit (Old Fart) (USA)
lets say I go steal a dvd from a store, what will happen to me if I get caught a few weeks later? what happens when I download a movie from a torrent? what will happen if i get caught a few weeks later
We Americans aren't fucking up anything. You hammerheads scream for help each and every time a disater strikes. If America is so bad, then why the hell does everyone want to come here?
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