Revision3 Sends FBI after MediaDefender
The popular Internet television network Revision3 suffered from a severe DDoS attack, launched by the infamous anti-piracy organization MediaDefender. After targeting The Pirate Bay’s trackers, MediaDefender apparently thought it was a good idea to spread their fake torrents through Revision3.
The CEO of Revision3 – Jim Louderback – was quite surprised when he found out that MediaDefender was the source of the attack that took down their entire network this weekend. He found out that MediaDefender used the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker for the fake torrents they upload to various BitTorrent sites.
In a lengthy blog post Louderback explains what happened, as he writes: “Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3′s servers for their own purposes , quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode , much like how a petulant toddler will throw an epic tantrum if you take away an ill-gotten Oreo.”
MediaDefender’s attack effectively took down the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker this weekend, and people were unable to grab the latest episodes. That was not all, the flood of SYN packets also took out their webserver and their email. These kind of attacks are illegal according to US law, and if Revision3 decides to pursue this case in court, it would not be the first time MediaDefender gets caught.
Only a few months ago, The Pirate Bay sued several media companies that hired MediaDefender, for exactly the same behavior. Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde said at the time: “They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff. We need to make a statement that just because something might be hard to fight it doesn’t mean that laws do not imply in the case.”
Louderback has no idea whether the attack on their network was intentional or not, but said he involved the FBI. “Was it malicious? Intentional? Negligent? Spoofed? I can’t say. But what I do know is that the FBI is looking into the matter , and it’s far more serious than toddlers squabbling over broken toys and lost cookies.”
This is yet another epic fail in MediaDefender’s history, and this might very well be the final punch to knock the company out. Most of you probably remember the leaked emails and confidential information, which cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and brought them on the verge of bankruptcy.
To quote MediaDefender’s CEO Randy Saaf: “This is really fucked.”
Update: Ironically Revision3 seems to be down again because of all the traffic the news generated.
