RIAA Website Wiped Clean by “Hackers”
Written by Ernesto on January 20, 2008Apparently the RIAA is so busy suing consumers that they forgot to hire a decent programmer. With a simple SQL injection, all their propaganda has been successfully wiped from the site.
It started out on the social news website Reddit, where a link to a really slow SQL query was posted. While the Reddit users were trying to kill the RIAA server, someone allegedly decided to up the ante and wipe the site’s entire database.
The comments on Reddit are only speculation so far. Based on the username, which was apparently “webReadOnly”, it might not have been setup correctly, or someone could have found another way to delete the content form the site.
Another possibility is that the website has some sort of database flood protection that disables new connections, or perhaps the RIAA themselves removed the content temporarily. The latter seems unlikely, as a better solution would be to take it entirely offline to fix the bigger problem. While they could fix a small vulnerability like this in a matter of seconds, the chances are it’s not an isolated problem.
As pointed out by Haywire, playing around with the urls a bit can return some funny results. It is pretty easy to make the RIAA link to The Pirate Bay for example.
For now it sure does look like all the content has been wiped from the RIAA homepage. Let’s hope they have backups, or not.
Update: After a few hours the RIAA restored the site. They seem to have fixed the vulnerability, but we have saved some screenshots.
Update: They didn’t fix it all, this still works.
RIAA website without content
RIAA supporting The Pirate Bay
Error?
Previously: Music Industry Got An Injunction Against Rapidshare in 2007, Site Not Shut Down
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244 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Go ahead and keep stealing music, you inconsiderate idiots. That way, the artists don’t get paid, they don’t get what they deserve, and they can’t support their families. How selfish can you people be? Let me come over to your house and steal your stuff. How would you like that?
[quote comment="268382"]Go ahead and keep stealing music, you inconsiderate idiots. That way, the artists don’t get paid, they don’t get what they deserve, and they can’t support their families. How selfish can you people be? Let me come over to your house and steal your stuff. How would you like that?[/quote]
Oh, c’mon, stop being so brain washed. Artists don’t get paid because they let record labels to sell their music. Only junk music is promoted these days.
The RIAA website seems to be restored…
[quote comment="268382"]Go ahead and keep stealing music, you inconsiderate idiots. That way, the artists don’t get paid, they don’t get what they deserve, and they can’t support their families. How selfish can you people be? Let me come over to your house and steal your stuff. How would you like that?[/quote]
hahahahahaha
i love this
whenever artists or producers pull this shit it almost makes me die laughing.
honestly, it’s exactly like that south park episode.
“since you downloaded music illegally, britney spears can’t buy her fourteenth twin double awesome hyperjet and has to instead settle for a regular awesome hyperjet.
“since you downloaded music illegally, metallica can’t afford that third country they had been wanting to buy.
“since you downloaded music illegally, the rolling stones can’t afford to buy an entirely gold plated replica, square inch by square inch, of new york city, and instead are going to have to settle for a gold-plated replica of chicago.”
give me a fucking break.
no one suffers from this.
the people who need the money are getting promoted endlessly by filesharing, which totally helps them and gives them more money, and the people who are “hurt” by it (the multimillionaires with twelve clothing lines and perfumes named after them) don’t need the money anyway. they could still waste ten thousand dollars every day for the rest of their lives and not even notice.
so shut up.
no one cares.
cry us a fucking river.
@Retard above me (#75)
You just don’t get the idea of filesharing do you? The more we share, the more people will download. And the more people download, the more known artists become. The way the music industry is know, all the cash goes to douchebags in suits and not to the people who actually have the talent. With filesharing, these artists are able to get their music out to the world without paying the salaries of said suited douchebags, and once they are known, then they can begin to make money.
A recording is just a promotional tool. Music lives on stage, not trapped between the layers of a CD.
I think I missed all the fun… the site is back up again D:
musicians shouldn’t expect a cd to support their families. they should be out playing their music across the world every day without a family to worry about in the first place.
[quote comment="268382"]Go ahead and keep stealing music, you inconsiderate idiots. That way, the artists don’t get paid, they don’t get what they deserve, and they can’t support their families. How selfish can you people be? Let me come over to your house and steal your stuff. How would you like that?[/quote]
Thanks for that laugh. I haven’t read a company plant’s post on a blog in a few days. Do you get overtime for weekends?
The RIAA isn’t on the side of the angels. Not everyone online is downloading music illegally nor is everyone who listens to music automatically suspect. The RIAA seems to think that “consumer” or “PC owner” means enemy and has labeled everyone who isn’t in the industry as suspect.
So yeah, even though I don’t download, I’m happy to see them get taken down a peg or two because what they’ve been up to in the last few years hasn’t been just going after people who download. It’s been downright anti-consumer. They’re going after customers. Get that? People who are paying for the content the industry claims they aren’t getting paid for. The customers of the very organizations they are supposed to be protecting. They’re going after anyone they think might, maybe, possibly rip a CD to their computer. Or maybe, might possibly even be thinking about it. Sometime, in the future at some possible date… probably.
Frankly, they’re insane with greed and the consumers are stuck with the consequences. So your little rant is ineffective and just makes you look like a RIAA drone. Now run off back to you cubicle and tell your boss that the blogs aren’t responding favorably to your posts. If we’re lucky, you’ll trip over the water cooler and hurt yourself and that’ll be that last we hear from you.
thats fuckin epic
they’re back up again
Fuck RIAA? Yes.
Fuck copyright? No.
Go hackers ftw? Ehh…
This was one person figuring out a hack, and a bunch of people jumping on a bandwagon like blind lemmings. It was a cheap shot, and while it brings a smile, don’t pretend it was some sort of grand coup; RIAA will just play this up to demonstrate that people who oppose them aren’t just “stealing music”, but resorting to illegal hacking and DoS. Um, yes, that makes us all much more innocent.
Many musicians support sharing, but aside from the ones who are standing on the street accepting donations into their guitar case, I don’t know of many who would say “I want to give my music away for free, for the rest of my life.” If you do music as a hobby on the weekend, sure, but a “day job” does need to pay for itself. Sharing != fuck paying an artist.
I realize most people don’t want to think about this in more than terms of “wah, I can’t just indiscriminately download music, in violation of current copyright law, without worrying about the RIAA looking over my shoulder”, but if you’re ever hoping your balls will drop and that you’ll be perceived as a man and not just a boy, you need to start thinking about how the rest of the population - that doesn’t do p2p - is going to think about it.
A real fucking artist doesnt complain and moan about people downloading his music/movie or whatever.
A real artist knows how to survive and adept the changes.
So still. FUCK MPAA/RIAA and all the companies who are useless and sueing people over Large sums of money or putting them in jail and potray them as
CRIMINALS <—- unacceptable
@TheOneX
I think I should be allowed to smoke pot in public. Everyone else needs to learn to adapt, and get out of my face.
Portraying me as a criminal is unacceptable; I don’t care that the law has been this way for decades, I don’t like it, so I’m going to bitch and whine and moan and break the law, and then bitch and whine and moan some more when I get arrested or sued.
Grow up. You want to change this? Prove to the majority of people - not just the ones that already agree with you - that you’re right. And just because it works for rap artists to say “fuck” over and over again to make a hit song, doesn’t mean it’ll work for you.
Loads of bands put there music videos up on YouTube, MySpace, etc officially; you don’t pay to listen to it on there! Having a copy on your computer just prevents a build up of the ever-increasing internet congestion all over the world.
Don’t get me wrong, artists should get the money they deserve. It’s the “big guys” in the industry that get a load of money, for what I ask.
People still buy CD’s, Merchandise, etc, I’m sure the artist can survive on what they make; It’s still going to be more than most of us!
Something’s definitely happening: there’s a 404 on news_room.php, perhaps an attempt to stop all the XSSing!
I must admit, reading this on digg made my laugh a little!
cheers,
at least today riaa.com gets some clicks
GIVE THEM NOTHING…BUT TAKE FROM THEM EVERRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYTHINH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
CRAP! they got the site back up. Oh well, fun while it lasted.
it wasn’t wiped clean. stick to reporting on client bugs. I presume you will edit your story to something that is true, and not fiction.
all you have to do is hit enter 20 times or so and you get to their site
[quote comment="268455"]CRAP! they got the site back up. Oh well, fun while it lasted.[/quote]
You can still inject XSS.
Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome!!!
XSS still works :D
Screw them… :p
riaa has get cheezberger?
[quote comment="268190"]Your time is coming. Just wait until late 2012, you’ll see what we mean.[/quote]
so yea supposedly the apocalypse according to the mayans is going to happen that year so r they saying that were all going to die damn riaa u guys are fucked up for wishing that upon us well u guys arent going to last long i bet u guys are going to die out before that lol
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