Shareaza.com Hijacked and Turned Into a Scam Site
Written by enigmax on December 24, 2007Shareaza.com, the home of the hugely popular Shareaza multi-network sharing application, has been hijacked by scammers. Unsuspected visitors to the site will be completely unaware that they will be tricked into downloading something that isn’t Shareaza at all, but subscription-based malware infected software instead.
The announcement on the SourceForge page of the Shareaza client was ominous:
“As of December 20th, “Shareaza.com” is mirroring “Shareazaweb.com” - A known scam site. While we are working to resolve the matter, any help to contain this would be appreciated.”
The site looks convincing enough, labelled as it is “The Official Home of Shareaza” with the new operators of the site having seen fit to steal some of the original Shareaza artwork (originally created by ‘RocketX and Kid’) to complete the look. So who has taken over the domain?
According to Skinvista, a developer from the ‘real’ Shareaza, the situation is as follows:
“At this time the Shareaza.com destination is now controlled by iMesh/MusicLab LLC, an unauthorized Madison Avenue (New York) based company, with servers in Israel. MusicLab LLC previously acquired iMesh.com and Bearshare/Bearflix.com following lawsuits. It now appears the known scamsite Shareazaweb.com was a placeholder for the planned takeover of Shareaza, relating to another ongoing lawsuit.
It is urgent that people understand the software on these iMesh/MusicLab sites is suspicious, misrepresented, and illegal -breaking GPL and DMCA among other laws.”
As if this strange case needed any more twists in the plot, consider this. On October 26th 2007, the main Shareaza site went down due to unknown “personal matters”.
TorrentFreak asked ‘Wildcard’ a ‘real’ Shareaza developer what happened to the site. He explained: “That’s one of the mysteries. The main hosting server went offline, it had the Shareaza site, wiki and forums on it. The only information that made it this far, was that it was down due to personal problems with the owner of the server machines. what those personal problems were, medical or legal, we don’t know.”
Luckily the Sourceforge site was restored from an earlier backup.
However, the hijacked Shareaza.com domain now points to a server where it is hosted along with some other questionable sites, including bandoo.com, bearflix.com, bearshare.com, daemonsearch.com, imesh.com, imesh.net and musiclab-llc.com.
Apparently, there are lawyers involved now but the loose-knit Shareaza team are advising that it may be prudent to move forward on the basis that the domain won’t be recovered. A source close to this case has told TorrentFreak that Jonathan Nilson, the owner of the Shareaza.com domain has been contacted and he has confirmed that he has sold the domain to the scammers. It looks like the domain is lost forever, a big impact following the loss of the main site in October.
‘Wildcard’ explained that the software on offer from the hijacked site although labeled “ShareazaV4.exe”, is not Shareaza at all but likely a clone of the new malware infested iMesh/Bearshare client and should not be downloaded under any circumstances. Once installed, the software wants to install a search bar and make contact with a central server. Unlike Shareaza - which is abslutely free and has a reputation for being non-profit and shunning involvement with money - the hijackers are touting a subscription based product.
Indeed, the operators of iMesh even tried to trick people into thinking that the reputable GRC site endorsed the iMesh client - an assertion which is completely untrue.
Anyone wishing to find the real Shareaza client should head over to the project’s SourceForge page.
Developing story
Update: A contact of Jonathan Nilson is reporting that Nilson can neither confirm nor deny that he sold the domain to the scammers.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent, Christmas Edition
Next: Man Downloads TV Shows and Gets a $54,000 Cell Phone Bill
81 Responses
Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All
to one of your responces utorrent is not a private site you can get through mininova.org an ive used razza an edonkey an winmx an mirc an a few others which i carnt be askd mentionin use what ya like an stop fuckin bitch about them ffs
This site is full of disinformation
I’ve got better things to do
Mininova is not the most popular site
TPB is!
shareaza whateva
everyone gave up on the code at least 4 years ago because it gave SHIT load of problems from hackers following the connections
bad code bad end
[quote comment="252275"]everyone gave up on the code at least 4 years ago[/quote]
4 years is a lot he ;) Code has been established and is many times more stable… Why don’t you give it a try?
Just take a look at the fake sites License Agreement. It’s blatantly horrible. This is the best reason to read EULAs. Here’s just a few (exact) quotes:
“To access the Service, you will need to install or activate from time to time the Shareaza proprietary (isn’t this a cool word?) software application (”Shareaza Software”). You may also be required to install or activate other software made available through the Service and certain third-party software”
“Once you have downloaded a Song via the Subscription Service, you may save that Song to the hard drives of up to 3 of your personal computers and play back at any time and as many times as you want. You may not share downloaded Songs with anyone else. Any security technology that is provided with a Song is an inseparable part of the Song. Please don’t try to separate them. They really like each other.”
“Discordia does not represent or guarantee that the Software will successfully import or support any song files that are not downloaded or purchased using the Shareaza Service.”
“Shareaza also features Shareaza Media Bar (”SMB”), an Internet Explorer Toolbar. Should you choose to install SMB, a toolbar will be added to your Internet Explorer. SMB will help you search Shareaza and the Internet.”
“Smoking overall is bad for you. It gives you bad breath and may kill you sooner than you’d expect.”
I use BOTH Shareaza and Bitorrent progs, i don’t care about what prog is better to dl files, if it works for me and its completely FREE ill use it eternally.
I’ve been involved with warez and computing since the early days of the vic20/commodore64/amiga and fixed telephone line bulletin boards (BBS). I’ve seen many changes in the way warez have been distributed over time through the computing community. There are still many different ways to skin the same cat. Different options still offer different advantages and disadvantages for different people. And this is a great thing! For one, it means we will always have multiple effective options for gaining easy access to warez even if one or more of these options are lost along the way. The “Best” option is always going to be a subjective judgement. My personal choice of software for downloading and distributing warez is Shareaza. As someone else here said, it is by far the most comprehensive all-in-one p2p filesharing solution available to date. It has some sort comings, but its also a product still very actively in development and always improving. The beauty of shareaza is that it provides a single interface to 4 of the most popular p2p networks/protocols (Bittorent/eDonkey/Gnutella1&2) giving you access to the vastest range of file sources through one interface that your going to find anywhere! If its a program you have never used or looked at before its definately worth a look!
Man this really sucks that so many unsuspecting people will be duped into downloading what they think is Shareaza but get infested with freaking crapware!
Those dumping on Shareaza are most likely talking out their ass and have never even tried the program because if they did they would know it is the best P2P application ever made! Yes it has torrent support and yes I would rather use uTorrent for my torrents but for old & rare stuff that you will almost never find via torrent networks you will find thanks to Shareaza and mainly it’s G2 network which rocks!
Instead of shitting on Shareaza why don’t you jackasses direct that attitude towards the fucking scumbags that now run shareaza.com?
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
THE PIRATE BAY
[quote comment="256212"]Those dumping on Shareaza are most likely talking out their ass and have never even tried the program because if they did they would know it is the best P2P application ever made! Yes it has torrent support and yes I would rather use uTorrent for my torrents but for old & rare stuff that you will almost never find via torrent networks you will find thanks to Shareaza and mainly it’s G2 network which rocks!
Instead of shitting on Shareaza why don’t you jackasses direct that attitude towards the fucking scumbags that now run shareaza.com?[/quote]
^ IAWTP
And yes, Shareaza used to be slow, but it has become much less bloated especially lately.
Shit, I downloaded it! It had advertising in it, so I googled for removal of the ads, and found that it is a scam! I downloaded the free AVG Antispyware, uninstalled the fake Shareaza etc. but there’s still something left - why the hail didn’t I make a system restore???
[quote comment="247106"]Good, only dumbasses would use shareaza anyway.[/quote]
What a knuckle head
Are you stupid? Malware will run on ANY system that isnt secured and updated properly.
Shareaza is, and allways has been, a piece of crap anyway. So who cares, really.
give your head a shake
anyone supporting malware needs to have their bell rung real hard
If one wanted to make a DDoS, he could just run the following line and hope others would do the same… but, please, don’t do it!
x=0; while true; do x=$(($x + 1)); echo Start $x; wget http://download.shareazaweb.com/ShareazaV4.exe –limit-rate 30k -O - 2>&1 >/dev/null | grep HTTP; echo Done; sleep 30; done
8 references to this post
Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.