Anti-piracy outfit AiPlex Software made the news last year when their boss was quoted in the press admitting that his company launched DDoS attacks against several torrent sites. This confession resulted in an avalanche of negative PR and several retributive attacks from Anonymous. Today, a year later, AiPlex are attempting to erase these events from history by asking bloggers to take down their reports.
A recent talk at the Chaos Communications Congress revealed how BitTorrent swarms can be exploited to take down large websites with relative ease. A vulnerability in the technology behind so called trackerless torrents makes it possible for someone to trick downloaders of popular files into send thousands of requests to a webserver of choice, taking it down as a result. Basically, this turns BitTorrent into a very effective DDoS tool.
After nearly two weeks of DDoS attacks on various anti-piracy law firms and organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA, Operation Payback is still ongoing. In a possibly connected event, a few hours ago the office of the law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver was evacuated by the police after a bomb threat was received. The firm is responsible for suing thousands of BitTorrent users in the United States in recent months.
The website of the music industry lobby group IFPI is suffering from an organized DDoS attack and has been unresponsive for the past few hours. The attack was organized by Pirate Bay supporters who don’t agree with the sentences handed out to the four defendants.
Mininova, one of the leading BitTorrent sites, has been suffering from a massive DDoS attack over the past few days. Originating from a botnet spanning three continents, the attacks vary in strength and are causing the site to be completely inaccessible at times. The Mininova team is working on a solution.
Anonymous, a small group of scriptkiddies and high-level hackers started a war against the Church of Scientology this week. TorrentFreak managed to get an exclusive Q&A with the controversial group, in which they ask Pirates to join their fight.
Mongo56.org, the biggest torrent tracker out there, is facing serious DDOS attacks.
The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage
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Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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