At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has been inaccessible to most of the world for nearly 24 hours and our ‘inbox’ is suffering. But it appears to be the timing of the downtime that has caused more people than usual to panic.

The root lies in the recent court-ordered censorship of The Pirate Bay in the UK. The country’s leading ISPs are required to block the site so millions of people were already expecting to have trouble accessing the domain. What they didn’t anticipate was the failure of the many published workarounds to resupply access to the site.

For those to work the site itself has to be working properly and currently it is not. While TPB is used to being censored by courts and ISPs, it is a little less used to being blacked-out by other means. TorrentFreak is informed by a Pirate Bay insider that the site is currently being subjected to a DDoS attack rendering it unavailable in many parts of the world.

Now, while we’re informed that the problem might be mitigated during the next few hours, the timing of this attack against the site is either ironic, ‘interesting’ or at the very least coincidental, depending on your viewpoint.

Just last week, The Pirate Bay openly criticized elements of the ‘Anonymous’ collective for carrying out a DDoS attack on Virgin Media, the first UK ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay.

“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” said TPB in response to the DDoS attack against Virgin.

“So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.”

Right now, whoever is attacking The Pirate Bay has achieved what no copyright or governmental authority anywhere in the world has – an almost complete disruption of the site’s operations on a global basis with no court order required.

But despite the DDoS there are still ways for people to access the site. A handful of the proxies set up to circumvent the ISP blockades still appear to work and, when all else fails, the crazy methods still work too.

Source: Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy

“When we detect a website offering a link or a download, we contact the server hosts and intimate them about the illegal activity. They issue a notice to the site owner,” said AiPlex’s Girish Kumar in an interview with DNA.

The above is nothing out of the ordinary, but where other content protection companies stop, AiPlex takes it up a notch. Uncooperative sites are not ignored but can expect to be taken offline by force.

“The problem is with torrent sites, which usually do not oblige. In such cases, we flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity.”

“At times, we have to go an extra mile and attack the site and destroy the data to stop the movie from circulating,” Kumar said.

In other words, AiPlex admitted to breaking the law by DDoSing several websites. This confession wasn’t received well by sympathizers of torrent sites, and under the name “Operation Payback” Anonymous took out the company’s website for several weeks.

Today, a year later, AiPlex is still claiming to be hurt by the unusual openness of their boss. In an attempt to make it all go away, they are trying to rewrite history by asking people who reported on the news to pull their posts. Several site owners forwarded us the same request, which is posted in full below.

“We kindly request you to deactivate the link as the article is defaming the company’s image & its prospects. It was mis-interpreted by the news agency which was blown out of proportion by some of the pirates across the globe,” the email starts.

It further notes that the company is still suffering immense losses due to threats and continuous attacks from pirates.

As we’ve seen before, the email from AiPlex also claims that the words of their boss have been misinterpreted. But this seems unlikely. The verbatim quotes can only be interpreted in one way and several torrent site owners told TorrentFreak that they were indeed threatened and attacked by AiPlex in the past.

Interestingly, AiPlex has yet to contact TorrentFreak with a takedown request. This is odd since we are the source of all the articles that AiPlex is desperately trying to pull offline. Also, the original DNA article on which we based our report still remains online, completely unedited.

The irony of it all is that Aiplex’s attempt to rewrite history have only resulted in attracting more attention for the mistakes they made in the past. For a tech company they seem to understand very little about how the Internet works, and they definitely have never heard of the Streisand effect.

Source: Anti-Piracy Outfit Tries to Erase History

Every day millions of people are downloading files via BitTorrent, and in some instances more than 100,000 people are sharing the same file at the same time. These large ‘swarms’ of peers are great for sharing, but they also pose a threat as became apparent at the Chaos Communications Congress (CCC) recently.

In a talk titled “Lying To The Neighbours” it was shown that the DHT technology which powers “trackerless torrents” can be abused to let BitTorrent downloaders effectively DDoS a webserver of choice. DHT’s normal function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker. This ensures that downloads can continue even when the central tracker goes offline.

According to the presenter who goes by the name ‘Astro’, Kademlia based DHT can be exploited by a malicious peer to carry out a DDoS attack. If there are enough peers downloading the same file, this could easily take down medium to large websites. The worrying part is that the downloaders who are participating in the DDoS will not be aware of what’s going on.

“The core problem are the random NodeIDs. The address hashing and verification scheme works for scenarios like the old Internet, but becomes almost useless in the big address space of IPv6,” Astro told TorrentFreak in a comment. As a result, any BitTorrent swarm can be abused to target specific websites and potentially take them down.

This and other DHT vulnerabilities are not entirely new concepts for BitTorrent developers. They have been discussed in various places already, but no agreement on how they should be dealt with has yet been reached.

Over the last months DDoS attacks have been in the news regularly, mostly carried out under the flag of Anonymous’ Operation Payback. Initially anti-piracy targets such as the MPAA and RIAA were taken offline, and last month the focus switched to organizations that acted against Wikileaks, including Mastercard and Paypal.

While these attacks required hundreds of people to actively participate and fire up their LOIC application at the same time, the BitTorrent DDoS could take down the same sites from a single computer, using BitTorrent downloads as a ‘botnet’. But, where there’s a problem there’s a solution, and Astro has some pointers for BitTorrent developers.

“Not connecting to privileged ports (< 1024) where most critical services reside," is one ad-hoc solution, but Astro says that since it's a design error, the protocol has to be redefined eventually.

The idea of using BitTorrent as a DDoS tool is not entirely new. In fact, researchers have previously shown that adding a webserver’s IP address as a BitTorrent tracker could result in a similar DDoS. The downside of this method is, however, that it requires a torrent file to become popular, while the DHT method can simply exploit existing torrents that are already being downloaded by thousands of people.

It will be interesting to see if BitTorrent developers are going to act upon the DHT vulnerability in the coming months and come up with a solution to prevent this kind of abuse.

Source: BotTorrent? Using BitTorrent as a DDoS Tool

After having attacked the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI, BSA, ACS:LAW and many others, attention shifted towards the US law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver this week. The firm, which started thousands of lawsuits against BitTorrent users under the name US Copyright Group (USCG) this year, is best known for pursuing alleged downloaders of the Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker.

Two days ago a group of Anonymous/4chan users called for a DDoS attack on the website of the law firm under the flag of ‘Operation Payback’. Minutes later it was taken down together with their email server. Although the site slowly recovered after a few hours, the trouble for the Leesburg-based law firm were far from over.

Thursday afternoon an email containing a bomb threat was sent to the law firm, whose employees contacted the police. In a swift response from the local police, members from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the Loudoun County Fire Marshall’s Office evacuated the building.

Several dogs trained in detecting explosives were brought in, but after a thorough sweep of the office no explosive devices were found. After the building was cleared detectives remained on the scene and the police said they will investigate the threat further.

Police spokesman Chris Jones said that the content of the bomb threat email was vague and that no specific reasons for targeting the law firm were given. However, considering the previous DDoS attack on the firm and the prank calls other anti-piracy outfits received, the sender of the email could conceivably be connected to (or inspired by) Operation Payback.

Earlier this week TorrentFreak spoke to one of the people connected to the (DDoS) operation to find out why Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver was included as a target. “They’re all anti-piracy lawyers,” was the non-disguising answer we got. “Think of Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver as of ACS:Law, but in the USA,” Anonymous commented, linking the Leesburg firm to the UK lawyers whose emails ended up on the streets after a DDoS attack.

According to the police report, no direct link between Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver’s anti-piracy efforts and the bomb threat has been made yet. Leesburg Police Department is offering a cash reward to anyone who can help solve the case. People are encouraged to report leads to the police by calling (703) 771-4500. Anonymous calls can be placed at (703) 443-TIPS.

Source: Anti-Piracy Law Firm Evacuated After Bomb Threat

In February, when the Pirate Bay trial was in full swing, a group of hackers managed to deface the Swedish IFPI site. Today, the international IFPI site is the new target and is suffering from a DDoS attack. At the time of writing the website is completely inaccessible.

The attacks are part of Operation Baylout which also encourages people to send black faxes to the MPAA’s anti-piracy office and movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted. Thus far, we have no confirmation that any fax machines have been taken down.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak in a comment: “I feel peoples’ frustration. I hope they do something more permanent instead, like making sure the idiots that give power to the media industry lose their own power. We need to cut out the companies abusing copyright at the expense of society’s well-being. But this is not a permanent fix so it’s just pointless.”

Pointless or not, according to the Reg, some 250 hackers are gathering in AnonNet’s IRC channels to discuss their battle strategies and future plans.

Mooncup, one of the root administrators at AnonNet confirmed this and told TorrentFreak: “They seem to be doing it to demonstrate to the record industry that the Internet is our domain and they can keep the fuck out of our business or face the consequences,” he explained.

“They [IFPI] represent most of the record companies, therefore attacking them represents an attack on all of the people who try to stop websites like The Pirate Bay without really understanding what they are really about,” Mooncus added, noting that AnonNet itself is by no means involved in the attacks.

IFPI was contacted for a response, but we haven’t heard back from them at the time of publication.

Update: IFPI.se is also down.

Source: IFPI Site Under Attack by Pirate Bay Supporters

Mininova co-founder Niek confirmed to TorrentFreak that they have been suffering from a DDoS attack over the past few days. The site is currently being pounded by a botnet of hundreds of computers which is slowing the site down significantly and at times making it completely inaccessible.

Niek said that he has no idea who’s behind the attack or why they chose to target Mininova. This is not the first time the site has had to deal with a Denial of Service attack, but they haven’t witnessed one of this magnitude before.

It started on Thursday originating from three different continents, but seemed to wear off in the hours that followed. Today it’s back in full force. Mininova is used to serving millions of visitors a day, but even they are not equipped to handle an attack like this.

Today’s attack originates from Germany and Argentina and is 2 Gbit strong. The DDoS attack is maxing out the entire uplink and is hard to filter since it uses UDP connections.

Niek told TorrentFreak that they are working on a solution at the moment, and he hopes things will be back to normal soon.

Source: Mininova Hit By Massive DDoS Attack

“We will continue our efforts to bring down Scientology, but we need the help and support of another Freedom fighting community, the pirates.” one of Anonymous’ members told TorrentFreak, and the group gave us the opportunity to ask a couple of more questions.

TorrentFreak: Can you briefly describe what “Project Chanology” is?

Anonymous: Project Chanology is the project to bring down Scientology. Nothing more, nothing less. Why that name? Well, we’re working from IRC ‘Channels’ against ‘Scientology’. Mix those words together and add the project in front, and you have it.

TorrentFreak: How did Anonymous start? and how many people take part in it?

Anonymous: Anonymous is an old group of friends. I don’t exactly know the date, but it has been raised by some friends who wanted to test out their hacking skills. Since then, they created Anonymous, and let it be open for anyone who wants to join. That made it into a new kind of hackers-group. It consists of two spheres. The outer sphere is for new people. They mostly are low-skilled and are “scriptkiddies”. Since they have a very good contact with the inner sphere (we’re all friends fast and easily), anyone is allowed to join the inner sphere of high-level hackers. This is a loose representation since it doesn’t fit always. But, this made it for sure into a group of scriptkiddies with the right tools and high-level hackers with the right skills.

TorrentFreak: What is your main motivation to ban Scientology from the Internet?

Anonymous: Scientology is a malicious organization. Here’s a YouTube clip that proves more. Also, they’re frequently taking off content from the Internet. Like a clip in which Cruise promotes Scientology too much, criticizing health science, etc… it would have brought Scientology in a bad situation. So they took it off all sites with an army of lawyers. This is censoring. This is bad. This is against Net Neutrality. This is taking away our freedom and our right to fight for that freedom.

TorrentFreak: Don’t you think your actions violate the freedom of speech?

Anonymous: It does violate the freedom of speech. Of course, we know that. But there should be a refinement. Anonymous fights for freedom of speech in a way they have always used, but a little bit rougher however. For a greater sake.

TorrentFreak: Do you see any parallels between your fight against Scientology and the conflicts between pirates and the entertainment industry?

Anonymous: Yes. Most of us are pirates too. We have no big money to start lawsuits. But the enemy, the MAFIAA and Scientology are both big companies. They misguide the law, they change the law. Scientology members have infiltrated in many governments. Just like the MAFIAA.

TorrentFreak: What is your ultimate goal for “Operation Chanology”?

Anonymous: Our ultimate goal is to let Scientology say in public that they are misleading many people. And that they are destroying the futures of many people.

TorrentFreak: How do you plan to accomplish this goal, apart from the DDoS attacks?

Anonymous: We have IRL raids in planning stage, we have real life protests and demonstrations coming up. We are infiltrating their networks with zip bombs. We are sentencing them.

TorrentFreak: You told us that you wanted the pirates to help you to free the Internet, how can people help?

Anonymous: People can help Anonymous by joining the IRC, get one of the DDoS tools and start firing the DoS. IRC is at irc.partyvan.org. Channels are #Target , #Lazer and #Xenu. There are also many local channels. They can also help us by joining protests, by telling other people about this, by telling their media, etc… The force of humanity will save many lives.

…

Update: As many already argued, it turns out that the person interviewed here is an Anonymous member from the “outer sphere”, who is not as informed as he appeared to be. Sorry.

“I know that I’m not as informed as the inner sphere. However, I had a source which I thought was from there, providing me many answers. He faked his status.
But we do not have one spokesperson. We do not have a leader.
We unite as one, divided by none.
Together, we will bring them down in their glory.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.”

Source: Scientology Hackers Ask Pirates To Join Their War

If you’ve downloaded a torrent with the announce http://mongo56.org:3434/announce, simply open the torrent up with Maketorrent – second tab "View/Edit Torrent" and change the tracker announce to http://mongo56.org:3535/announce, click save – and the torrent will work anyways. This is also doable in clients that support editing of torrents. You can also use the command line; For linux; btreannounce.py http://mongo56.org:3535/announce /path/to/.torrent For windows: python btreannounce.py http://mongo56.org:3535/announce c:\path\to.torrent

Let’s hope things ge back to normal asap.

Source: BitTorrent tracker facing attack