TorrentFreak » media-defender

ZipTorrent Pollutes and Slows Down Popular Torrents

Ernesto — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:26:01 +0000

The goal of ZipTorrent is to slow down popular downloads as much as possible. They use hundreds of these clients at the same time and this can potentially bring the average download speed down to zero. Even more so, it is not unlikely that it will record your IP-address in the process so they can send you a copyright infringement notice on top of it.

On the Media Defender website we read:

“Decoying and Spoofing are the most commonly known techniques that we employ. We send blank files and data noise that look exactly like a real response to an initiated search requests for a particular title.”

According to ubisuck over at the mininova forums, Media Defender is doing just this with ZipTorrent. Apparently the fake client is a mod of the popular BitTorrent client Azureus which can be configured to send fake data.

Here’s a full screenshot of the ZipTorrent configuration screen. As you will see, there are some dubious settings like “fake upload ratio mode”, “no upload” and “safe fake download”.

It is not hard to check whether you are connected to these fake clients. In the peers list of your BitTorrent client they will show up as “ZipTorrent” and most of the time you will be connected to a bunch of them all originating from similar IP addresses with either 0% or 100% of the file completed.

However, there are blocklists to stop these malicious clients from connecting to your BitTorrent client. Pasted below is a list of the known IP-ranges ZipTorrent is on. The ranges were identified by The Pirate Bay team and are posted in several forums. You might want to add these to the blocklist of your BitTorrent client or PeerGuardian.

There’s one problem though, Media Defender will probably move to new IPs if they read this, a never ending story.

Update: The legitimacy of the screenshot and “ZipTorrent” is doubtful but the IP ranges are correct. Spoofing is not limited to a client like ZipTorrent and I’m told that clients like uTorrent and Azureus are also used to do this job.

ziptorrent:64.62.145.130-64.62.145.165 ziptorrent:65.19.131.0-65.19.131.85 ziptorrent:66.160.133.0-66.160.133.199 ziptorrent:87.117.250.0-87.117.250.150 ziptorrent:216.218.0.100-216.218.184.199 ziptorrent:216.218.190.0-216.218.199.255 ziptorrent:38.99.252.0-38.99.252.255 ziptorrent:38.99.253.1-38.99.253.200 ziptorrent:38.100.24.0-38.100.24.255 ziptorrent:38.100.25.0-38.100.25.255 ziptorrent:38.100.26.0-38.100.26.255 ziptorrent:38.100.134.0-38.100.135.255 ziptorrent:63.216.0.0-63.223.255.255 ziptorrent:64.62.145.0-64.62.145.255 ziptorrent:64.62.214.0-64.62.214.255 ziptorrent:64.93.64.0-64.93.64.255 ziptorrent:65.19.131.0-65.19.131.85 ziptorrent:65.19.143.0-65.19.143.255 ziptorrent:65.120.42.0-65.120.42.255 ziptorrent:66.117.5.0-66.117.5.255 ziptorrent:66.160.133.0-66.160.133.199 ziptorrent:66.160.158.0-66.160.158.255 ziptorrent:66.180.192.0-66.180.207.255 ziptorrent:66.186.192.0-66.186.223.255 ziptorrent:66.198.35.0-66.198.35.255 ziptorrent:81.230.187.01-81.230.187.99 ziptorrent:87.117.250.0-87.117.250.255 ziptorrent:100.0.0.0-115.255.255.255 ziptorrent:129.47.9.0-129.47.9.255 ziptorrent:154.37.0.0-154.37.255.255 ziptorrent:206.80.0.01-206.80.99.99 ziptorrent:207.45.196.0-207.45.196.255 ziptorrent:208.10.23.0-208.10.23.255 ziptorrent:208.10.29.0-208.10.29.255 ziptorrent:209.66.117.0-209.66.117.255 ziptorrent:209.133.121.0-209.151.247.255 ziptorrent:209.133.122.0-209.133.122.255 ziptorrent:209.151.247.0-209.151.247.255 ziptorrent:216.218.0.100-216.218.184.199 ziptorrent:216.218.190.0-216.218.199.255

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Media Defender Buys P2P.net: Preparing for their Next Scam?

Ernesto — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:18:33 +0000

P2P.net (not P2Pnet.net) was up for auction at eBay earlier this year. Initially it wasn’t sold because the original owner wanted a higher price for the domain. It turns out that Media Defender was one of the interested parties, and they probably paid thousands of dollars to get the domain in their possession. Because of the huge amount of money that’s involved it is not likely that the domain will stay unused for a long time.

Last week we discovered that Media Defender actively tried to lure people into downloading blockbuster movies from their fake download site, Miivi.com. As expected, only a few hours after we made the news public the site was taken offline.

Media Defender later told Ars Technica that Miivi was an internal project to test out an online video project, but we know better. We’re convinced that they will try this, or a similar trick again in the near future.

Media Defender is hired by companies like the MPAA, BSA and RIAA to track down people who try to download copyrighted content. They record IP-addresses from BitTorrent trackers and other P2P networks. But they also utilize more proactive methods such as uploading fake .torrent files and setting up fake video download sites.

Luckily most BitTorrent site admins are aware of their shady practices and remove these fake files from their sites before they can do any harm. Pirate Bay admin Brokep offered his help to other BitTorrent admins to help them identifying and removing these fake files, he told TorrentFreak:

“Since the Miivi-incident we can’t keep quiet about them anymore. We want their employers to stop using them so they go bankrupt”

To our friends at Media Defender from all of us here at TorrentFreak… We’re watching you…

Update: Media Defender decided to redirect P2P.net to this article, thanks guys.

Whois Info P2P.net

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Media Defender to Spam P2P Networks With 16,000,000 Tracks from One Artist

enigmax — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:44:01 +0000

It’s being reported that Telecoms company Sprint has signed on the dotted line to form a partnership between themselves, Atlantic Records and Media Defender’s ArtistDirect.

The partnership is all about advertising. Sprint has bought the rights to have their name and logo embedded into tracks from the Atlantic Records hip-hop artist Plies.

It appears that Atlantic will supply Media Defender with a small number of Plies tracks, which will then be embedded with the Sprint logo which will appear on PC screens and digital devices playing the tracks. In return for a reported six-figure investment shared between the anti-piracy outfit, Atlantic Records and Plies, Media Defender will then flood P2P networks with the tracks over a 3 month period. Previously, Media Defender worked with Suretone Records to spam P2P networks with partial songs and videos in an attempt to generate traffic to their client’s website.

ArtistDirect’s CEO Jon Diamond said the project has a three-pronged approach of generating advertising revenue for record labels, linking brands to a particular artist to reach a certain demographic and in the process, limiting piracy.

However, most file-sharers want a plain MP3 track with nothing added and are unlikely to want tracks which cause advertising pop-ups or similar on their PC. As ‘vanilla’ MP3′s of tracks from the same artist will be widely available on the same P2P networks, it’s likely that file-sharers will be drawn towards those downloads instead of the ‘infected’ versions offered by Media Defender. So, this strategy will most likely NOT limit piracy.

Besides setting up fake BitTorrent trackers and fake video download sites, Media Defender is currently in talks with other artists and is likely to announce similar partnerships shortly.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.