According to a recently published paper by Prithula Dhungel, Di Wub and Keith Ross, these effort are a waste of time and money. In the paper titled “Measurement and mitigation of BitTorrent leecher attacks,” the researchers show that BitTorrent swarms are hardly influenced by attacks from anti-piracy outfits.

The research looked into the effectiveness of two popular attack methods used by companies such as MediaDefender. The first is a ‘piece attack’ where the hostile leecher attempts to slow down downloads by creating as many hash fails as possible. The second method is the ‘connection attack’ where the hostile leechers try to tie up as many TCP connections as possible in order to make it impossible for downloaders to connect to real peers.

The different methods were tested in a real-life BitTorrent swarm of a popular music album that was targeted by these attacks. “We present measurement results for a torrent for a new album, which was verified to be under attack,” the researchers report, adding “This popular album was released a few weeks before our experiments. At the time of the experiment, it held the number 1 position on the UK album chart and iTunes ranking list.”

The researchers then downloaded the ‘attacked’ torrent several times with both Azureus (Vuze) and uTorrent. For each download they recorded the time it took to complete, both with and without using blocklist software that bans (some) of the attackers’ IP-addresses.

The results were quite remarkable. The researchers found that, on average, downloads with a blocklist were 30 to 35% faster. In other words, the efforts of the anti-piracy outfits do slow down the targeted swarms, but only for a few minutes at most, and not long enough to deter anyone from downloading.

A more detailed look at the peer distribution of the two BitTorrent clients further reveals that without the IP-filters, uTorrent encounters only 2% of malicious peers, who all use the ‘piece attack’ method. Azureus on the other hand encountered no ‘piece attack’ peers at all, but 18% ‘connection attack’ peers.

Not surprisingly, the researchers conclude from their research that the methods used to attack BitTorrent swarms are highly ineffective. “The anti-P2P companies are not currently successful at stopping the distribution of targeted assets over BitTorrent. We have also found that blacklist-based IP filtering is insufficient to filter out all the attackers,” the researchers write.

What the researchers have overlooked is that both Azureus and uTorrent have implemented various technological measures against these automated attacks. The results may differ for other BitTorrent clients. Azureus (now Vuze) has put a lot of work in preventing ‘piece attacks’ and uTorrent has implemented similar anti-pollution measures.

The overall conclusion put forward in the article is most likely the right one, and to most people not even that surprising. The millions of dollars spent by the entertainment industry to protect their works from being shared on BitTorrent is at best only a mild annoyance to the ‘pirates’.

Via.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Now, following an announcement by ARTISTdirect CEO Dimitri Villard, it seems that the sullied names of both MediaDefender and Media Sentry will be consigned to the archives as the company rebrands the pair under a new name: Peer Media Technologies.

Despite the hacking chaos that all but destroyed Media Defender’s business, coupled with the controversy when Media Sentry’s investigative tactics were deemed illegal in several US states (and was promptly dropped by the RIAA), ARTISTdirect is still touting the pair as a force to be reckoned with – albeit with a new coat of paint and a new name.

“The combination of MediaDefender, the leader in Internet Piracy Prevention (IPP) with Media Sentry, the leader in business and marketing intelligence derived from P2P channels, creates a true powerhouse in the field of intellectual property protection,” says a notice on Peer Media’s shiny new website.

CEO Dimitri Villard also announced that he had hired ex Macrovision and Blackwave director Terri Denver as head of worldwide sales at Peer Media.

According to ARTISTdirect, the rebranding and consolidation of MediaDefender and Media Sentry under the Peer Media banner will benefit the customer base “by offering higher quality products than either company did previously.”

Services being offered by Peer Media include spoofing and decoys on file-sharing networks, sending cease and desist notices to ISPs to forward to their customers and sending the same to file-hosting sites carrying copyright content. Other services include monitoring networks for leaked movies and music, and assessing demand for media by monitoring what file-sharers do on the Internet.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Targets of the scam receive an unsolicited email purporting to come from notorious anti-piracy company MediaDefender. The email, which is simply addressed “Dear User!” claims the individual has been monitored on any of several torrent sites while engaging in anything from copyright infringement, through to simply browsing the sites.

Of course, citing MediaDefender is a nonsense, since that company doesn’t get involved in anti-piracy warning letters – its specialty was spoofing on BitTorrent networks.

Additionally, most of the sites listed don’t even operate a tracker, so committing any type of copyright infringements on them is almost impossible. Here is the body of the email;

Dear User!

Your recent internet activity was logged on the following sites:

* Btjunkie
* SumoTorrent
* isoHunt
* Btscene
* Mininova
* Fenopy
* Monova
* Yotoshi
* GetInvites
* Btmon

hxxp://XXXXX.net/report_78478XX.exe (XX added by TorrentFreak)

We have a report about the copyrighted movies, music, softwares you downloaded or searched on these webpages. We strongly advise you to stop any future activities regarding the downloading of illegal content or you can expect prosecution by 17 U.S.C.512,1201?1205,1301?1332; 28 U.S.C. 4001 laws.

Sincerely,

MediaDefender Inc.

So what is this scam all about? Attached to the email is a logfile which supposedly provides additional information about the user’s infringements, but of course this is a lie – the log is really a virus.

This type of scam is nothing new – the same type of thing has been tried before, probably by the same people. However, this time the virus is different. Here is the report, courtesy of ThreatExpert;

Threat characteristics of ZBot – a banking trojan that disables firewall, steals sensitive financial data (credit card numbers, online banking login details), makes screen snapshots, downloads additional components, and provides a hacker with the remote access to the compromised system. Creates a startup registry entry. Contains characteristics of an identified security risk.

Savvy Internet users will hopefully realize the email is a scam fairly quickly, but hardened file-sharers should smell a rat even earlier due to the omission of demands for money.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Following the departure of its two founders, MediaDefender CEO Dimitri Villard said MediaSentry had been bought for $936,000, comprised of $136,000 in cash and an $800,000 1 year note.

“The combination of MediaDefender, the leader in Internet Piracy Prevention (IPP) with MediaSentry, the leader in business and marketing intelligence derived from P2P channels, creates a true powerhouse in the field of intellectual property protection,” Villard said. “This acquisition will enable MediaDefender to dramatically expand its effectiveness by providing customers with a wide range of options to meet the constantly evolving challenges in copyright protection and enforcement.”

Among file-sharers, MediaDefender grew to become one of the most hated anti-p2p companies but always maintained that it did not track individuals or report them to the authorities or copyright holders. With its acquisition of MediaSentry, a company designed to do just that, MediaDefender now boasts the full range of tools to hinder, mislead, track, monitor and report copyright infringers.

Previously a SafeNet Inc. subsidary, MediaSentry became well known as the RIAA’s main anti-piracy partner, providing crucial support to the lobby group during its aggressive litigation campaign against file-sharers. The RIAA dumped MediaSentry in January, choosing to work with Danish tracking company DtecNet instead.

MediaSentry is best known for harvesting IP-addresses of alleged copyright infringers but their methodology has been questioned in court by several experts. On top of that, Mediasentry’s investigation tactics were deemed illegal in several states because it operated without the appropriate and required paperwork. According to some, this was why they were ditched by the RIAA.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In mid 2005, MediaDefender founders Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrera were paid $43 million for their anti-piracy company when it was acquired by ARTISTdirect. This seemed to be a good deal, particularly since the big movie studios were paying millions for MediaDefender’s services – but that situation didn’t last.

In August 2007 disaster struck when a database of MediaDefender’s internal emails leaked to the public. Every juicy detail of their anti-piracy campaigns were out in the open, including the tools they used. The hacker said that he initially didn’t plan to make the info public, but when he found out what MediaDefender were up to he was determined to “destroy them” – and so he did.

The emails were published on the web at MediaDefender-Defenders.com but now the site just diverts to The Pirate Bay. Despite the damage control efforts of MediaDefender, however, the emails are still available for download on some BitTorrent sites. This must have helped give the large movie studios the impression that MediaDefender is not the most capable company to entrust with the protection of their blockbuster titles.

A few months after the leak it became known that the data breach was proving exceptionally expensive, with MediaDefender’s parent company losing almost $1,000,000 because of the hack. As a result, their stock price plunged and is now valued at a measly two cents per share and the company’s activities have noticeably decreased. BitTorrent site administrators told TorrentFreak that MediaDefender are not as active as they used to be.

Many times we have predicted the downfall of MediaDefender but on paper the company is still alive. Its founders are no longer on board though. According to a SEC filing last month, MediaDefender has terminated the employment of Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrara.

Why the two left is not clear, but it’s the end of an era for sure. It wouldn’t surprise us if the company ceases to exist in the near future. Meanwhile, the two anti-piracy partners were elected to the Board of Directors of Jibro, Inc. a relatively unknown mobile entertainment company where they will continue to work together.

We wish them all the best.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The emails exposed some of the innermost secrets of the anti-piracy outfit, and now another one is about to be revealed. One of the things we’ve learned already is that polluting file-sharing networks is a profitable business. MediaDefender received $4,000 to protect a music album and $2,000 for a single track. Movies were even more expensive, as they got $3.6 million from a large studio to protect just 4 movies.

The money they got from the entertainment industry must not have been enough though. We recently discovered that Mediadefender had (or has) some interesting side projects – selling access to adult sites. It makes sense. What better way to make cash on the Internet than from porn, especially if you have the knowledge and equipment to spam file-sharing networks with files that redirect people to your site.

From the leaked internal emails we’ve now learned something that wasn’t covered before. MediaDefender was spamming Limewire and other file-sharing networks with thousands of porn related files, trying to convert P2P users into paying porn subscribers. Here’s a quote from one of the emails MediaDefender’s Ben Grodsky sent to some of his colleagues:

One of the theories I’ve had about why the LimeWire redirects sell so many porn subscriptions is because one basically can’t get porn on old versions of LimeWire because our popups and spoofs overwhelm the user.

In the same email, Adult Friend Finder was mentioned as one of the affiliate programs they were working with, and probably made a lot of cash from. This is confirmed by another email, where they discuss the conversion rates:

Adult Friend Finder converts 1 in 2000 on LimeWire. If we want more users, Dylan’s eDonkey messages would get us a lot of Europeans that are a little bit older crowd….

MediaDefender also used LimeWire to promote their infamous Miivi project. In one of the emails they discuss how they can drive more traffic to Miivi, and redirect Limewire users to searches on Miivi:

Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson ARE in the system. Some of these are on the PM2 Data Collection owner sending traffic to our porn site. Any ones sending traffic to our porn site (www.enterallsites.com), you can switch over to the MiiVi links that Colin indicated below.

What’s interesting about this last email is that they don’t only use Adult Friend Finder, but they have their very own porn site, enterallsites.com. Other emails show that this site was advertised by MediaDefender on Limewire and eDonkey too.

It looks like porn was big business for MediaDefender, and we’re curious whether their stock holders are aware of this, since it is never mentioned in any of their financial reports. Thus far, the adult revenue stream has never been mentioned. Nevertheless, traffic reports from Alexa and Compete show that the active advertising stopped directly after the emails leaked September last year.

We assume that MediaDefender stopped advertising their porn projects on LimeWire and other file-sharing networks after the emails leaked, in an attempt to avoid more bad press. They did the same with their Miivi advertising after that project was uncovered. Nevertheless, even without the porn connection being out in the open, their stock price dropped to less than $0.01.

It is worth mentioning that while MediaDefender was selling pron subscriptions to thousands of file-sharers, they were also working with the New York Attorney General to track down child porn downloaders. Nothing wrong with that of course, but we raised our eyebrows when one of MediaDefender’s employees found a suspicious file on The Pirate Bay, and said: “I’m trying to download it now from a dedicated server, but it isn’t finding any peers.”

Today, more than a year after the MediaDefender email leak, enterallsites.com is still up and running. Several other adult domains also owned by the company are still redirected to the site as well. With Piracy and Porn, it must be a great working for MediaDefender.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The hacker, a high-school student using the pseudonym Ethan still lived with his parents when he first accessed they company’s servers by exploiting a weakness in their firewall. This was at the end of 2006, at a time when business was still good for MediaDefender, with its revenue standing at nearly $16m.

Soon after that, Ethan got access to the company’s email, its networked resources and even its telephone system. Logging in a handful of times each month through the summer of 2007, he started to get bored with “Monkey Defenders” – his pet name for the anti-piracy outfit. Deciding to go out with a bang, he and the Media Defender-Defenders gathered thousands of the company’s internal emails and published them on web.

The rest is history. On September 15, 2007 the database containing thousands of emails was uploaded to several BitTorrent sites. In the release note Ethan and friends wrote: “By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contain information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services,” and “A special thanks to Jay Mairs, for circumventing their entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account.”

The emails contained a wide range of information including server passwords, social security numbers, spoofing strategies and vacation pictures. And it didn’t end there. In the days after the email leak, Ethan and friends released a private telephone conversation between MediaDefender and the New York attorney general’s office, a P2P tracking database, which was followed up a few days later by all of Media Defender’s anti-piracy tools. The effect on the company and its operations was dramatic.

In a SEC filing, the financial damage started to become clear. As a result of the hacking, by November 2007 MediaDefender had lost nearly $1,000,000, which affected the stock price of parent company ArtistDirect significantly. Before the email leak, stock was around the $2.25 mark. Three months later stock plummeted to $0.63. Now, a year after the leak the stock price has hit rock bottom, at less than $0.01 per share.

Meanwhile, BitTorrent sites witnessed a decrease in MediaDefender activity following the leak. The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, who sued some key players in the entertainment business for using MediaDefender, told TorrentFreak that there has been a significant decrease in activity from BitTorrent spoofers and decoyers. “It’s strange that no one has given much regard to the fact that the way MediaDefender works is probably illegal in most countries. Even in the US. I might even say, especially in the US,” Sunde added.

Decrease in activity or not, this spring the company still managed to make the tech headlines by sabotaging the BitTorrent tracker of the popular Internet TV network Revision3. Revision3 lost thousands of dollar in revenue because of the DDoS attack, but decided not to take any legal action. Meanwhile, the stock price on MediaDefender’s parent company continued its freefall.

So what does the future hold for MediaDefender? Currently, they have decreased their anti-piracy efforts, and started to explore options to use filesharing networks for marketing purposes. Eric Pulier and Teymour Boutros-Ghali, two former members of ArtistDirect’s board of directors who resigned last month announced that they were interested in buying MediaDefender, but it’s not clear what path they intend to take.

Perhaps a more realistic option, is for the company to file for bankruptcy, as The Pirate Bay predicted they would, long before the emails leaked.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Although most scams can be avoided easily when a few simple rules are followed, they still manage to trick thousands of novices every day – and this is not going to end anytime soon. Since BitTorrent has become more or less mainstream, with millions of users worldwide, it also proves an interesting target for email spammers.

The latest scam, unlike the others we have reported on before, is one that is sent by email. The email is disguised as a message from the anti-piracy company MediaDefender (using their logo etc.), and warns the recipient that his or her download behavior has been logged. The email has a report attached with more details about the infringed material, which turns out to be a virus (A Mytob worm which installs a trojan, and allows outsiders to gain access to your computer).

Dear User!

Your recent internet activity was logged on the following sites:

* Btjunkie
* SumoTorrent
* isoHunt
* Btscene
* Mininova
* Fenopy
* Monova
* Yotoshi
* GetInvites
* Btmon

We have attached a report about the copyrighted movies, music, softwares you
downloaded or searched on these webpages. We strongly advise you to stop any
future activities regarding the downloading of illegal content or you can
expect prosecution by 17 U.S.C. §§ 512, 1201?1205, 1301?1332; 28 U.S.C. §
4001 laws.

Sincerely,

MediaDefender Inc.

To the more experienced and BitTorrent savvy users it is clear that the email is a scam. First of all, MediaDefender has never been involved in anti-piracy enforcement. The only thing they do is spoofing, flood BitTorrent sites with fake files, and the occasional DDoS attack on Revision3.

In addition, the email claims to have data on what the user searched for on the sites, which is irrelevant and practically impossible. It seems that the spammers should have done some more research on the topic. A good spammer would have included The Pirate Bay in the list of sites instead of Getinvites, which is a BitTorrent invite trading site, and not a search engine

A related scam email, sent out by the same group of people judging by the style and format, is also targeted at filesharers and threatens to suspend their Internet connection. The email claims to be sent by the Internet service provider consortium, and again includes an infected attachment with a report.

The email is a clever scam that shows how mainstream BitTorrent has become. The emails are sent out randomly, but many recipients, scared by be cut off by their ISP, or sued for downloading copyrighted material, might open the infected attachment without realizing that it is a scam.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In a recent financial statement, the company stated that there is a decrease in interest for their anti-piracy services, and that the results of their p2p-advertising model are also disappointing. This news led to further decrease in the stock price, which was sitting at an all time low of just 16 cents this Monday.

Surprisingly enough, the company structurally fails to mention the email leak and security breach, which has cost them a significant amount of money. In September 2007, disaster struck. MediaDefender had made many enemies with its anti-p2p activities. One of them decided to teach the company a lesson by hacking into their systems and leaking their internal emails and closest secrets to the Internet. The effect on the company and its operations was dramatic.

In an interview with Portfolio, the hacker (using the pseudonym ‘Ethan’) explained how things led up to the leak. Ethan, a polite high-school student who lives with his family, was on his Christmas break when he first gained access to the anti-piracy company’s servers by exploiting a weakness in their firewall. This was at the end of 2006, at a time when business was still good for Media Defender with revenue standing at nearly $16m.

Soon after that Ethan got access to the company’s email, its networked resources and even its telephone system. Logging in a handful of times each month through the summer of 2007, he started to get bored with ‘Monkey Defenders’ – his pet name for the anti-piracy outfit. Deciding to go out with a bang, he and the Media Defender-Defenders gathered thousands of the company’s internal emails and published them on web.

Last November, MediaDefender said it lost $825,000 as a result of the leaked emails, and this amount has probably gone up significantly in the months after that. Its stock price is falling, and it’s beginning to look like the company won’t recover anytime soon. The Pirate Bay wished last year that MediaDefender would go bankrupt, and by the looks of it, they might just get what they hoped for…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

P2P marketing is a win-win situation according to MediaDefender, both advertisers and filesharers will benefit. It gives the advertiser “access to passionate fans of any choosing” and filesharers “…get what they want… free content with unique and compelling offerings that fit their personal tastes.”

But wait a second, what a strange world we are living in. A few months ago, Jammie Thomas lost her court case, and was ordered to pay the RIAA hundreds and thousands of dollars because she shared a few songs, and now the same record labels use filesharing networks to distribute their branded MP3s.

Similarly, the IFPI is trying to educate kids and parents about the great dangers of filesharing, while the record companies they represent hire MediaDefender to distribute authorized content on LimeWire and other P2P networks.

So, on the one hand record labels are going after people who distribute their files online, and at the same time they spam these networks with authorized copies. Strangely enough, there is no way for the filesharer to make sure whether a file is authorized or not.

I’m not a lawyer of course, but this double standard must have some legal implications. MediaDefender is even hosting a branded copy of Kayne West’s ’stronger’ on their own servers, and I assume they wouldn’t be infringing copyright.

Of course we asked MediaDefender to shed their light on some of these questions, but unfortunately, they did not respond to our inquiries. Probably too busy spoofing or DDoS-ing random BitTorrent trackers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Surprisingly, however, MediaDefender – best known for spreading fake files on BitTorrent – does not blame itself for their losses, but the music labels. In their latest quarterly report the company explains the huge drop in revenue as follows:

“Revenues related to MediaDefender’s anti-piracy activities declined in 2007 as compared to 2006 and management anticipates a further decline in 2008. The largest source of this decline is due to reduced spending on the part of the major music labels due to a significant reduction in their sales and profitability.”

So, MediaDefender argues that the music labels are spending less money because their revenue is going down. This is a strange argument, if you consider that the music labels blame piracy for the decrease in sales. MediaDefender’s purpose is to decrease piracy, so either they are not doing their job very well, or there might be another explanation that the labels stopped hiring MediaDefender.

Could it be that the bad press that resulted from the security breach at MediaDefender has something to do with it? Some of the emails that leaked at the time revealed some unique insight into the inner workings of these labels and i’m sure they weren’t too happy about that.

In the quarterly report last year’s email leaks aren’t mentioned at all, even though it could very well be one of the major causes of the decreased revenue. By November 2007 MediaDefender had already lost a massive $825,000 due to the leaks, and more financial damage was to be expected.

Before the email leak, stock was around the $2.25 mark, but this has dropped to less than $0.50. Last week we learned that MediaDefender is not only going after trackers from BitTorrent search engines, but that they’re also targeting businesses like Revision3. This wont do their image any good either, and might bring the company down even further.

So, what will happen now? Revision3’s CEO Jim Louderback said on Twit that they wont pursue the company in court after all. Nevertheless, I’m quite convinced that the company has the ability to walk the plank to bankruptcy, all by itself.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In a lengthy blog post Louderback explains what happened, as he writes: “Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes , quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode , much like how a petulant toddler will throw an epic tantrum if you take away an ill-gotten Oreo.”

MediaDefender’s attack effectively took down the Revision3 BitTorrent tracker this weekend, and people were unable to grab the latest episodes. That was not all, the flood of SYN packets also took out their webserver and their email. These kind of attacks are illegal according to US law, and if Revision3 decides to pursue this case in court, it would not be the first time MediaDefender gets caught.

Only a few months ago, The Pirate Bay sued several media companies that hired MediaDefender, for exactly the same behavior. Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde said at the time: “They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff. We need to make a statement that just because something might be hard to fight it doesn’t mean that laws do not imply in the case.”

Louderback has no idea whether the attack on their network was intentional or not, but said he involved the FBI. “Was it malicious? Intentional? Negligent? Spoofed? I can’t say. But what I do know is that the FBI is looking into the matter , and it’s far more serious than toddlers squabbling over broken toys and lost cookies.”

This is yet another epic fail in MediaDefender’s history, and this might very well be the final punch to knock the company out. Most of you probably remember the leaked emails and confidential information, which cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and brought them on the verge of bankruptcy.

To quote MediaDefender’s CEO Randy Saaf: “This is really fucked.”

Update: Ironically Revision3 seems to be down again because of all the traffic the news generated.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In early 2005, online music business ARTISTdirect saw its stock being traded at just a cent. Then in mid 2005, it paid MediaDefender founders, Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrera, $43m for their anti-piracy company and the stock rocketed to beyond $3.00. Smiles all round – but not for long.

In September 2007, disaster struck. MediaDefender had gathered many enemies due to their anti-p2p activities. One of them decided to teach the company a lesson by hacking into their systems and leaking their internal emails and closest secrets to the Internet. The effect on the company and its operations was dramatic.

Within days, seemingly everyone knew about the MediaDefender leak and inevitably, news started filtering through to MediaDefender’s customer base. With the company’s secrets out in the open, and its operations virtually shut down, people started asking if it was possible for the business to continue and if it did, how effective could it be? MediaDefender’s customers weren’t happy, and the company was forced to issue $600,000 in credits to them by way of compensation for a total lack of results in the 3 months following the leak. But this was just the beginning.

In a SEC filing, the financial damage started to become clear. As a result of the hacking, by November 2007 MediaDefender had lost a massive $825,000 – and growing. Before the email leak, stock was around the $2.25 mark. Three months later in December 2007, things were starting to look bleak as stock plummeted to $0.63.

With the stock sitting today at $0.51, ARTISTdirect needed to take some drastic action – and they have, calling in Los Angeles based financial services company, Salem Partners LLC, to try and sort out the mess. Salem Partners are to explore “strategic alternatives” for the business (which is currently $30m+ in debt), such as restructuring, merger or sale. For this service they will be rewarded well: Salem are on a $50,000 a month retainer for the first 4 months with numerous six and seven-figure bonuses woven in to the rates, dependent on the deals they manage to do.

They could decide to sell MediaDefender off as a separate entity, so it’s possible that Randy and Octavio would like to buy their old business back. One thing is certain – it won’t fetch anything near the $43m they sold it for. The pair currently pick up $350k a year each at MediaDefender so they’re not quite at rock-bottom yet, but would they even want it back after last year’s disaster? Time will tell.

Potential buyers will probably choose to wait a little. According to a source, ARTISTDirect’s current FORM 10-QSB financial statement is not online, but it should have been posted to SEC by Feb 14th 2007 March 31st 2007. Looks like the worst of the financial pain hasn’t even been reported yet.

Update: A comment from a TorrentFreak reader who wanted to correct the above date:

“Most companies have financial years that end 12-31, and quarters that end 3/31, 6/30, 9/30. You file 4 reports about financials (at a minimum) per year. A quarterly report is called a 10-Q, a yearend report is called a 10-K. The forms they are filing are 10-QSB and 10-KSB, with the SB meaning small business, however they are still governed by the same rules and regulations.

Non Accelerated is everything under 50million. To be filing a 10-QSB/KSB, you have to be Non Accelerated by default. So anyways, a non-accelerated company has 45 days after the end of a quarter to file a 10-Q. If their financial end of year was 6/30, their 10-Q would have been due February 14th. However, this time of year, it’s time for a 10-K, because their financial end of year is 12/31. A Non Accelerated company gets 90 days from end of year to file a 10-K. All of this means, they are due to file a 10-KSB by March 31st.”

The Pirate Bay finally got what they hoped for.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Soon it became known that a shadowy group known as MediaDefender-Defenders appeared to be behind the attack – they host the Media Defender emails on their website to this day, but little was known about the chain events, or who was behind them – until now.

In an interview with portfolio, the hacker (using the pseudonym ‘Ethan’) explains how things led up to the leak. Ethan, a polite high-school student who lives with his family, was on his Christmas break when he first gained access to the anti-piracy companies servers by exploiting a weakness in their firewall. This was the end of 2006, at a time when business was still good for Media Defender, with revenue standing at nearly $16m.

The interviewer, Daniel Roth, says he communicated with Ethan on pre-pay phone to ensure security. Meeting after school in a local bookstore, Ethan handed over a flash drive holding confidential Media Defender information, explaining that the initial security breach hadn’t amounted to much and that he had difficulty in gaining the interest of fellow hackers. However, a few months later Ethan decided to go back and take a second look – which bore more fruit – giving him access to the company’s email, it’s networked resources and even its telephone system. He then explains how he passed on some of the information to a fellow hacker who gained access to Media Defender servers and used them for denial-of-service attacks.

Logging in a handful of times each month through the summer of 2007, Ethan started to get bored with ‘Monkey Defenders’ – his pet name for the anti-piracy outfit. Deciding to go out with a bang, he and the Media Defender-Defenders gathered thousands of the company’s internal emails and published them on web.

A text file included with the emails stated: “By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contains information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services,” and “A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account”

Just days later, slamming the anti-piracy company again and again seemed to be the aim of Ethan and friends, as they released a private telephone conversation with the New York attorney general’s office, a P2P tracking database, followed a few days later by all of Media Defender’s anti-piracy tools.

Ethan said that he didn’t set out to ruin Media Defender: “In the beginning, I had no motivation against Monkey Defenders” he said. “It wasn’t like, ‘I want to hack those bastards’. But then I found something, and the good nature in me said, These guys are not right. I’m going to destroy them.”

Ethan, who is now sought after by the FBI because of the leaked emails, is getting close to this goal. It all went downhill for MediaDefender after the leaks got out. In November it turned out that MediaDefender’s parent company ArtistDirect lost almost $1,000,000 because of the hack, and their stock price plunged soon after that.

To make it even worse, a week after the sensitive information was made public, the Pirate Bay launched a counterattack against their arch rival. They decided to use the information from the emails to file charges against some of MediaDefenders customers including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker.

There is no doubt that the pirates have won this battle, and it will be very hard for MediaDefender to regain their credibility. To quote MediaDefender CEO Randy Saaf: “This is really fucked…”. Yes, I’m afraid it is Randy.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Unfortunately for them, one of their employees was stupid enough to forward all his work email to his Gmail account, without using a proper password. To make it even worse, more sensitive information started to leak as the email leak was soon followed by a p2p tracking database, a phone call and a collection of anti-piracy tools they used for their daily operations.

Soon after this sensitive information became public, the Pirate Bay launched a counterattack. They decided to use the information from the emails to file charges against some of MediaDefenders customers including Paramount Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Music Group for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker.

The leak did not have any effect on the stock price initially, but after the company announced that it had cost them $825,000, it started to drop hard. It turned out that MediaDefender’s parent company ArtistDirect spent $600,000 to compensate their customers and the rest of the money was used to cover legal expenses. The investors weren’t too happy about this news as can be seen from the picture below.

So what will happen now, will the company walk the plank to bankruptcy? Many people think it will, but MediaDefender still sees a future in the anti-piracy business. Sure, they were devastated by the leaks, but remarkably, they believe that it didn’t hurt the goodwill of the company. Makes you wonder what is needed to hurt this then, because it can’t get any worse if you ask me.

I’m sure we will hear from them again in 2008.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

To give an example, Universal Pictures – a company represented by the MPAA – contracted MediaDefender to protect movies, which basically means that they pollute BitTorrent sites with fake files to make the real files harder to find. There are several emails that prove this, and quotes such as “can you jump all over this swarm and try to kill it?” leave little room for speculation.

Universal Pictures is not the only MPAA movie studio MediaDefender worked for, the emails clearly show that they were also hired by Paramount, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures. I would suggest Tondel to go through these emails before making ungrounded claims like this again.

Brokep, one of the Pirate Bay founders told TorrentFreak earlier that they decided to file complaints because they want to make these big media companies aware of their own wrong doings: “I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how this case develops. One thing is for sure, it will be hard for these media companies to deny their involvement with these emails as evidence.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

TorrentFreak: What is the main reason why you decided to file charges?

Brokep: To make the big companies aware about their own wrong doings. They are huge corporations where I’m sure a lot of different people decide. I don’t want that to be an excuse, I want them to take their crappy methods and stop their wrong-doing. They are going around accusing the pirate community for doing immoral stuff, when they do illegal stuff. We need to make a statement that just because something might be hard to fight it doesn’t mean that laws do not imply in the case.

TorrentFreak: In your blog post you said that the MediaDefender leaks started all this. Have you contacted MediaDefender about this suing of their clients?

Brokep: Yes. I talked to Randy Saaf, he sounded like a nice guy but he didn’t want to talk about it. He basically said “you do what you have to do” and honestly – if it were my clients, I would be a bit more eager to not get them in trouble.

TorrentFreak: What’s the legal status of the leaked emails, can they be used in the lawsuit as evidence?

Brokep: Yes. We have something called “fri bevisprövning” in Sweden which means that evidence, no matter how they’re obtained, can be used.

TorrentFreak: Do you have any other evidence against the media companies?

Brokep: Yes, stuff like our own logs of the connections from MD and such.

TorrentFreak: Have you heard anything from the companies you pressed charges against?

Brokep: No. We tried having a debate in national swedish radio but they refused to talk to us. They sent a note using IFPI saying “we will not talk about unserious claims like this”. It’s a twist of irony. They do illegal stuff and it’s unserious claims, we do stuff they consider immoral and they force the police to help them out. How’s that for democracy…

TorrentFreak: What message do you want to send out to the movie and music studios and anti-piracy companies like MediaDefender,and what else do you hope to accomplish by pressing charges?

Brokep: That you can’t fight file sharing. You have to join it, embrace it and adopt to it. It’s the only way, like it or not. It’s not going away, it’s grows every day and it’s for a good reason – the people want it. And the people are their customers, why fight them? Listen to them.

TorrentFreak: Thanks Brokep, and good luck of course!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Following the revelations that ‘Big Media’ hired MediaDefender to illegally sabotage The Pirate Bay’s activities in Sweden, we reported that complaints have been filed with the police. The porn industry – already in the early stages of its own personal war against BitTorrent – could’ve been expected to demonstrate a united front in support of MediaDefender and its actions against The Pirate Bay. This is not the case. They are hugely divided with many openly supporting the world’s most famous pirates, with some even making it public that they are donating hard cash to help their cause.

Using language as filthy as their movies (mostly without spell-checkers), those of a sensitive nature should proceed with caution when reading these quotes from some of the longest-standing senior members on the porn industry’s GFY forums:

It all started in quite a civil manner, with Madrox quite correctly pointing out: “well what they are trying to do to PirateBay is illegal, so i guess they are trying to fight fire with fire, i hope PB wins…” to which a disbelieving 34,000-post count “tony404″ responded angrily: “Your fucking kidding right?”

Jace goes on to demonstrate the reality of the situation: “the fucked up part is that what the thepiratebay is doing in their country is legal, and what the movie companies are doing in the country of thepiratebat is ILLEGAL, so there is a good chance this will be a pretty damn good fight” to which GhostCash Rush responded: “I agree. This is the one shot Gottfrid has been waiting for.”

Madrox steps in again: “and thats exactly the reason why im rooting for PB, sure its illegal over here for what they are doing, but they aren’t doing anything illegal in their own country, so im not gonna hate them for breaking laws in another country… premarital sex is illegal in a lot of 3rd world countries, but oh wait, not in America, but you don’t see them trying to sue us do ya?”

…..which provoked several “fuck you” and “asshole” comments from people who are clearly hugely frustrated by their limited legal and geographical knowledge. According to will76, Sweden is a 3rd world country “where hacking is legal you dumb fucks” and while pointing out their ‘legal’ page claims TPB staff are “cocky mother fuckers asking for trouble”.

At this point, in steps ‘RawAlex’ who has more to say on this matter than anyone else on the porn industry forum and has some really ‘interesting’ ideas about the legality of TPB and copyright law: “The funny part is that piratebay would have to first admit what is on those trackers. So they would have to admit to sharing copyright material in the first place before they could move forward.”

TPB host only .torrent files and never distribute copyright works, that’s why they are legal in Sweden and are still operating. So we can all ‘move forward’ now…with some common sense from ‘hungry hungry hippy’:

“usa law stops at the borders, tpb does nothing illegal in their country, period. because you can’t come to grips with that does not mean you can go vigilante and hack them – that is illegal in both countries. sorry to interrupt the whine fest, someone want to pass the cheese?”

…to which RawAlex responds: “Sorry moron, but you forget that piratebay doesn’t limit themselves to distributing stuff in Sweden – they distribute worldwide.” Sorry to correct you again Alex – they don’t distribute anything but .torrent files – which are totally legal.

‘Amputate Your Head’, a member since 2001 supports Pirate Bay “fully” while ‘Dirty Franck’ explains that he “just donated 200 bucks to PB for their case” along with ‘Bang.TV‘. Pryda exclaims: “Go Pirate Bay! I always loved them, but now I’m rooting for them even more, since I read the MediaDefender story.”

Matt 26z makes an interesting point when he refers to legal issues faced by many adult webmasters: “If you support ThePirateBay being brought to justice in other countries for doing what is perfectly legal in their own country, then you MUST support the extradition of adult webmasters to China to face trial. This is the WORLD wide web. With that comes severely conflicting beliefs and laws that clash online.”

After the industry claimed to have taken down the ijsklontje.nl site recently, one has to wonder how on earth this was possible. The only people who have a grasp of the law on GFY are the ones coming out in favor of The Pirate Bay, which leaves the ill-informed to make hollow threats and blow hot air. This all adds credence to the claims that ijsklontje.nl was taken down by its owners own choice and actually had nothing to do with porn industry action.

I’ll leave the last comment with RawAlex: “If they want to steal from others and profit from it, they should get fucked up the ass with a broomstick without lube” – an idea he probably pirated from TPB’s legal page as they corresponded with the lawyers from Dreamworks, although substituting ‘retractable batons‘ with ‘broomsticks’ probably keeps him safe from copyright police persecution.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

There is a lot of variance in the reported effectiveness between BitTorrent sites and the different decoy projects. We scanned through most of the reports and it seems that The Pirate Bay and Mininova were best protected against fake files whereas MediaDefender was more effective on sites like BiteNova and TorrentPortal.

Niek from Mininova, the toughest site to get onto according to MediaDefender, wrote a blog post in response to the leaked MediaDefender emails. He sums up some of the quotes that show how well protected Mininova is. Niek adds, “We can only be grateful for the many nice words from our friends at MediaDefender. All thanks go to our great moderating team, who did (and do) great work.”

The Pirate Bay has always been one of MediaDefender’s main targets because this site is often mentioned in the press. Unfortunately for MediaDefender The Pirate Bay is also one of the sites that is well protected against fake files.

In July, Brokep from The Pirate Bay already told us that they were doing all they can to block Media Defender from accessing their trackers. “We block them and some other torrent sites do as well.” he said.

This apparently annoyed MediaDefender, as we can see from one of their emails regarding the effectiveness of their decoys for Micheal Moore’s Sicko: “we still have no presence on Pirate bay which is a site they [Weinstein?] are likely watching as it was mentioned in the AdAge article they referenced.”

Here is an example of an effectiveness report for “Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer” based on the top search results. Note that an effectiveness of 100% means that all the torrents that showed up in the search results (top 6/10/15) were fake.

BiteNova: 100%
Bittorrent.am 27%
Btjunkie 20%
Btmon 15%
BushTorrent 100%
ExtraTorrent 47%
Fenopy 100%
FlixFlux 23%
FullDLS 32%
IsoHunt 100%
Meganova 100%
Mininova 0%
Monova 35%
MyBittorrent 91%
NewTorrents 0%
Novatina 98%
PirateBay 0%
Snarf-it 74%
TorrentBox 32%
TorrentLocomotive 47%
TorrentPortal 100%
TorrentReactor 0%
TorrentSpy 4%
TorrentValley 77%
TorrentView 27%
Torrentz 22%
Underground 0%
WorldNova 97%
Yotoshi 92%

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The source is complete for their operations regarding Kazaa, bittorrent, gnutella etc. This system is now released for the public in order to identify the decoys they set up. A special thanks to the MD employee that gave this to us.

It appears that this leak was not collected from the e-mails. The MD-Defenders themselves claim that a MD employee handed over the files to them, but this hasn’t be verified by other sources at this point.

This leak contains a wealth of information and seriously harm MediaDefender’s future operations. BitTorrent tracker owners and other admins who are involved in managing P2P networks can utilize the leaked information to brace themselves against companies like MediaDefender, who try to pollute their networks with fake files.

From the leak it seems that MediaDefender is active on virtually every P2P network, including Usenet.

Not surprisingly, most applications are dedicated to BitTorrent, which is probably their main target because of its popularity. Application names BTPoster, BTSeedInflator, BTDecoyClient and BTInterdictor make it quite obvious what they are supposed to do.

At this point it is still unclear who the MediaDefender-Defenders are and how they got their hands on all this information. MediaDefender has announced that the FBI will be investigating the source of the leaks.

To be continued?

Update: A list of leaked utilities is now available:

AresDataCollector, AresLauncher, AresProtector, AresSupernode, AresUDPDataCollector, AutoUpdater, AutoUpdaterSource, BTClient, BTDataCollector, BTDecoyClient, BTInflationDest, BTInterdictor, BTIPGatherer, BTPoster, BTRemover, BTScraper, BTScraperDLL, BTSearcher, BTSeedInflator, BTTorrentGenerator, BTTorrentSource, BTTracker, BTTrackerChecker, CVS, DCMaster, DCScanner, DCSupply, DistributedKazaaCollector, DllLoader, ED2KSupplyProcessor, EdonkeyIpBanner, FastTrackGift, FastTrackGiftDecoyer, GnutellaDecoyer, GnutellaFileDownloader, GnutellaProtector, GnutellaSupply, KademliaProtector, KazaaDBManager, KazaaLauncher, KazaaSupplyProcessor, KazaaSupplyTaker, KazaaSwarmerDest, KazaaSwarmerDistributedSource, KazaaSwarmerDownloader, KazaaSwarmerSource, MediaMaker, MediaSwarmerDest, MediaSwarmerSource, MetaMachine, MetaMachineHashSetCollector, MetaMachineSpoofer, MI-GnutellaSupply, MovieMaker, NameServer, NetworkMonitor, OverNetLauncher, OvernetProtector, OvernetSpoofer, P2PFileIndexer, PioletDC, PioletPoisoner, PioletSpoofer, SamplePlugIn, SLSKSpooferDLL, SoulSeekClient, StatusDest, StatusSource, SupernodeCollector, SupernodeController, SupernodeDistributer, SupplyProcessor, TKCom, TKFileTransfer, TKLauncher, TKProjectManager, TKSyncher, UsenetPoster, UsenetSearcher, WatchDogControllerDestination, WatchDogControllerSource, WinMxDC, WinMxLauncher, WinMxProtector, wma generator

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.