“After conclusion of due diligence by the parties we were unable to reach agreement on a definitive contract,” said Dimitri Villard, Chief Executive Officer of Peer Media. “We are now focused on pursuing our own future strategic direction.”

Peer Media Technologies was the result of the joining together of two other anti-piracy companies that readers will be more familiar with – Media Sentry (which worked extensively with the RIAA for many years) and BitTorrent-poisoning company MediaDefender.

Read More

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

According to a recently published paper by Prithula Dhungel, Di Wu 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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…

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