FC: P2P hacking and worm-writing redux, by Nathan Cochrane

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 14:57:14 +1000
From: Nathan Cochrane <ncochrane () theage fairfax com au>
Organization: The Age newspaper
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: P2P Hacking Redux
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-UIDL: 5ef76796ca33286d944dbf3a40540dfe

Hi Declan

Please ignore the previous post; I hadn't quite finished it when it barfed 
from my machine.

You may remember last year there was much talk around the RIAA's alleged 
proposals to hack PCs to see if there was pirate music on them. It occurs 
to me that the RIAA doesn't really have to do anything. The P2P networks 
are so inherently insecure they are their own worst enemies.

September 25, 2001
Alleged e-mail from RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen to entertainment industry 
executives published December 25, 2001.
"It is time to get coordinated and aggressive with the new round of peer to 
peer services. We need to discuss:
1. Spoofing and/or interdiction methods for existing peer to peers - 
(perhaps by adding promotional messages about the launch of various new 
systems)"
http://www.dotcomscoop.com/print.php?sid=40

October 16, 2001
"Look out, pirates: RIAA wants to hack your PC
By Declan McCullagh
An RIAA-drafted amendment, according to a draft obtained by Wired News, 
would immunize all copyright holders -- including the movie and 
e-book   industry -- for any data losses caused by their hacking efforts or 
other computer intrusions 'that are reasonably intended to impede or 
prevent' electronic piracy."
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02656.html

October 24, 2001
RIAA denies to Declan McCullagh that it wants to hack PCs:
"The answer to whether our proposal would permit a copyright holder to hack 
computers and delete information is: No, absolutely not."
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02704.html

April 30, 2002
"KaZaA users brace for hijack
By Nathan Cochrane
'I have concern about their (KaZaA Media Desktop owner, Sharman Networks) 
security protocols for activating the client and running programs that 
utilise idle resources . . . If someone finds out that, anybody can request 
your machine to do what they want, which is scary,' (said distributed 
computing researcher, Rajkumar Buyya.)"
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/04/26/1019441306209.html

May 18, 2002
"Worm Crawls Into The KaZaA Network
The KaZaA file exchange network takes its turn as a virus victim.
Kaspersky Labs, an international data-security software developer, 
announces the detection of the network worm "Worm.Kazaa.Benjamin" - the 
first malicious program to spread through the KaZaA file exchange network."
http://www.kaspersky.com/news.html?id=738605

May 20, 2002
"Benjamin Worm Means Well
By Brian McWilliams, Newsbytes
The creators of a new worm that targets users of the Kazaa file-trading 
network say they released the code to frustrate Internet users searching 
for pirated software and child pornography.
'After a few months it could be that there are more Benjamin files in p2p 
networks than warez files ... Within a few days Benjamin has spread very 
far in these illegal networks,' said (virus creator Paul) Komoszki."
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:H4D_By_NUPkC:www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176684.html+kazaa+virus&hl=en&ie=UTF8


--

Nathan Cochrane
Deputy IT Editor
:Next:
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.next.theage.com.au




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------