Category Archives: Piracy

The Pirate Bay lands in North Korea. Glorious leader breaks out the rum!

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We reported a few days ago that the (in)famous Pirate Bay had switched providers and locations due to intense pressure from law enforcement agencies. It seems the pirates have finally found a new long term home and it##Q##s probably the most surprising place ever: North Korea.

Yes, the site that is reportedly fighting for freedom has become best buds with one of the most restrictive regimes on Earth. Then again, they are arguing for giving almost everything away for free, to each according to his needs from each according to his ability. So yeah, maybe they actually have more in common then we thought. In either case, the irony isn##Q##t lost on the them. On their official blog the pirates posted:

This is truly an ironic situation. [...]We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country##Q##s changing view of access to information. It##Q##s a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do.

What##Q##s even more interesting is that they mention that the beloved leader Kim Jong Un was the one that actually extended the invitation to come over.The pirates also note that this relationship has a potential to actually exert some change in the country. They explain that they will try to do everything in their power to convince the N. Korean government to let its own people access The Pirate Bay.

This development is definitely interesting and it will very likely have geopolitical implications. And if nothing else, it will give certain folks even more reasons to hate North Korea.

The Pirate Bay lands in North Korea. Glorious leader breaks out the rum! – Neowin.

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UK Court orders blocking of more “illegal” websites

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Following the decision by the High Court of the UK last year to block The Pirate Bay and its known alternative addresses, the court in the UK has added three more sites to the list and are requiring a number of “major” ISPs to block them henceforth.

The BBC reports that the ISPs will be required to stop their users from accessing Kickass Torrents, H33T andFenopy.

Music industry group the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said the sites infringed copyright on a “significant scale”.

Opponents to the decision have long argued that such decisions have little effect, and in some cases such as the blocking of The Pirate Bay last year, can actually have the opposite effect where traffic not only returned to normal, but actually increased after the ruling.

Speaking after Thursdays decision BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said:

The growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music online without permission.

Blocking illegal sites helps ensure that the legal digital market can grow and labels can continue to sign and develop new talent.

The BBC report also pointed out that a market research firm NPD has suggested that there had been a large reduction in the number of users illegally downloading music, with users instead favouring legal options like streaming site Spotify. However, their report did fail to mention that services like Spotify has only become a viable legal option since recently and has still yet to roll out in other countries.

UK Court orders blocking of more “illegal” websites – Neowin.

Chinese man pleads guilty in $100 million stolen software sting

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In a case U.S. officials say is the first of its kind, a Chinese businessman pleaded guilty Monday to selling stolen American software used in defense, space technology and engineering – programs prosecutors said held a retail value of more than $100 million.

The sophisticated software was stolen from an estimated 200 American manufacturers and sold to 325 black market buyers in 61 countries from 2008 to 2011, prosecutors said in court filings. U.S. buyers in 28 states included a NASA engineer and the chief scientist for a defense and law-enforcement contractor, prosecutors said.

Corporate victims in the case included Microsoft, Oracle, Rockwell Automation,, Agilent Technologies, Siemens, Delcam, Altera Corp and SAP, a government spokesman said.

U.S. officials and the Chinese man’s lawyer, Mingli Chen, said the case was the first in which a businessman involved in pirating industrial software was lured from China by undercover agents and arrested.

The businessman, Xiang Li, of Chengdu, China, was arrested in June 2011, during an undercover sting by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents on the Pacific island of Saipan, an American territory near Guam.

Video from the undercover meeting in Saipan, filed as evidence in court, is expected to be made public during a press conference Tuesday by John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Charles M. Oberly III, the U.S. Attorney for Delaware.

Li, 36, originally charged in a 46-count indictment, pleaded guilty late Monday to single counts of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright violations and wire fraud.

“I want to tell the court that what I did was wrong and illegal and I want to say I’m sorry,” Li told U.S. District Judge Leonard P. Stark during a 90-minute hearing in federal court. The Chinese citizen spoke through a translator.

In a court filing, prosecutors David Hall and Edward McAndrew said the retail value of the programs Li sold on the black market exceeded $100 million.

During the hearing, Li told U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark that he disputes that figure. After the hearing, his lawyer said Li did not realize the retail value of what he was selling until he was caught and plans to present his own estimate at sentencing, which is set for May 3, he said.

In recent years, U.S. officials have targeted software pirates overseas but bringing them to the United States has proved difficult.

In one of the largest copyright cases, U.S. prosecutors last year charged seven people, including Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, with racketeering conspiracy and copyright violations. The indictment alleges that Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, ran an organization that earned $175 million selling an estimated $500 billion worth of pirated movies, TV shows and other entertainment media. Dotcom is fighting extradition from New Zealand.

EXPENSIVE SOFTWARE

The Li case involves sophisticated business software, not entertainment software, and thus small quantities of higher-priced products. The retail value of the products Li pirated ranged from several hundred dollars to more than $1 million apiece. He sold them online for as little as $20 to $1,200, according to government court filings.

At one point, Crack99.com and Li’s other sites offered more than 2,000 pirated software titles, prosecutors said.

Li trolled black market Internet forums in search of hacked software, and people with the know-how to crack the passwords needed to run the program. Then he advertised them for sale on his websites. Li transferred the pirated programs to customers by sending compressed files via Gmail, or sent them hyperlinks to download servers, officials said.

“He was pretty proud of himself,” Chen said of his client’s business acumen. “He did not realize it was such a big crime.”

Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations learned of Li’s enterprise after an unidentified U.S. manufacturer noticed his company’s software for sale on crack99.com.

Working undercover for 18 months beginning in early 2010, the U.S. agents made at least five purchases from Li. These included pirated versions of “Satellite Tool Kit” by Analytical Graphics Inc. of Exton, Penn., a product prosecutors said is “designed to assist the military, aerospace and intelligence industries through scenario-based modules that simulate real-world situations, such as missile launches, warfare simulations and flight trajectories.” Agents bought software worth $150,000 retail for several thousand dollars.

Agents lured Li from China to the U.S. territory of Saipan under the premise of discussing a joint illicit business venture. At an island hotel, Li delivered counterfeit packaging and, prosecutors said, “Twenty gigabytes of proprietary data obtained unlawfully from an American software company.” Officials did not identify the company in court documents.

Chinese man pleads guilty in $100 million stolen software sting | Reuters.

Murder by Internet – Future CyberThreats

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crime Murder by Internet Future CyberThreats

(Credit: iStockphoto)

New cyberthreats that will emerge in 2014 include the use of Internet-connected devices to carry out physical crimes, including murders, and cybercriminals leveraging mobile-device Near Field Communications (NFC) to wreak havoc with banking and e-commerce, predicts IID (Internet Identity, a provider of technology and services that help organizations secure their Internet presence,

With nearly every device, from healthcare to transportation, being controlled or communicated with in some way via the Internet, IID predicts that criminals will leverage this to carry out murders.

Examples include a pacemaker that can be tuned remotely, an Internet-connected car that can have its control systems altered, or an IV drip that can be shut off with a click of a mouse.

“With so many devices being Internet connected, it makes murdering people remotely relatively simple, at least from a technical perspective.  That’s horrifying,” said IID president and CTO Rod Rasmussen. “Killings can be carried out with a significantly lower chance of getting caught, much less convicted, and if human history shows us anything, if you can find a new way to kill, it will be eventually be used.”

NFC dangers

By 2014, Juniper Research predicts, almost 300 million (one in five) smartphones worldwide will be NFC-enabled, and Global NFC transactions will total almost $50 billion. NFC is a set of smartphone standards that enables everything from payments to unlocking of hotel room doors to automatic peer-to-peer information exchange between two devices placed closely together. IID predicts that while the underlying technology in NFC is secure, almost all of the applications that will be written to interface with the technology will be riddled with security holes, and massive losses will ensue.

“The amount of banking and point of sale e-commerce apps that are being developed utilizing NFC is astronomical,” said IID Vice President of Threat Intelligence Paul Ferguson. “This is a gold mine for cybercriminals and we have already seen evidence that they are working to leverage these apps to siphon money.”

Other cybersecurity trends IID predicts for 2014 include:

  • A large increase of government-sanctioned malware targeting other government institutions around the globe, with nation states openly engaging in acts of cyber-espionage and sabotage
  • At least one successful penetration of a major infrastructure component like a power grid that results in billions of dollars in damage
  • An exploit of a significant military assault system like drones that result in real-world consequences

Intelligence sharing network

However, IID predicts a strong response in the form of an intelligence sharing network that will alert participating companies, government institutions, and more about the latest cybercrime attacks.

Currently, government agencies lack clear guidance about the rules of engagement for sharing, and enterprises are worried about the potential liabilities created by intelligence sharing. IID expects that Congress will enact new cybersecurity legislation that provides safe harbor protections enabling enterprises and government institutions to share intelligence without such fears in the coming months.

Murder by Internet | KurzweilAI.

Piracy issues shuts down NZBMatrix

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One of the most popular Usenet indexing services on the internet, NZBMatrix, has shut itself down voluntarily over piracy troubles. According to the site’s owners, who published a farewell notice on the site, a huge DMCA takedown request was posted to the site on behalf of a number of entertainment companies including Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. – a request so complex that policing the site’s indexing bots would become “an impossible task.”

This issue with piracy was also compounded by problems with payment systems, which the owners claim were unstable and constantly pulling out. The costs for the site in the end were huge, and thanks to uncooperative payment providers as well as huge DMCA takedown notices, the site became too hard to manage.

The site ends the statement by indicating that by constantly removing pirated content from its indexes, the indexer becomes irrelevant:

Also the Usenet Indexing scene is going through some changes, with content being removed from pretty much every provider its making the existence of an indexer irrelevant if the content does not even exists anymore.

NZBMatrix was extremely popular in the Usenet community as an easy way to find content, most often pirated, and this shutdown (along with Newzbin2 last month) continues the vicious war by copyright holders to make it harder for people to obtain content for free.

Piracy issues shuts down NZBMatrix.

SOPA hearings to resume in February in US House of Representatives

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Even as a number of major web sites plan to shut down their operations on Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, there’s word today that SOPA hearings won’t even be held until sometime in February. In apress release from the US House Judiciary Committee, a statement from the committee chairman, Congressman Lamar Smith, says that the committee won’t begin its discussions on SOPA until sometime in February.

Congressman Smith, a major supporter of SOPA, is quoted in the statement as saying:

Due to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February. I am committed to continuing to work with my colleagues in the House and Senate to send a bipartisan bill to the White House that saves American jobs and protects intellectual property.

The statement makes no mention at all of the planned web shutdown protests that will involve web sites like Reddit, Wikipedia and many others on Wednesday. A few days ago it looked like SOPA was going to be put into limbo but Congressman Smith‘s statement would seem to indicate that it is simply been delayed, not shelved.

The US Senate is also debating a similar bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Even though there was a call from several Senators to hold off on voting on the bill, the US Senate’s Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that the vote will continue on PIPA as scheduled on January 24.

SOPA hearings to resume in February in US House – Neowin.net.

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