Hackers Surreptitiously Downloading Mr. Bean To Your Computer?
from the what-will-they-think-of-next? dept
A few years ago, we noted a novel approach to people defending themselves against computer crime: “a virus did it.” It even worked for a guy who was charged with tax evasion, despite the fact that no virus could be found on his computer — and it only seemed to impact him. However, with malware writers getting more and more sophisticated these days, it’s increasingly likely that malicious hackers could do bad things on your machine, leaving you on the hook. We’ve already discussed how the entertainment industry’s lawsuits seem weak since they can’t really prove who was responsible for anything they see — and it looks like some malicious hackers may be taking advantage of that. Someone over at Digg points to a story about a surreptitiously installed rootkit that installs BitTorrent and starts downloading movies (in this case, Mr. Bean) to the infected computers. It’s not hard to see how someone could then be accused by the entertainment industry of illegally sharing the movie, even though they had no idea it was even on their computer. While the original poster isn’t entirely sure why they’re doing this, it’s not hard to come up with a few ideas. Remember those online extortion rings that would threaten sites with denial of service attacks if they don’t pay up? Imagine the same thing directed at individuals, threatening to get them in trouble for all sorts of illegal things on their computer that they had no idea were even there.
Comments on “Hackers Surreptitiously Downloading Mr. Bean To Your Computer?”
No Subject Given
I was a victim of something similar. A malware installed a torrent on my computer and used it to download viruses and spyware. I had to reformat my computer to get rid of it all, and it still lags.
Re: No Subject Given
Poor hardware is still poor hardware after a re-format.
Re: Re: No Subject Given
Hahah, I was going to say that too. How the F is your comp going to lag after u do a fresh install? Sorry dude but ur a tarded. And if you are getting malware and spyware installed on your computer from using BT(BitTorrent), then BT is not for you. Also how stupid can you be not to see that your bandwidth was being hogged by something else. And if you knew that it was there how hard was it to unplug ur cat5 out of you NIC DUH!!!!!!!
BTW yes PC users have excuse for dl’n ilegal stuff, alas us *ix users where viruses don’t exist for uss. Haha
Re: Re: Re: No Subject Given
Sorry dude but ur a tarded.
Based on your spelling and grammar, one could say much the same about you.
Re: Re: Re:2 No Subject Given
beaner has no idea what he’s doing
No Subject Given
Hahhaa. I love it. I now have an out to download stuff, and get away with it. It would have been a little nice though if someone would have done this, I dunno… say 4 or 5 years ago…
old idea, new data....
I had a trojan do something similar about 6 years back, it published a directory on my computer and started replicating a warez site on my hard drive. It was actually kind of convenient at the time because it gave me a modest collection of music and porn, but after it consumed all the free space on my hd, I decided to remove it.
Automated extortion
I was wondering a while ago how long until some clever organised criminals start running automated extortion campaigns. It would work by sending out malware containing encrypted child pornography or something similarly illegal. The program would inform the victim that the “evidence” has been surreptitiously concealed around their hard disk (and burned media and such) over the past N months and that, unless a payment is made (to an anonymous e-cash account in Russia or Somalia or somewhere hard to prosecute), a remote server will send details to the police/their nosy neighbours. Or possibly start spamming their address book with snuff movies or whatever.
Here a reason:
Come up with a list of, say, your 25 fav movies.
Make 25 versions of said virus, (1 Movie each, or if you are really enterprising, 2,5 or maybe 10 diff movies per virius). Drop them on 25 computers and let their bandwidth soak it up at a slower speed in hopes they don’t notice (And what AOL user would?). Then Dl them from the client to your machine. Really, how many putertards notice the upload bandwidth do anything at all let alone cap out?
Hmmm… I have work to do 😉
Re: Here a reason:
Thats one possibility.
That would pretty much guarantee you dont get a visit from the MPAA lawyers. Only the infected users with the infected PCs are downloading it from the P2P network.
Another possibility would be these are being installed by some arm of the MPAA themselves providing them with targets to aim lawsuits at to make an example of a few more people.
Ordinarily I would say there is no way they would be that underhanded, but 6 months ago I would have said the same thing if someone told me Sony were installing rootkits through their audio CDs….
Re: Re: Here a reason:
z0idberg,
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Sony isn’t evil. Granted, someone somewhere in there knew what was going on, but I’d guarantee that the executive decision makers were too technically ignorant to understand the real impact. It’s just a case of stupidity.
As for the rest of your conspiracy theory… good luck with that.
still not sharing
just because a virus downloads a torrent program to your computer and mysteriously begins to download movies without your consent still doesnt mean you are allowing them to be uploaded. It also doesnt mean that just because it is on your machine that you are sharing it either. So then what is the real issue, downloading or sharing?
everybody should do it...
sounds like a good way to bankrupt the movie and record industry. If everybody had this virus on thier computer they could download movies and music to thier computer without a care, because when thier computers are inspected the virus would be found and they could blame it. There wouldn’t be a single case which the RIAA or MPAA could win because it would all look like an ACCIDENT.
Re: everybody should do it...
EXACTLY. That’s the thing hackers are getting at. Virus writers aren’t all bad. Remember, if enough people get this installed, then people won’t be held responsible for the movies/music they download and the MPAA/RIAA won’t be able to sue anymore. Therefore they’ll finally change their business model.
Even if you don’t have the virus on your computer, you would be able to make the claim that you reformatted your HD to get rid of the virus/other problems. People reformat all the time. So even if they do have an ISP log of you downloading a movie and try to sue you 6 months later for it, you can claim to have reformatted after getting the virus and removed the movie in the process. Any decent lawyer could win this case. This is the future of these lawsuits once people start to figure it out.
The people who write these viruses are saviors. People just don’t realize it yet.
Here's an Idea!
Maybe someone should do that to the MPAA computers! Then they could sue themselves!
No Subject Given
I think im just going to put one of those old fashioned sub7 trojans on my computer if I were to ever get caught… remember sub7?
Re: sub7
hahaha yeah that was great fuck around with back in the day!
Re: No Subject Given
I meant to say ur a tard. WTF nobody can make an error? That is how famous words like pr0n came about. But anyways, I still say that doing a fresh install should’ve fixed everything.
I had exactly this same idea only I envisioned it as a plugin that you could get for azureus that would randomly select a torrent to partially DL and seed (upload more than DL) that you could activate when you had bandwidth to spare because you don’t know what was DL’d/UL’d you could simply claim you thought it was limited to innocent noninfringing torrents or weren’t sure how it worked or you could claim simply that you are active as a proxy to annonymize bit torrent data and simply claim that as legitimate. (again you wouldn’t need to know)
Though there are a number of ways that this could be defeated by the MPAA there are just as many ways it could be improved so the MPAA couldn’t defeate it.
I believe that in either form (virus or anonymizer/seeder) it is the best answer to making bt safe enough for general use while not slowing it down or requiring a special network like i2p, actually as stated it could be made to increase DL speed for others on the torrentrs you seed.
ya know.. this virus excuse ain’t gonna hold up for long. if it’s your computer that had the virus, it is your responsibility to maintain that computer and keep it virus/malware free. just as an example, if you’re going 60mph down the highway and all the sudden your car throws a rod cuz you havent changed the oil in a year and you lose control and smash into a car full of people and they die… you killed ’em. the courts will find you guilty and you will pay the price. same thing. just because you didnt have control of your computer due to not maintaining your antivirus/etc doesnt mean you shouldnt have and arent responsible for the damages.
Re: Re:
There is a major difference between you car, which you are legally bound to maintain and operate with in the set laws and a computer which you sign absolutly no legal binding agreement on use or maintainance. I’m not disagreeing with your point, nessicarly, just your reasoning.
mr.bean