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ComputerWeekly: IT security

BitTorrent Inc. Escapes Disaster as Source Code and Financials Leak

With its uTorrent and BitTorrent mainline clients, BitTorrent Inc caters to more than 150 million monthly users.

Considering the size of this massive userbase, one doesn’t need a lot of imagination to come up with several disaster scenarios that might unfold should a malicious third-party gain access to all these clients. But that is exactly what could’ve happened earlier this year if it wasn’t for “MentaL”, an admin at RaGEZONE.

This Spring, MentaL was looking for a hosting provider for a friend when he stumbled upon the Jenkins panel of BitTorrent Inc. This turned out to be the gateway to a treasure trove of highly confidential information that could have destroyed the company if it had landed in the wrong hands.

“They forgot to set a user/pass to the admin panel, that had access to github from a master account. Github accounts had usernames and passwords that were linked to everything,” MentaL told TorrentFreak.

BitTorrent’s Jenkins panel

Luckily for BitTorrent Inc, MentaL wasn’t out to do harm. He contacted the company in May to report his findings and was duly thanked and promised a reward in return. BitTorrent Inc. quickly secured the Jenkins panel but to MentaL’s surprise no reward was forthcoming.

MentaL says that when he contacted BitTorrent Inc he was treated rudely and was eventually offered a $ 500 reward for which he should send an invoice. MentaL was insulted by this “low” offer and instead of taking it he decided to share his findings with the rest of the world. While he never copied any of the files available through the panel, he did take screenshots which show how severe the “leak” was.

Through the open Jenkins panel anyone had access to the heart of the company, including financial details, user accounts and the source code to pretty much all released and unreleased software including uTorrent.

“Anyone who had the access I had would be able to steal the source code of all BitTorrent products and more,” MentaL told TorrentFreak.

“Truth be told, I had access to so much content that I was really unaware of what most of it would and could do! But one extreme scenario that I could have done hypothetically if I was some idiot would be to tweak the actual live build and push an update that could include a virus that would destroy all user content who installed the update,” he adds.

uTorrent source code (more)

So, in theory, a malicious person could have updated millions of live torrent clients with viruses, or worse. In addition, it would be possible to reveal stacks of confidential documents including financial information and detailed job offerings.

“In regards to the financial documents, I only checked several and it included payments and balances to and from the company. Other documents I saw were job offers with introductory salaries that reached over $ 150,000 starting wage,” MentaL told us.

“It was quite extreme and shocking.”

Below is a screenshot of a letter that was sent to the Brazil consulate in Los Angeles. As MentaL has no intention of doing the company any permanent harm, the details of the letter have been redacted.

Letter to the consulate

In another screenshot several source files of BitTorrent’s software and databases are visible. In addition, MentaL tells us that he had access to username and passwords for SQL databases. Needless to say, there are plenty of possibilities to exploit this kind of data for nefarious purposes.

BitTorrent data

The above clearly shows that BitTorrent Inc has narrowly escaped a massive disaster. Perhaps they could have been a bit more appreciative of the way MentaL reported the problems, as that would have saved the company from having the rather embarrassing mistake out in the open.

“I felt I wanted to share and express my annoyance regarding the matter. They make millions a year in ad revenue alone and I never released, tweaked, sent fake builds or nothing out to any user and I feel insulted,” MentaL concludes.

TorrentFreak contacted BitTorrent Inc for a comment on the potential disaster and we will add their response when it comes in. It could be that they are still busy counting their blessings.

Source: BitTorrent Inc. Escapes Disaster as Source Code and Financials Leak

TorrentFreak

Pirates Form Church to Battle Copyright Law That Insults Their Beliefs

Last week Russia introduced its brand new anti-piracy law that will see sites blocked at the ISP level if they fail to respond swiftly to copyright complaints.

The law, which critics say is overbroad and likely to cause collateral damage, is opposed by big companies such as Google, local search engine Yandex, Internet resources such as Wikipedia and thousands of website operators and users.

But just as protests including last week’s blackout by 1,700 sites subside, a more unconventional front is opening up.

Later today pirate activists in five regions – Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Khabarovsk – will submit documents to begin the process of having their church officially recognized by the authorities.

If that all goes to plan in a few years time Russia will have its own Church Kopimizma, but for the faithful there are important issues to be dealt with right now.

As soon as the papers are filed the church’s founders will file a lawsuit against the anti-piracy legislation that came into force August 1. They will do this on the basis that the law, which restricts copying and sharing, is an insult to Kopimists.

But according to lawyer Victor Naumov, separation of religion and state in Russia means that it’s unlikely that the complaint will achieve much, although an appeal could be made to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

Nevertheless, the movement’s early followers are already showing commitment. Izvestia reports that a Kopimist-inspired wedding between Olga Koroleva and Vladislav Petrushenka took place yesterday but instead of the traditional exchange of rings, the pair exchanged microchips which they plan to have embedded in their bodies.

However, Church Kopimizma announced on Facebook that the pirate wedding was actually the outcome of a collaboration between Pastafarians and the Russian Pirate Church.

The new Russian Kopimist church will closely follow the values pioneered by Sweden’s Church of Kopimism, a religion that was formally recognized by the authorities there in 2012.

This means that it’s likely that CTRL+C and CTRL+V will likely be held as sacred symbols, and the acts of sharing and copying will be viewed as the most beautiful things in the world. The church also believes that the value of information increases the more it’s spread and that while confidentiality is sacred, listening in to other people’s conversations is the greatest sin.

Source: Pirates Form Church to Battle Copyright Law That Insults Their Beliefs

TorrentFreak

Details On Upcoming Police Torrent Site Crackdown Revealed

Early June, City of London Police informed TorrentFreak that they had begun targeting sites that provide access to unauthorized content for “criminal gain.”

The ongoing initiative is part of a collaboration with Hollywood studios represented by the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the major recording labels of the BPI. Many torrent sites received letters in which they were warned they were breaking the law. Shutting down, the letters implied, would be the safest course of action.

“We have grounds to suspect that as owners and/or operators of the XXXXX website, you are committing the offense of communication to the public under s.107(2A) of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 (“CDPA”). Section 107(2A) is an indictable offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment,” the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau warned.

At the end of June the UK government announced the formation of a new intellectual property crime unit to launch in September with £2.5 of public funding. It then became clear that the new unit at City of London Police and the threats to torrent sites were closely connected.

To our knowledge only a couple of sites have actually shut down after receiving a police letter. Admins of other sites discussed the threats with TorrentFreak on condition of anonymity but we get the impression that for them it will be business as usual next month.

The Intellectual Property Crime Unit issued threats to sites not just in the UK but all over the world and it’s expected that they will coordinate with organizations such as Europol and Interpol to an attempt to shut them down.

Of course, the police won’t be initiating these actions on their own. They are working closely with record labels and movie studios who are providing the initial guidance and intelligence. While this is nothing particularly new, it seems that the new unit could be the missing link on information sharing absent for almost a decade.

“The introduction of a specialist team in the City of London police to deal with online IP crime provides the focus to deliver the information sharing first envisaged in the Enterprise Act 2002,” intellectual property law litigator Iain Connor told UK law firm Pinsent Masons.

Up until 2002, law enforcement agencies had limited ability to share information for use in civil cases, Connor says, but even since then copyright cases have not been a police priority. He points out that the prosecution of SurfTheChannel admin Anton Vickerman was a private prosecution brought by the studios, but that dynamic will change with the introduction of the new unit.

“The new IP crime unit provides rights holders with the opportunity to refer intelligence on criminal activity to the authorities safe in the knowledge that action will be taken and that when a prosecution is secured, that prosecution can be used to obtain financial recovery through the civil courts,” Connor said.

Previously, private organizations like FACT have been accused of acting like the police, even though they have no formal official powers. It seems likely that with the advent of the new unit in September, FACT and the BPI will be able to call on the police to carry out actions on their behalf, almost as if they were an extension of their own organizations.

Earlier legal analysis on the threats to torrent sites is available here.

Source: Details On Upcoming Police Torrent Site Crackdown Revealed

TorrentFreak

BT signs two new BDUK contracts

Oxfordshire and Worcestershire sign contracts with telecoms giant BT to roll-out superfast broadband across the two counties

ComputerWeekly: Internet technology

CW500: The rise of the machines – how devices are taking over the internet

By 2020, there will be a trillion sensors sending data over the internet

ComputerWeekly: Networking and communication

Customer demand for digital shakes up banking business cases

Customer demand for new ways of banking is forcing retail banks to look at new ways to justify IT investments

ComputerWeekly: Financial services IT news

Russian ‘SOPA’ Anti-Piracy Body Under Investigation For Software Piracy

The introduction this week of Russia’s new anti-piracy law was greeted by rightsholders in the movie and TV show industry but few others had reason to celebrate.

Internet users and website owners large and small are concerned by the law’s provisions and music and other rightsholders aren’t yet protected by the legislation.

The first target was social-networking giant vKontakte, who were reported to the courts by an art-house movie distributor as soon as the law went live. However, the company failed to provide the correct documents to prove that they own the movies in question and the case was rejected.

And now, just two days into the scheme, there is controversy surrounding the government body charged with the law’s implementation.

Among other tasks the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roscomnadzor) will maintain a piracy site blacklist which was launched yesterday along with the new anti-piracy law. However, Roscomnadzor has now been forced to acknowledge that the watchdog itself may not be entirely innocent when it comes to copyright infringement.

The problems date back to July 9, 2013 when a technology audit at Roscomnadzor offices led officers from the Economic Crime unit and the Interior Ministry to seize five computers suspected of containing unlicensed software.

According to preliminary information from local law enforcement agencies, two of the seized computers contained unlicensed copies of Photoshop but apparently the problems don’t stop there as unlicensed software from Microsoft, Corel and Autodesk was also found.

“Further investigation carried out by the management has shown that [the software] was installed several years ago by employees who do not work as management. Currently the option of self-installation of software is excluded,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement.

Speaking with CNews, lawyer Natalia Kalin who works protecting the rights of Adobe in Russia, said that if it’s decided that the damages caused by the unlicensed software exceeds 100,000 rubles ($ 3,020), those responsible could be held criminally liable and face up to two years in prison.

Roskomnadzor notes, however, that it is yet to receive official confirmation that it used unlicensed software but once that arrives it will remedy the violations and punish those responsible.

The news that the agency tasked with administering Russia’s anti-piracy law is itself guilty of piracy will be particularly unwelcome, so expect the authorities to live up to their promise of holding people accountable.

Source: Russian ‘SOPA’ Anti-Piracy Body Under Investigation For Software Piracy

TorrentFreak

BT forms new business retail division

BT Retail will split into business and consumer divisions when its leader ascends to the role of CEO in September

ComputerWeekly: IT Management

A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Regime Is A Lot Closer Than You Think

The key to changing the world’s copyright monopoly regime lies in Europe and the European Union. The reason for that is that the United States is completely dependent on a number of Industrial Protectionism (IP) schemes since the failure of its industrial capacity in the mid-1970s, having moved ahead from that failure with disguising lopsided rent-seeking schemes as “free trade agreements”. The first of these was the WTO, the body created to oversee the TRIPs agreement. There have been many more since. You cannot change the United States from within on these matters.

Externally, the United States puts significant unilateral pressure on any country that doesn’t submit to these agreements, up to and including trade sanctions. (You will not have a hard time finding a case where the United States has threatened a country with trade sanctions or visa problems for having a too lax copyright monopoly regime, for example – the U.S. even does this on a regular basis in something named the “Special 301 Report”.) That’s why Europe is key to change.

Europe has the world’s largest economy, slightly larger than that of the United States. (China is in third place.) For trade sanctions to be effective, they have to be directed against a smaller player. This is why the United States can have effective trade sanctions against Cuba, but not the other way around. Therefore, the United States cannot execute trade sanctions against Europe without getting hurt more itself.

However, the laws and enforcement of the copyright monopolies, patent monopolies and other protectionism schemes are at the national level in the European Union. That means that a state in Europe can change its laws significantly, and still enjoy the shield against trade sanctions that comes with being a member of the European Union. (The country may get some heat within the EU, but that’s not going to have any consequences if there is political momentum in the direction of the change. EU rules are routinely ignored when politically inconvenient.)

So Sweden could change its copyright monopoly laws and be free to ignore the rattling of American sabers, knowing safely that the threats cannot be put into effect. So could Poland or Germany, if there was political will. But Sweden is not a very interesting country in terms of political clout. It was just meant to be the proof of concept; the important first stage.

Remember: Sweden, Europe, and the world. In that order.

(As a side note, countries in Latin America also have a politically expedient climate for this change and the gradual dismantling of Industrial Protectionism schemes, but lack the necessary shield from an economic union, and even so, their combined economy is roughly half of that of the US or the EU – not enough on its own.)

On June 7, 2009, the proof of concept materialized as the Swedish Pirate Party took two out of Sweden’s twenty seats in the European Parliament. That sent shockwaves through the political establishment. I thought that this would be the signal for Pirate Parties to form in more countries, seeing that success was achievable; that was actually wrong. There were already Pirate Parties in some fifty different countries by that date. Things had moved much faster than I had anticipated.

To see why Europe is the next step, we need to understand the political dynamics of the Industrial Protectionism supporters (copyright monopoly and patent monopoly rooters). These schemes have essentially been forced onto Eastern Europe by the countries in the west of Europe – notably the UK, France, and Germany. But tides are changing. In the European Parliament, there is now an estimated one-half still in favor of monopolistic protectionism, one-third sceptical or against it, and one-sixth undecided. Shift that balance by more than a sixth, and the protectionist dismantlers will get political majority.

But there’s more than just the European Parliament. Europe is run in many different ways in parallel, and I mentioned the UK, France, and Germany. It is enough to win one of those three countries to tip the political majority in Europe toward the line of the countries in Eastern Europe: the political line exposing copyright monopolies and patent monopolies of today for lopsided rent-seeking schemes that are generally bad for everybody with the possible exception of the United States.

Let’s take a closer look at Germany. The Pirate Party there has enjoyed quite a bit of success, but has come tumbling back down to a more baseline level of support after failing to live up to extreme amounts of hype around the party. If it manages to get a kingmaker position in the German Parliament, it has the power to shift Germany’s stance completely on these matters (and the other parties would gladly give up such a peripheral issue – peripheral to them, anyway – in exchange for the Office of Chancellor).

To do this, the German Piratenpartei needs 5% in the elections on September 22 of this year. If that happens, and the kingmaker move succeeds, then there will be a majority in Europe against copyright monopolies and patent monopolies.

The German Piratenpartei is currently polling at 3%-4%.

Just another small nudge forward for the German Piratenpartei, and Germany is won. The instant Germany is won, Europe is won.

And the day that Europe decides that it is not going to honor protectionistic monopolies, then that’s just the way it is. The day the world’s largest economy (Europe) decides that copyright monopolies are bullshit, they will practically cease to exist overnight elsewhere, too. The same goes for any gradual dismantling.

In other words, we are ridiculously close to a tipping point which will end this destructive war on information, knowledge, and culture. We are ridiculously close to a tipping point which will start dismantling the atrocious copyright and patent monopolies, worldwide. Specifically, we are about 1.5% of political support in Germany away from that tipping point.

The plan was to win Sweden, Europe, and the world. In that order. And it’s executing brilliantly.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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Source: A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Regime Is A Lot Closer Than You Think

TorrentFreak