RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC

[fogelbise]

This was a blurb in the newspaper shop in October, but I couldn't find this specific proof of riaa's intent to hack into p2p users computers mentioned in this p2p forum.

I was reading about this in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine...and found this older article...sorry if this article has been discussed here.

http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47552,00.html

It's no joke. Lobbyists for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to glue this hacking-authorization amendment onto a mammoth anti-terrorism bill that Congress approved last week.

October 2001

[fogelbise]

no comments? seems like a pretty important problem that needs to be fought...though not sure how.

I forgot to add that the Rolling Stones article mentioned that the RIAA is one of the worst at lobbying to get things attached to bills that have nothing to do with what they are attaching them to. They are constantly trying to slide right over the normal process required to get a bill passed and slip one under on us.

Much of the article was talking about the various ways artists get screwed by the record labels. One thing the RIAA did get away with initially by attaching to an unrelated bill, was extending the time the record labels could hold the copyright to the artist's original works.

They apparently don't cary articles online, just reviews and the like.

[JackSpratts]

a few months before you arrived fogelbise the riaa hack story blew thru here like a bitter wind. i managed to get a couple of things printed in a few papers pointing out the illegality and sheer absurdity of it all. the riaa was essentially warned off the idea by people both outside, and inside the organisation. to my knowledge no riaa hack has to date been successfully attempted. that's not to say they might not eventually try but at this point i think it would destroy them.

- js.

[fogelbise]

i see what i did, i searched without logging in so i didn't get that thread as it is in the members underground forum...sorry about that.

[BuzzB2K]

Originally posted by fogelbise
i see what i did, i searched without logging in so i didn't get that thread as it is in the members underground forum...sorry about that.

It doesn't hurt any to remind everyone how devious the RIAA can be and what they will do to try and maintain the status quo.

[JackSpratts]

agreed. i was pointing out why the thread had gone unanswered. no criticism was made nor implied.

- js.

[theknife]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
a few months before you arrived fogelbise the riaa hack story blew thru here like a bitter wind. i managed to get a couple of things printed in a few papers pointing out the illegality and sheer absurdity of it all. the riaa was essentially warned off the idea by people both outside, and inside the organisation. to my knowledge no riaa hack has to date been successfully attempted. that's not to say they might not eventually try but at this point i think it would destroy them.

- js.

I can easily imagine a covert hacking operation financed by the RIAA. There are millions and millions of dollars at stake, not to mention their very survival as an industry...and there is clearly a mounting sense of panic and urgency amongst entertainment industry executives. If I was a record company executive, and I felt my livelihood and way of life threatened, why wouldn't I consider drastic measures such as a hack? Particularly since it could take the form of an anonymous viral application...
what would I, the prosperous record company executive, have to lose?

[assorted]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/24445.html

"Old Morpheus still works for unhacked users"

"Register reader Haavard Pettersen's recent experiences suggest someone had indeed tampered with people's computers to prevent them from using Morpheus.

When Pettersen tied to use an older version of Morpheus (on a Windows 98 partition), which he hadn't used since before Morpheus went down, he discovered to his surprise that it still worked.

In XP, he couldn't get either old Morpheus or Preview Edition to work, incidentally.

Russ Spooner, a security consultants at Interrorem and former Morpheus user, confirms Pettersen's experience.

"Clearly the Fast Track client part of the software (used in KaZaA, Grokster and Morpheus) has a backdoor in it that allows the knowledgeable few to fire special packets at clients logged into the Fast Track network which will enable them to modify registry settings," Spooner told us.

"It would appear that for a period of time they had effectively a login script sitting on the authentication servers that basically said 'if (client==morpheus ){ modify registry}'," he added.

The offending login script has now been removed, he notes, so now the original clients work fine, "just so long as they were not exposed to the evil pathogen".

Sharman Network Services is yet to respond to this latest allegation, and we'll fill you in if and when it does."

YOU MEAN SOFTWARE I THOUGHT I TRUSTED COULD MESS WITH MY REGISTRY SETTINGS?? MESS WITH MY COMPUTER???

look out kids.

[Mowzer]

[rant]

What if the RIAA made a virus that hit movies and music?

Now there is a scary thought. I wouldn't put it pass those bastards.

I was gonna write up a little quick one that did that (But in a non destructive manner) and made it look like it was RIAA sanctioned.

I figured it would give them some akward press, and add a new worm to the mass pile that are already out there.

However that would be illegal. I only keep my stuff out of the wild, it would also end up being bad for the anti RIAA scene.

Oh well, I am surprised the RIAA hasnt been doing back handed things like that or hacking users PC's.

Sadly I think its all getting a bit like a boiler room for them though, as now movies are becoming just as popular of a download as mp3s. I excpect em to crack one day, and start doing messy things.

The first move is when they finally use the fancy scanner software they empoloy to start shutting down users isp accounts or reporting them.

Allot of other seemingly straight companies and groups seem to tend to fall to using bad apples when the pressure gets to be too much.



I am anti RIAA, as from allot of what I read, I dont think they are too go for the music artisits either. Some independent artist friends i know feel the same.

I think people need to start supporting allot of smaller companies out there that are developing new technologies and media techniques for independent artists, so as we keep moving into the future more viable mediums for indy artists come about.

To many new ideas are swallowed up by the big guns, like Microsoft for instance, there in bed with the riaa, they are also planing to break into the juke box business world wide through an off shoot of thier corona music technologies.

Corona is a new project m$ has been working on. I see that as muscling in on the open source icecast market.

geez

[/rant]

[fogelbise]

js: no offense taken. you definitely put it in a nice way.
thank you