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Piracy Worms

Demonoid Down For a Week, Serving Malware Laden Ads 144

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the don't-copy-that-floppy dept.
hypnosec tipped us to reports that Demonoid is still down after a suffering a massive DDoS last week, and that the domain is now redirecting to a malware-ridden spam site. Notable for surviving a CRIA mandated shutdown, this may be lights out for the torrent tracker: "To begin, while Demonoid’s admin told us that he would eventually bring the site back online, he clearly has other things on his mind. A really important family event puts a torrent site nowhere near the top of his priorities. ... Demonoid has been experiencing staffing issues this year. As we mentioned in an earlier article, there were rumors that one or maybe more Demonoid staffers had been questioned by authorities about their involvement in the site."
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Demonoid Down For a Week, Serving Malware Laden Ads More

Demonoid Down For a Week, Serving Malware Laden Ads

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  • to finally start researching private newsgroup servers.

    • The NNTP protocol is a real mess for binaries, really. Severe overheads, awkward packing. There is a reason for those PAR2 files - because delivery is too unreliable to use without them. If you're looking for a non-p2p method of file distribution, you'd be better off with some sort of simple file server - HTTP, even old-fashioned FTP (Which will soon have you loathing NAT). You'll soon run into two problems though: It costs a fortune, and any sizeable pirate service with such centralisation will eventually

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        7zip is awkward, and parity files are difficult to use? And here you are posting on /.? Okay there. I'd hate to see what happens if faced with a CLI.

        • Having to collect the files together, waiting for that last one of the number you need to recreate the original content because for some reason it hasn't made it to your server's feed yet (or it has expired on your server and you need to wait for a repost), not having the content nicely indexed on the tracker we site, and so on, is more hassle than dealing with torrents.

          OK, there are sites that do some of that indexing (but they are potentially subject to takedowns and DoS attacks as much as torrent inde

      • Re:the kick in the pants I needed (Score:4)

        by JMJimmy ( 2036122 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @12:24PM (#40858157)

        What's needed is decentralized p2p indexing so taking down any given site doesn't affect the ability to locate files. How to accomplish this is beyond me but I'm sure it's possible.

        • Re:the kick in the pants I needed (Score:5, Interesting)

          by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @12:36PM (#40858319)
          As I proposed. It can be done - and we know it can be done, because Freenet is exactly that. But Freenet is made for dissidents and activists, and it's anti-tracking measures are accordingly paranoid: Performance is sacrificed in order to make it near-impossible to tell what anyone is either publishing or retrieving. This makes Freenet slow. Really slow.

          What you want can be done - it'd have to involve hashes, or better yet hash trees. All it needs is someone with the skill and will to impliment it.

      • How's about using NNTP just for distributing the .torrent only :-)

        I did a quick search... amazingly I haven't seen anyone doing this?

      • I haven't had to use a PAR2 file in years. The delivery of binary files are just fine for me. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, but I just haven't had problems with incomplete files in at least four years. Many of the bigger usenet servers do offer downloads via HTTP as well.

  • Who was going to sites like Demonoid... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlastfireRS ( 2205212 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @10:26AM (#40856593)
    ...and not using some form of AdBlock anyway?

    • hell not just adblock, but also noscript, and https everywhere.
      my browsing experience can be a pain in the ass, but at least it's relatively safe.

    • Re:Who was going to sites like Demonoid... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by s0nicfreak ( 615390 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @11:11AM (#40857123) Journal
      People that want sites like Demonoid to survive and therefore support them by viewing ads?

      • People that want sites like Demonoid to survive and therefore support them by viewing ads?

        The geek sees an add that helps pay the bills. The judge sees a profit-making web site.

      • You mean people who don't know that you can get malware from ads like this?

        I use an adblocker not because I don't like supporting websites but because there's no way I'm risking the chance of an infection like that.

        • I just ensure my computer can't install anything without my permission and use adequate malware protection, which is a good idea no matter what sites you are going to and no matter if ads "like this" are blocked.

          I use to run a tracker, I know how much of their own money the people running it must pump into it; viewing the ads is a free way to put a little money back into something I use.

    • this is just retarded. They said they incurred a bandwidth cost from the ddos and turned on advertising to deal with it. I imagine the bandwidth cost before and after the DDOS were probably substantially different. I don't know if they were aware of the bad ads regardless.

  • IIRC, demonoid has had several outages throughout the years, some lasting weeks at a time. I would be surprised if this lasted much longer, but I would be far more surprised if this really did spell the end of demonoid all together.

  • I've always been forced (by means of parental guilt-trip) to act as tech-support for family, which basically means being the guy who gets roped into decontaminated malware-laden PCs for them, despite the fact I'm in a full time job and earn more than most of them. Yes, the whole "being the guy who knows PCs" thing is really starting to grate as I move further into my 30s, not least because my knowledge is nowhere near as fresh or as deep as it was a decade ago.

    Anyway, rant aside, I've been used to dealing w

    • For a decade now, I've been operating on the basis of "Do I need it? If not, do I want it? Can I justify spending money on it? And if not, is there a free-as-in-beer legal alternative available?"

      The problem is that most people don't make it to this point. They only see that FREE FREE FREE FREE, and then use their morals against giant companies/for privacy/ anti-government, what-have-you, to justify their decision. A little bit of research will prove that for most things there is a legal, free version available. It might not be 100% what you want, but it'll be close, and it'll be great considering it's free.

      DISCLAIMER: I do pirate things (games usually, or music) to TRY THEM. IF I like them, I BUY T

      • there is no such thing as a good demo anymore.

        Ugh, I know right? I miss the good old days when a demo was a 30-day trial, with every feature intact.
        Right when dual core processors came out I built a PC with the most expensive processor I could find. Most games would not even recognize the second processor and have tremendous difficulty running. After the FIRST time that happened, I switched to downloading the game first, just to see if it could even operate on my machine. It probably saved me from buying hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of incom

    • obligatory link to The Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/computers [theoatmeal.com]
    • Uhm.... how about charging 50+ USD/hour + miles ?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Oh man...this is techie porn, right here. Time machine+win updates+one click installs=awesome.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by adolf ( 21054 )

        Hairyfeet,

        I've been reading your banter for years, and while I generally perceive that you're trying to be helpful, this is the first time that you've helped me.

        Thank you for re-introducing me to WSUS Offline (the last time I saw that concept was many years ago and somewhat broken and/or German), and Comodo Time Machine (which I'd not yet found).

        These things will make my life, and the lives of my customers, immeasurably easier.

        Best regards,

        adolf

    • In my personal experience pirate sites are relatively safe even when browsing them from Windows, I've never had any problems with sites like solarmovie.eu, demonoid.ph/demonoid.me or thepiratebay.org. Actually, I've personally had less problems so far with pirated content than with dysfunctional DRM schemes. Perhaps your relatives are a bit too careless or need better anti-virus software? (Porn sites, on the other hand, are full of malware.)

      But anyway there is an easy remedy: Install GNU/Linux for them and

  • I remember the good old days when (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stirling Newberry ( 848268 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @10:41AM (#40856773) Homepage Journal
    stopping people from getting information about sex and contraception was supposed to solve some problem or other.

  • i started missing demonoid when chris marker died (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2012 @10:56AM (#40856981)

    i went to download some of his more obscure movies (and they're all pretty obscure) and without demonoid i had to pause for a second and think where will i get them? especially since only a few have been released on DVD. well i still found them but it really remind me what a wonderful culture resource demonoid was. i mean any obscure movie from anywhere in the world was probably on there, likewise for music. although i'm still looking for a copy of communist Polish camp classic Hydrozagadka with english subs. wasn't even on demonoid! at least not with subs..

    • i miss BTJunkie.

      BTJunkie had EVERY FUCKING THING!!!112

      Dammit.

    • This.
      My movie/music tastes are pretty strange at times, and I am genuinely trying to buy some obscure movies or albums. Problem is, they can't be found anywhere any more. Some have been released by Iron Curtain state owned companies (communist era stuff from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, URSS), some were released by now-bankrupt companies, etc. Digital copies are the only chance, and now with less and less large torrent sites around, the chances of actually watching that obscure movie or listening to tha

  • For me demonoid.me points to localhost so if you're being redirected to a malaware website your system is compromised.
  • ...where am I to torrent stuff now? /sadpanda

  • Update (Score:5, Informative)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Thursday August 02, 2012 @12:07PM (#40857881)
    According to the article in TFA, which has been updated, the ads were put in place deliberately by the site admin to recoup some of his costs. Presumably, he didn't know they were full of malware.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "I'm shocked, shocked to find that the people who buy ads on my site dedicated to illegal activity would be involved in some sort of illegal activity", said the admin. "I thought these were all fine, upstanding companies."

  • Was wondering what was happening.

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