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Oklahoma Security Expert Attacks RIAA Claims
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 07, 2007 07:50 PM
from the resting-on-shifting-sands dept.
from the resting-on-shifting-sands dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A group of Oklahoma University students has made a motion to vacate the ex parte order the RIAA had obtained compelling the university to turn over their names and addresses. In support of their motion was the expert witness declaration (PDF) of a computer security and forensics expert who essentially attacked the entire premise of the RIAA's lawsuit, characterizing the declaration upon which the RIAA based its motion as 'factually erroneous' and 'misleading.' Among other things he pointed out that 'An individual cannot be uniquely identified by an IP address,' and that 'Many computers can be connected to the Internet with identical IP addresses as long as they remain behind control points.' The students are represented by the same Oklahoma lawyer who recently obtained a award for $68,000-plus in attorneys fees against the RIAA in Capitol v. Foster."
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RIAA Directed To Pay $68K In Attorneys Fees 192 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Capitol v. Foster, in Oklahoma, the RIAA has been directed to pay the defendant $68,685.23 in attorneys fees. This is the first instance of which I am aware of the RIAA being ordered to pay the defendant attorneys fees. The judge in this case has criticized the RIAA's lawyers' motives as 'questionable,' and their legal theories as 'marginal' (PDF). Although the judge had previously ordered the RIAA to turn over its own attorneys billing records, today's decision (PDF) made no mention of the amount that the RIAA had spent on its own lawyers."
[+]
RIAA Campaign Against Students Hits Stormier Seas 296 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It's been astutely observed that the RIAA's "ex parte" campaign against "John Doe" college students seems to have run into much stormier waters than its campaign against regular folks. Discovery motions were thrown out by the judges in cases involving the University of New Mexico and the College of William and Mary, and motions to quash have been made by students at Boston University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of South Florida. The RIAA might find it particularly troubling that the students are coming in armed with substantial expert witness declarations attacking the entire underpinning of the RIAA's case, that the students are finding each other and banding together, and that the Chairman of Boston University's Computer Science Department went to bat — as an expert witness — for the BU students."
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Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey, didn't the whole slashdot community say the exact same thing [slashdot.org] last month?"
We could have at least gotten credit for it.
Re:Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I got news for you, that was heard in an RIAA conference room.
Only thing, they're not good listeners, as you may have noticed already.
Re:Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hold out any hopes that the MAFIAA will listen or even care. The aim here is to establish legal precedent in a court of law that says the MAFIAA, when they use spurious technical evidence to try to extort thousands of dollars from people, doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. It doesn't matter whether they agree or not. All that matters is that judges know the truth and that truth gets added to the patchwork quilt of established law that is legal precedence.
Sad thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I delight in seeing young people use the system to fight for their freedoms.
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Re:Sad thing is... (Score:4, Informative)
Mmm.. I doubt it. I'd be surprised if most of the lawyers defending RIAA "victims" (for lack of a better word) are charging their full rates, considering they're mostly defending poor college students.
On the other hand RIAA lawyers aren't paid by the hour, and whether they win or lose their salary is the same (you think they're working for a percentage of a $10,000 settlement?)
They've created a climate of fear, which is all this has been about from the beginning. If they win a case the reward is a pittance to them, if they lose, well, they can afford it. Either way, considering the press it's still generating a lawsuit costs much less and is much more effective than a prime time television ad campaign. Unless there's some way to assign a penalty that really hurts or put a stop to their abuse of the legal system altogether they will continue to sue even if they lose almost every case.
Re:Sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Funny)
I guess I'm only safe when my local Starbucks has had 4,294,967,296 unique wi-fi visitors and has to start over...
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Just to give you the (raw) calculation: you would need
(IP + MAC + newspace + (2* blank space)) * available hosts in the s
Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Interesting)
Like a Red-light camera: they send the ticket to the owner of the car, not necessarily the driver. (Of course, in that case, the owner can simply prove it was not them, and provide the name of the driver, and the ticket will be re-assigned.)
I don't necessarily agree with this, but most ISP's have similar clauses in their TOS: You are responsible for whatever your equipment puts out/takes in over the network connection. I'm not sure what makes Starbucks (for instance) not liable if a wifi customer downloads kiddy porn, but a person who owns an open WAP gets their PCs confiscated by the cops. But I wish the 'immunity' applied to anyone.
Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, as in the case of Minneapolis' red-light cameras, the entire process is deemed unconstitutional because it presumes guilt rather than innocence.
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the driver (the guilty party) can't be identified
It's reasonable to assume that, since it's YOUR car, YOU are the driver.
Just like, if YOUR specially autographed baseball bat was used to beat someone to death, it's reasonable for the
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But that is enough for the police to arrest (or at LEAST question) you. It's e
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If wishes were horses (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the truth is that the global network and the technologies behind it are pretty goddamn complex as well, and change more often than the average trial lawyer changes his boxers. Gross oversimplifications and prevarifications regarding network technology, such as those pulled out of thin air by the RIAA's so-called "expert witness", have so far resulted in several severe miscarriages of justice. Unfortunately, while it is a necessity to have legal representation in a technical case, there seems to be no corresponding requirement that the legal beagles involved have a clue about technological underpinnings of said case. Given how successful the RIAA has been with the testimony of Mr. Linares, it's apparent that expert witnesses are of no help when the people making the legal decisions don't have the mental knowledge base to tell the wheat from the chaff.
Re:Oh come on (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
What's taken so long? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm actually ashamed of this, BTW
OSU, not OU (Score:3, Informative)
TFA says the 11 students are at Oklahoma State University (OSU), not that Other University to the south (OU).
[ Yes, I am an alumni of OSU. ]
While we're nitpicking... (Score:4, Funny)
Are you an alumnUS? Or are you siamese twins?
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heh (Score:2)
As a matter of curiousity... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:As a matter of curiousity... (Score:5, Informative)
That's because it's not in the RIAA's playbook to pick on someone who can fight back.
The articles you're thinking of, by Harvard Law School profs, "Universities to RIAA: Take a Hike" [blogspot.com] and "Protect Harvard from the RIAA" [blogspot.com], urged Harvard and other universities to fight back if the RIAA were to come knocking.... but so far it hasn't come knocking at Harvard.
And don't hold your breath waiting for it to do so.
Re:As a matter of curiousity... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be pedantic but some of those 'good ol boys' probably went to Harvard as well, and so aren't inclined to embroil their Alma Mater in legal battles when there are so many other available targets.
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That they won't go after Harvard implies a lot. 1. They know Harvard will fight, and will win the fight 2. Why will Harvard win? Through sheer prowess of their legal expertise? No. Because Harvard has an angle, and unfair advantage like being owed a l
Just a motion (Score:2)
A little oversimplified... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, we all know this is true from a technical perspective. However, the RIAA is not as dumb as to ignore it. From the depositions in the Lindor case (posted earlier by NewYorkCountryLawyer) they are also relying on the fact that Kazaa (and workalikes) apparently include the local IP in the protocol. So if I'm behind my router, and my IP is 192.168.1.1, but my router's IP is 123.45.6.78, then the RIAA will see BOTH addresses and know whether there's some NATting going on with a pretty high degree of certainty. However, if Kazaa reports the local IP as 123.45.6.78 as well, then it's highly unlikely any more than a single computer is behind that IP.
Reading the report, the "expert" here appears to be completely ignorant of this fact.
Also, some of this is really atrocious. Early in the report it cites an example of someone downloading child pornography sitting in a car by "hacking" a wi-fi network. Only at the end of the report does it admit that the network was unsecured. If you connect to 'linksys' are you "hacking" that network? Would you use that term No. No "hacking" (in any reasonable sense) is going on.
Is the "expert" a native English speaker? "Botnet, Trojan, and Back Door are example of malicious codes..." Aside from the grammatical atrocities, I have never heard of my fellow software engineers referring to software programs as "codes." A back-door is not a "code" or a program, nor are botnets. Bots are, Trojan (Horses) are, and they can open back doors. Precision, please?
Do look at the expert's biography page [f0rb1dd3n.com] on the site shilling his book. Plenty of asserted qualifications and certifications, although I don't see any formal degrees listed anywhere. It also asserts that "One final note Jayson was chosen as one of Time's persons of the year for 2006." (hint: so were you). The grammar in the bio is even worse than in the expert brief. Do a search for his name and you'll find precious little at all.
I'm not saying that the RIAA is doing due diligence; the Lindor briefs leave a lot in question (although less than most slashdotters would like). However, fighting back with equally specious and unresearched information doesn't seem to be a much better strategy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A little oversimplified... (Score:5, Informative)
One thing, though, he could have mentioned - various IP spoofing methods. Imagine you are on a DHCP network (on campus, for example.) You ask for an IP and you will get it, and this will be logged: "00:f0:3e:45:33:66, authorized as belonging to John Doe, asked for an IP and got 10.0.15.213 for 6 hours". Nice. However what if you want to misrepresent yourself? An enterprising student can use ping and arp (if not some better tools) to find out what IP and MAC addresses are online, and once some of those computers go to class (or to sleep, for example,) take over the MAC address and ask for a new DHCP lease ... done, and you have a new shiny IP address, perfectly logged as belonging to John Doe whereas you are someone else entirely.
This would clearly demonstrate that the DHCP has no authentication beyond the MAC address, and that can be easily changed [nthelp.com] on many cards. Any judge, however technically illiterate, can understand that if you can get any identity by just asking then it's pointless to hold the identity owner responsible.
This text, as seen here [windowsecurity.com], would be relevant in the expert's refutation:
Unfortunately it's the very simplicity of DHCP that's actually the problem as far as security goes. No authentication or authorization takes place during an exchange between a DHCP server and DCHP client, so the server has no way of knowing if the client requesting the address is a legitimate client on the network, and the client has no way of knowing if the server that assigned the address is a legitimate DHCP server. The possibility of rogue clients and servers on your network can create all kinds of problems.
Re:A little oversimplified... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the same brief I did? Because your quotes don't match with what is in the PDF file.
Here's what I see in the PDF: "An example of the dangers of open networks is the case of Walter Nowakoski. Nowakoski connected to unsecured home networks and used the bandwidth via unencrypted wireless networks to download child pornography. This is an example of criminals using networks of others to commit crimes so that the innocent are victims twice - once for the theft of their own network resource and then when they are wrongly accused for the illegal activity."
Not to be picky, but if you're going to comment on the man's grammar, at least have the courtesy to quote him correctly. He conjugates the verb correctly, saying "... are examples of malicious codes..."
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"Exhibit 6: Sci-Tech November 23, 2003 article from CTA News Staff reporting a driver of a motor vehicle engaged in internet child pornography utilizing a laptop computer and Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) card to crack into a computer in a nearby home."
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Re:A little oversimplified... (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, now tell me how hard it is to hack a WEP-enabled wireless network? It takes all of what, 90 seconds?
why hasn't a judge censured the RIAA for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
The law is not really in the RIAA's favor here.
The RIAA has shown a history of fradulent law suits.
Why aren't people countersuing for malicious prosecution?
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When I lived at home with my parents, at its peak there were 6 licensed drivers, and 3 cars. My parents borrowed eachothers cars regularly, and us 'kids' borrowed their cars all the time too. While WE could probably deduce who
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Red light cameras increase the accident rate as often as they decrease it. Also, the real dangerous drivers that actually run the middle of the red light and T-bone innocent drivers, aren't paying attention. Before red light
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Re:Lawyers and technology don't mix well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Where did you get the idea all universities have tons of IPs? Some do, some don't. Also, a class B might seem like a lot, but if you've got 50,000 students, 20,000 departmental computers and servers, and you dole the IPs out in subnets to different departments (so they aren't 100% utilized) you start feeling the crunch more than you might think. Where I work we've got two class Bs (as we were in on the Internet game fairly early) and network operations has already begun working on renumbering the network to try and reclaim unused IPs. We haven't had to implement NAT on any campus level (though there are tons of little ones that random people run) but it is not something out of the question. Take a larger university with less IP space, you'd have little choice.
2) NAT has other uses such as cloaking the activities of individual computers. You'll see places use NAT just for that, they don't want individual activity being traced based on IP. So they get a many-to-many NAT set up. You have say a couple hundred routable IPs with a couple thousand non-routable IPs behind them. The router picks out which public IP you get randomly, or round-robin, or whatever. Thus it ends up being impossible to figure out what is happening.
3) Who says the university runs the NAT? You telling me you don't think students stick routers in their dorms? You telling me that you don't think they do that, and turn on unsecured WiFi (especially since many universities have extremely poor or non existent WiFi)? I know for a fact they do, because we always have problems with this on our campus.