Monday, October 18, 2010

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update

Movie Rental Outfit Hacked, Emails Leaked, Redirected to The Pirate Bay

Posted: 18 Oct 2010 01:17 AM PDT

ACAPOR, a Portuguese organization which represents the interests of local movie rental companies, has been defaced by Anonymous as part of Operation Payback. The ACAPOR website currently shows a message from Anonymous and then redirects to The Pirate Bay. To make the shaming complete, a 640 MB email database of the outfit was leaked and posted to The Pirate Bay.

When the Portuguese movie rental outfit ACAPOR declared war on The Pirate Bay a few weeks ago, it was perhaps inevitable that it would have to deal with the wrath of Operation Payback. ACAPOR wanted to ensure that Portuguese citizens can't access The Pirate Bay, and filed a complaint against the site.

The movie rental association claimed that The Pirate Bay is directly responsible for about 15 million illegal downloads in Portugal every year. By installing a Pirate Bay block at all ISPs, ACAPOR hopes to decrease the financial damage they claim it causes.

Aside from the complaint against The Pirate Bay, ACAPOR had also announced a separate case against Piratatuga.net, a site that links to various movie, game and music titles hosted on third party sites. With approximately 50,000 Portugese visitors a day this site is as popular in Portugal as The Pirate Bay, ACAPOR claimed.

In recent weeks dozens of outfits involved in anti-piracy efforts have been targeted by Anonymous, especially those who have targeted The Pirate Bay. Most victims suffer a few days of downtime because of a DDoS attack, but for ACAPOR the damage is much worse.

Just a few hours ago the outfit’s website was defaced, presenting the following message from Operation Payback. To make things even worse the website then redirects to The Pirate Bay after a few seconds.

And the trouble for ACAPOR doesn’t stop there.

In addition to defacing the website, the ‘hackers’ also managed to grab a copy of the email database of ACAPOR. Little is known about the content of the emails at the moment, but previous leaks from MediaDefender and ACS:Law have shone an interesting light on their operations.

Portuguese speaking TorrentFreak readers who have more information on the contents of the leaked email database are encouraged to get in touch. To be continued.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Major Torrent Sites Go Down After Attack on Hosting Provider

Posted: 17 Oct 2010 01:03 PM PDT

A massive attack on the hosting provider Reality Check Network took down several major BitTorrent sites today. The attack corrupted many servers on the network and at the time of writing TorrentReactor, Vertor and several other torrent sites remain inaccessible. Due to the prolonged downtime, millions of users are having to seek refuge at other torrent sites.

A few hours ago, Locke from TorrentFunk sent TorrentFreak some information regarding a massive attack on hosting provider Reality Check Networks that affected several major torrent sites, his one included. Although BitTorrent sites go down all the time for various reasons, the massive blackout witnessed today is quite exceptional.

Torrents.net, Vertor.com, Yourbittorrent.com, Torrentfunk.com, Torrenthound.com, Torrentreactor.net, Torrentzap.com, Torrentmatrix.com and Fulldls.com are just 9 sites that are affected by the attack, but it is likely that there are dozens more. The number of visitors for the above mentioned sites ranges from tens of thousands to more than a million a day.

According to Reality Check Network the attack took place early Saturday morning. An intruder managed to corrupt the Master Boot Records of several servers the company said, but backups are in place and are expected to be installed as soon as possible.

“We are writing this letter to inform you that a very targeted malicious attack took place on our network this morning at 6AM EST. As a result, most of our server operating systems have been corrupted resulting in the current downtime,” the company wrote to the affected customers a few hours ago.

“We have access to all backups and have already figured out a strategy for bringing your servers back up, and have all hands on deck working to restore service,” Reality Check Network President Moisey Uretsky added.

Initially it was unclear who had carried out the attack. Since Reality Check Network hosts quite a few high profile torrent sites, some site owners suspected that it might have been an anti-piracy action, but this was just a hunch.

During the last hours Reality Check Network has frequently updated its customers, and according to one of the latest emails the attack is being blamed on a disgruntled ex-employee.

“It was the result of an ex-employee who was with us for three years as a result he had intimate knowledge of our systems which is why the effects are so large,” Uretsky wrote.

Regular visitors of the affected torrent sites will probably have to seek refuge at alternative sites as it may take a few more hours before the sites reappear.

Article from: TorrentFreak.
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