Elbows Music Blog Community

Yesterday two new targets hit the radars of ‘Anonymous’, the faceless and powerful hordes who carry out 4chan attacks. The beauty is that anyone can join in the action, 4chan ‘membership’ is not even required. People wishing to participate can simply load up their Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) and enter the IP address they want to attack. The resulting assaults are massively distributed making defending against them almost impossible.

Yesterday’s target one was everyone’s favorite Indian anti-piracy company, AiPlex Software. A completely unknown entity until a couple of weeks ago when they stupidly admitted to DDoSing uncooperative torrent sites (then unsuccessfully trying to backtrack), it seems their rise to fame came at a price.

Following claims that AiPlex had DDoS’d The Pirate Bay, a few hours ago their website was taken down and remains that way at the time of writing. Along with the downtime came this message (pic):

How fast you are in such a short time! Aiplex, the bastard hired gun that DDoS’d TPB (The Pirate Bay), is already down! Rejoice, /b/rothers, even if it was at the hands of a single anon that it was done, even if ahead of schedule. now we have our lasers primed, but what do we target now?

We target the bastard group that has thus far led this charge against our websites, like The Pirate Bay. We target MPAA.ORG! The IP is designated at “216.20.162.10″, and our firing time remains THE SAME. All details are just as before, but we have reaimed our crosshairs on this much larger target. We have the manpower, we have the botnets, it’s time we do to them what they keep doing to us.

REPEAT: AIPLEX IS ALREADY DOWN THANKS TO A SINGLE ANON. WE ARE MIGRATING TARGETS.

While it’s claimed that AiPlex was taken down by a single attacker, the ongoing assault on the MPAA.org website is definitely a group effort. The site was attacked on schedule (9pm eastern time yesterday) and taken down in minutes. It remains down at the time of writing.

Update: After 18 hours the MPAA moved its site to a new IP-address, which means it’s up again. More news coming up tomorrow.

Update: Is the RIAA next?

http://torrentfreak.com/4chan-ddos-takes-down-mpaa-and-anti-piracy-websites-100918/

RIAA pres Cary Sherman says the failed sue-em-all campaign was really a success because it was “constantly generating dinner conversations about what you may or may not do with your computer.” He also doubts that legal music stores will ever have the selection of music that P2P offers because of the complexity in trying to get permission from various copyright holders, and types of copyright holders, each of which have their own set of rights.

RIAA pres Cary Sherman still seems to be under the illusion that suing music fans for tens of thousands of dollars, or in most cases, offering to settle of court for several thousand dollars, regardless of innocence, was a good idea. After it decided to drop the practice back in December of 2008 in favor of ISP-level cooperation, he pointed to the growth of digital music sales as proof that the strategy was a success.

After coordinating DDoS attacks against the MPAA, RIAA and anti-piracy company AiPlex Software this week, 4chan turned to a new target.

Anti-piracy lawyers ACS:Law, who send out tens of thousands of letters demanding cash-settlements from often innocent Internet subscribers, became the new target. The company, which is headed up by lone principal Andrew Crossley, is widely hated among file-sharers and innocents alike and with 4chan’s Operation Payback now in full swing, payback is the operative word.

After prank telephone calling Crossley in the middle of the night during the week, it now seems that 4chan are aiming to tear his professional life apart, as they have obtained and are distributing a 350mb of the company’s website which includes countless company emails.

So how were they obtained?

“Their site came back online [after the DDoS attack] – and on their frontpage was accidentally a backup file of the whole website (default directory listing, their site was empty), including emails and passwords,” a leader of the attacking group told TorrentFreak. “The email contains billing passwords and some information that ACS:Law is having financial problems.”

Financial problems? Interesting. Many tens of thousands of people who received letters from ACS:Law are also experiencing the same problem, having already paid up several hundred pounds each to make non-existent lawsuits go away.

“We’re still sorting through it. There’s a lot of stuff here to go through. But, basically, we were told we were less important than a 10 minute late train, or a queue for coffee by Andrew,” the attackers’ spokesman told us, adding:

“Payback is a bitch, isn’t it Andrew?”

The file is currently seeding on The Pirate Bay but most leechers are stuck with less than 60%. It is, however, available publicly on the web already. We have managed to secure one of those copies and are examining it now.

A little taster from emails read so far:

– ACS:Law and USCG (of Hurt Locker fame) appear to be cooperating

– Crossley boasts that his retained lawyer “literally wrote the SRA rules!”

– Crossley accuses Which? of ‘defamation’ and articles designed to “demean” and “denigrate”

– Crossley gives veiled warnings to Which? that he could sue them for libel

– Internal documents reveal intentions to take down Slyck.com

– Email from ACS:Law client which states the following: