£40m software piracy ring smashed in Italy
Posted by Daniel Fleshbourne on 05 November 2002 - 16:58 · 2 comments & 385 views
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Full name: Daniel Fleshbourne
Forum name: Daniel
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#1 Posted by pringlex on 05 Nov 2002 - 17:47
- tehehehehe they said fingered
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#2 Posted by corrosive23 on 05 Nov 2002 - 17:58
- i hate the BSA. We have a disgruntled former employee that calls them every couple of months and says we have pirated software. So we have to round up all our liscenses and make sure everything is in PERFECT order or they fine the fuck out of us.
One person has been charged and a further 10 suspects fingered as the Italian finance police (Guardia di Finanza) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA) seized 100,000 software titles ready to be copied onto CDs and DVDs.
The haul also included thousands of other illegally produced media including the latest film releases and video games. Four thousand images of explicit pornography - including child porn - were also seized as well as information that could lead to the duplication of satellite TV smart cards.
The network sold counterfeit software over the Internet using three illegal Web sites. It also sold products using anonymous emails which sometimes used encrypted messages with passwords to reach customers. The Internet piracy ring had an estimated turnover of more than £38.5m.
The BSA welcomed the crackdown claiming it is part of an active investigation into software piracy in Europe. Last month more than 20 people were arrested after police and Trading Standards officers launched a series of dawn raids in the UK in an orchestrated crackdown on software pirates.
Codenamed "Operation Andrew", officials seized more than 8,500 pirate master CDs and copying equipment worth £500,000
In most situations, the attacker would already need to be on a computer connected to the network to execute an attack. However, if the router has a 'remote management' feature enabled, a malicious hacker could execute an attack from anywhere on the Internet by entering the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the router along with the name of the script into his or her Web browser.
"An attacker could just scan a (network) subnet for IP addresses belonging to Linksys routers. Once they identified the targeted routers, they could bring them down just using their Web browser," said Sunil James, a senior security engineer at iDefense, which is in Chantilly, Virginia.
The vulnerability affects BEFSR41 routers using a version of the router firmware earlier than version 1.42.7.
Other Linksys models including the BEFSR11 and BEFSRU31 routers may also be affected by the vulnerability, according to James. Those models use the same embedded Web server and firmware software as the BEFSR41, James said.
IDefense has not tested the vulnerability on the BEFSR11 or BEFSRU31 router hardware, James said. Aside from losing Internet connectivity, however, James said that iDefense does not believe the vulnerability would allow attackers to place or execute malicious code on an affected network. Following an attack, users would need to reset the router by pressing a reset button on the back of the device to restore it, according to iDefense.
To guard against this vulnerability, iDefense recommends upgrading the router firmware to version 1.42.7 or later (http://www.linksys.com/download/firmware.asp). That and subsequent firmware versions appear to eliminate the vulnerability, though Linksys makes no mention of the vulnerability in the release notes that accompany the updated firmware, according to James.
Users are also asked to verify that the router's remote management feature is not enabled.
Denial of service (DOS) attacks are usually associated with coordinated efforts by one or more hackers against high-visibility corporate Web sites such as eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. However, the growing popularity of broadband Internet connections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia have made small office and home-based computer networks -- and attacks that target those networks -- common.
A study in 2001 by researchers from the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputer Center found that a significant percentage of more than 12,000 DOS attacks the group studied were against home users with broadband Internet connections. Researchers theorized that personal vendettas may have been the motivation for many of those attacks.