This teenager hacked into the outfit charged with protecting companies like Sony, Universal, and Activision from online piracy—the most daring exploit yet in the escalating war between fans and corporate giants. Guess which side is winning.
The first time Ethan broke into MediaDefender, he had no idea what he had found. It was his Christmas break, and the high schooler was hunkered down in the basement office of his family's suburban home. The place was, as usual, a mess. Papers and electrical cords covered the floor and crowded the desk near his father's Macs and his own five-year-old Hewlett-Packard desktop. While his family slept, Ethan would take over the office, and soon enough he'd start taking over the computer networks of companies around the world. Exploiting a weakness in MediaDefender's firewall, he started poking around on the company's servers. He found folder after folder labeled with the names of some of the largest media companies on the planet: News Corp., Time Warner, Universal.
The first time Ethan broke into MediaDefender, he had no idea what he had found. It was his Christmas break, and the high schooler was hunkered down in the basement office of his family's suburban home. The place was, as usual, a mess. Papers and electrical cords covered the floor and crowded the desk near his father's Macs and his own five-year-old Hewlett-Packard desktop. While his family slept, Ethan would take over the office, and soon enough he'd start taking over the computer networks of companies around the world. Exploiting a weakness in MediaDefender's firewall, he started poking around on the company's servers. He found folder after folder labeled with the names of some of the largest media companies on the planet: News Corp., Time Warner, Universal.
Since 2000, MediaDefender has served as the online guard dog of the entertainment world, protecting it against internet piracy. When Transformers was about to hit theaters in summer 2007, Paramount turned to the company to stop the film's spread online. Island Records counted on MediaDefender to protect Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album, as did NBC with 30 Rock. Activision asked MediaDefender to safeguard games like Guitar Hero; Sony, its music and films; and World Wrestling Entertainment, its pay-per-view steel-cage championships and pudding-wrestling matches.
MediaDefender's main stalking grounds are the destinations that help people find and download movies and music for free. Sites such as the Pirate Bay and networks like Lime Wire rely on peer-to-peer, or P2P, software, which allows users to connect with one another and easily share files. (See what movies, television shows, and music are most downloaded.) MediaDefender monitors this traffic and employs a handful of tricks to sabotage it, including planting booby-trapped versions of songs and films to frustrate downloaders. When the company's tactics work, someone trying to download a pirated copy of Spider-Man 3 might find the process interminable, or someone grabbing Knocked Up might discover it's nothing but static. Other MediaDefender programs interfere with the process pirates use to upload authentic copies. When Ethan hacked into the company, at the end of 2006, MediaDefender was finishing an exceptional year: Its revenue had more than doubled, to $15.8 million, and profit margins were hovering at about 50 percent.
Ethan and I had first started talking over an untraceable prepaid phone that he carried with him. He eventually agrees to speak in person, as long as I protect his identity. (Ethan is a pseudonym.) We meet after school, in a bookstore that he says is near his house. He hands me a flash drive containing documents that I was later able to independently verify as internal, unpublished information belonging to MediaDefender. He also pulls out a well-creased sheet of paper bearing my name, the first five digits of my Social Security number, a few pictures of me, and addresses going back 10 years. "I had to check," he says. Then he asks me about another Roth he has been researching; it turns out to be my brother. "I was just starting to dig in to him," he says. "There's a lot there." Ethan is a handsome kid, with broad shoulders and a preppy style, and is unfailingly polite, cleaning up the table after I buy him a coffee and patiently walking me through the intricate details of Microsoft security procedures.
News source: Portfolio
View: Full Story @ Portfolio
looks to be a good read!
The linked-to article does contain the "F" word (and "S"), for what it is worth.
Last edited by markjensen on 16 Jan 2008 - 22:18
The linked-to article does contain the "F" word (and "S"
+1 have to agree brilliant article
They're just words that have no meaning unless you give them meaning.
Except when it's the only justice you can get.
**** the RIAA. Down with DRM.
Backup their primary servers offsite? Impressive!
overall i disagree with you. cause with people like RIAA/MPAA etc you gotta do anything you can to screw them cause they would do the same to you
p.s. nice article by the way as i read the entire thing
Last edited by ThaCrip on 17 Jan 2008 - 03:21
Last edited by markjensen on 17 Jan 2008 - 04:10
Greed is not an intrinsic right any more than mob justice and in this world run by the former, the latter is often the only means of defense.
True, the hacker group is comprised of narrowminded children who like to create trouble but children do stupid things.
Last edited by ANova on 18 Jan 2008 - 04:24
Next time see if you don't change the topic title, maybe will be more easy to find.
if they lowered their prices instead they woudl actually sell more stuff..
I read this proverb in a novel by the late Robert Anson Heinlein, a science-fiction and fnatasy author who (like the late Dr. Isaac Asimov and the late L. Ron Hubbard, who were compatriots of his) were also scientists and inventors of no small repute (as much as people want to hate L. Ron Hubbard for helping create Scientology, if you look at Scientology *objectively*, as in compared to other religions, what's the beef?).
Like Asimov (and Hubbard), all too many of Heinlein's aphorisms (especially those from "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"
I read this proverb in a novel by the late Robert Anson Heinlein, a science-fiction and fnatasy author who (like the late Dr. Isaac Asimov and the late L. Ron Hubbard, who were compatriots of his) were also scientists and inventors of no small repute (as much as people want to hate L. Ron Hubbard for helping create Scientology, if you look at Scientology *objectively*, as in compared to other religions, what's the beef?).
Like Asimov (and Hubbard), all too many of Heinlein's aphorisms (especially those from "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"
theres no place for religion in the computing world..
can we get a simplified version
Raises some interesting points, and I look forward to see how the file-sharing industry develops in the future.
Hopefully music and film labels can find a way to harness the potential in it - possibly through advertising
doesnt matter where he did it from, he could have bounced off a whole bunch of computers and bots.. there are certainly ways of hiding your origins in the world of hacking
Hopefully the bull-headed, blinkered views of the RIAA & co. will eventually change, for their good as much as anyone else's. They're just driving themselves into the ground as hard as they can.
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