, SecurityFocus 2004-03-18
A pair of coders nurturing a deep antipathy for software pirates set off a controversy Thursday when they went public with a months-old experiment to trick file sharers into running a Trojan horse program that chastises users and reports back to a central server.
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Good for them
2004-03-19
nosebreaker.com (1 replies)
nosebreaker.com (1 replies)
Good for them? - Questionable Ethics
2004-03-20
Anonymous (4 replies)
Anonymous (4 replies)
Questionable Ethics? it's everywhere
2004-03-20
Anonymous (1 replies)
Anonymous (1 replies)
You all might think it's all fun and games..............
2004-03-20
neb (3 replies)
neb (3 replies)
You all might think it's all fun and games..............
2004-03-21
Anonymous (1 replies)
Anonymous (1 replies)
Don't blame real virus coders cause if you have real copies of Windows then you are fully patched!
2004-03-21
Geist (4 replies)
Geist (4 replies)
blame real virus coders cause if you have real copies of Windows then you are still not fully patched!
2004-03-21
Anonymous
Anonymous
Don't blame real virus coders cause if you have real copies of Windows then you are fully patched!
2004-03-22
Anonymous
Anonymous
We like to call that "Entrapment" in the legal world
2004-03-22
Reuben (4 replies)
Reuben (4 replies)

Indeed two wrongs dont make a right, and in this case there could very well be innocent people being posted on that site without being able to defend themselves..
I didn't read anything about how the website tracks people who have been tricked into downloading and executing the software under a different name or description, but I am going to go and read up about it a little more. If someone can obtain and reverse engineer the software to attack the creators site, then the sky really is the limit on how much they can retaliate. Changing details is something people have been doing since day one where file sharing is concearned.
Just as a very poor example lets say you go looking for something like Telnet.exe because you want a telnet client, and you are looking for a freeware one. If you find a match saying "Telnet.exe Desc:Free telnet client" and you download and execute this which in turn reports you as being a software pirate.. Your going to feel MORE than a little violated.
Of course, as I said, I'm sure they have already thought of this as it still happens and has happened since the birth of file sharing.
PS: I don't use file sharing software, and this is a perfect example of why. The 'cure' now seems to be as bad as the disease. To me this is another nail in the PTPFS coffin...
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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/8279/25426#25426