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copyright

Three Strikes, One Awesome

June 15, 2010 8:10:24.781

France enacted a "three strikes" law for digital copyright violations, so one of the ISPs there started offering a service (2 euros a month) to sit on user PCs (Windows only) and monitor for p2p activity. That's when the stupid started to pile up. The application periodically pings a server for updates - people looking into it found out that it's a Java servlet listening. However:

Nothing too out of the ordinary there except that all information is not only being transmitted in the clear but all information on that server is public (via http://195.146.235.67/status), meaning that every user had their IP addresses exposed to the public. But it doesn’t stop there.

It gets worse - hackers can apparently use the client apps to inject malware onto end user systems. This is what happens when you decide to solve a "problem" (p2p copyright violations) with complex "solutions".

That server doesn't seem to be accessible anymore, but go ahead and read the story - it's just too funny in a pathetic kind of way.

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posted by James Robertson

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