Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
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Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#2Is there a prediction market going for whether the MPAA is eventually found to be behind this?
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#3Is there a prediction market going for whether the MPAA is eventually found to be behind this?
"When viewed through a hex editor, the executables also contain a racial epithet that’s repeated more than 1,000 times followed by a large, randomly sized block of alphabetical characters."
Seems like it wouldn't be a good look for them if so.
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#4Is there a prediction market going for whether the MPAA is eventually found to be behind this?
"When viewed through a hex editor, the executables also contain a racial epithet that’s repeated more than 1,000 times followed by a large, randomly sized block of alphabetical characters." Seems like it wouldn't be a good look for them if so.
Has the MPAA ever been particularly prone to acting ethically? Throwing in some slurs to throw people off their trail seems very much like something they would do.
The MPAA itself has been accused of copyright infringement on multiple occasions. In 2007, the creator of a blogging platform called Forest Blog accused the MPAA of violating the license for the platform, which required that users link back to the Forest Blog website. The MPAA had used the platform for its own blog, but without linking back to the Forest Blog website. The MPAA subsequently took the blog offline, and explained that the software had been used on a test basis and the blog had never been publicized.[121][122]
Also in 2007, the MPAA released a software toolkit for universities to help identify cases of file sharing on campus. The software used parts of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, released under the General Public License, which stipulates that the source code of any projects using the distribution be made available to third parties. The source code for the MPAA's toolkit, however, was not made available. When the MPAA was made aware of the violation, the software toolkit was removed from their website.[123]
In 2006, the MPAA admitted having made illegal copies of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (a documentary exploring the MPAA itself and the history of its rating system)[124] — an act which Ars Technica explicitly described as hypocrisy[125] and which Roger Ebert called "rich irony".[126]
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#5lmfao. Imagine being good enough to code malware that does this and wasting your efforts on something like this.
Look, if you have skills like these, you're special. Don't fucking waste it on building malware for corporate asshats.
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#6lmfao. Imagine being good enough to code malware that does this and wasting your efforts on something like this. Look, if you have skills like these, you're special. Don't fucking waste it on building malware for corporate asshats.
It doesn't sound like particulary clever malware to me. It sends a filename to some logging service, then opens the windows hosts file and adds some lines to it. And it's only run because the downloader thinks it's some pirated software or keygen.
Not to say there aren't some folks wasting time on more clever malware.
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#7lmfao. Imagine being good enough to code malware that does this and wasting your efforts on something like this. Look, if you have skills like these, you're special. Don't fucking waste it on building malware for corporate asshats.
So if you have these skills or interests, what should you do with them?
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#8lmfao. Imagine being good enough to code malware that does this and wasting your efforts on something like this. Look, if you have skills like these, you're special. Don't fucking waste it on building malware for corporate asshats.
Better that they sell their souls to corporates the usual way.
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#9>Padding it out with racist slurs told me all I needed to know about its creator.
Clearly that is the intent. These companies have no shame. Remember Sony's response to their rootkit being discovered? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
Re: Newly discovered Vigilante malware outs software pirates and blocks them
#10Are people still pirating software? Apart from kids trying out software, people from countries where the product is not officially available or is exhorbitantly priced as compared to their purchasing power, I doubt there is a reason to pirate. Most tools have alternatives available or an easy on the pocket subscription plan (Adobe is an exception, subscription plans should not come with a lock-in, no matter how you justify it).