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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 11:33   #1
t3k
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Anonymous

Hi, something a lot of you will already have seen, but I found this quite interesting....

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/10/0...acmillan-case/

MoS getting wtfpwned is pretty lol, but BT made the right move here - especially after their last cock-up.
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 12:17   #2
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Re: Anonymous

http://www.reputationmanagementfor.c...ng-the-acslaw/

(related article)
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 14:02   #3
Paisley
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Re: Anonymous

Interesting read ... question is though can p2p / fileshring be traced if a VPN (virtual private network) is used?
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 14:30   #4
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Re: Anonymous

I don't know enough about VPN's to comment on that - surely if you set up VPN's though, as soon as you take down the VPN the transfer activity would be wiped?
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 14:35   #5
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Re: Anonymous

I'm not clued up on it myself but I use a VPN to download movies via bit torrents / p2p and the VPN just seem to totally bypass my isp's (t-mobile) bandwidths restrictions / throttling.

Certainly a question to the techies if your isp logs / keeps a record of file transfers whilst connected to a VPN
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 16:27   #6
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Re: Anonymous

All a VPN does is create a secure, encrypted tunnel between you and a server (or, taking it a step further, between two points on an interconnected network - firewall to firewall for example).

Whilst the traffic within that tunnel is secure and can't be viewed by the ISP or third parties, the bandwidth taken up by that connection is still able to be monitored.

Think of it this way...

You spend all day watching movies on youtube and surfing the internets. You grab your email with some attachments. You download some MP3's and you grab a couple of movies. Might break down on a traffic report as 400mb for HTTP (youtube and site surfing), 1,000mb under whatever p2p protocol you're using, maybe 20mb for POP3 / IMAP.

The next day, you set up a VPN tunnel to a server, through which you route all your traffic. That day, you do exactly the same. Your ISP sees 1,420mb of x protocol traffic (where x is whichever type of VPN you're using).

The critical point here is that regardless of whether you're using a VPN or not, your connection to the internet still initially hits a port on one of the ISP's switches - which is where they can do the monitoring.

That's not saying they ARE doing the monitoring there, but that's the most sensible place to monitor it.

Simple, short answer is that they can't track what is enclosed in the VPN tunnel. If you're still using the ISP's DNS servers, then they can track the DNS requests for the p2p sharing, then if they're pedantic enough they can track back the server they're originating from to your initial VPN connection request and link it back to you...

So, yes. VPN to wherever. Change your DNS settings to point at OpenDNS or similar - something not affiliated with your ISP. Make sure you route ALL traffic via the VPN. Make sure that you don't get caught at the other end, as that server that you're VPN'ing into is likely monitored too, and once the connection hits that and jumps out to the interwebs, it's not encapsulated anymore, so you're back to square one.
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 16:48   #7
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Re: Anonymous

Aye, cheers for that explanation Skiddy ...
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 17:22   #8
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Re: Anonymous

I've just been reading up on the digital economy (UK) act 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010

I'm no legal eagle but ...
If I am reading inbetween the lines here, the act basically allows the orginal copyright owners to get infomation (namely ISP addresses and even the customer in question name and address etc.) to get a litigation (prosecute) going against customer of the ISP.
If they keep being persistent in downloading the latest movies/music off a bit torrent client.

However how can this be done if there isn't a paper trail* (as skiddy explained it) so to speak.

Also how possible is it to get prosecuted if your wireless inet / wifi gets hijacked and also if you have an unregistered PAYG mobile broadband internet connection (using a VPN in addition) and the IMEI of the device hasnt been used on any other telephone number?

Sounds pretty ****ed up to me :P

thoughts / comments please
edit- fixing typos
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 17:31   #9
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Re: Anonymous

'a lot' is two words (sig).

Skiddy, that was a fairly epic post so thanks for that. No idea how to do any of the shit that you said, but I felt better informed for it regardless.
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 17:39   #10
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Re: Anonymous

Germany (afaik) recently passed a law which makes it illegal to have unencrypted wireless broadcasting from your home / place of business - essentially to get around the whole wireless hijacking thing. This way, you now have to prove that your network was broken into.

Unregistered PAYG will have a paper trail also, as the credit added to the account will be traceable to a top-up card, which is traceable to a point of sale, which is traceable to either a debit / credit card or an in-store security tape showing the person who purchased it.

To go down the "lack of paper trail" for ISP connections / VPN's, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. That single packet of data which is part of the whole download bounces from hop to hop before it reaches you. At numerous points, there is logging / monitoring etc. Once the encrypted tunnel is terminated at its endpoint, the data is no longer encrypted. With a VPN, all you're doing is moving the "traceability" of the packet from your home system to the system you're VPN'ed into.

So, if you VPN to your workplace and start dowloading, Edgar at CTU (Copyright Theft Unit... this time, Jack, this time...) can see that someone at your workplace is downloading shit. Now, they contact the sysadmin at your workplace. If he's half decent at his job, he has logging and a proxy server. He checks this, sees that the traffic went to an internal VLAN assigned to VPN connections. He looks at the logs and sees your account logging in via VPN at that time with that internal IP. You're busted.

On the hosted VPN side, Edgar at CTU contacts the hosting company. He provides them with the IP that the traffic was bound for and the time and date. They check their logs - that IP is registered to your account. You're busted.

The only way you can be safe on this is if the VPN hosting provider is shady / "designed for this" and simply does not keep logs of traffic, along with providing multiple users service via the same IP. That way, the paper trail essentially dies when they get to the hosted provider. Except for that you have a connection log at the ISP showing that you 'dialed out' to that provider with a VPN around that time and x amount of data went through it. Not to mention that the hosting providers upstream connectivity provider is likely going to come down on them like a ton of shit for providing what would likely be a service which breaches their service agreement.

Blah blah etc.

All you can do with this is to make it as hard as possible, as simple economics means that the harder it is to get your data, the less worthwhile it'll be for them to pursue you as opposed to Joe Bloggs down the road who just dialed up and downloaded.


All of this is academic, especially given that there are numerous ways around things and loopholes on both sides of the game.

It's especially academic given that downloading copyrighted material is illegal. Regardless of your views on copyright theft, the simple fact at the end of the day is that you're downloading something for free which is not licensed for free distribution.

So don't do it.
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 17:54   #11
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Re: Anonymous

One additional thing that I've just noticed was mentioned is throttling... Paisley mentioned it?

So... basically throttling a connection is limiting the bandwidth available based on data flow. Most ISP's do this in some form or another in order to give all customers attached to that feed an acceptable level of service. Cable suffers from it the most, as cables architecture spawns something called contention ratio. Your neighborhood = 50 people. All have cable. There's a 5Gb fiber connection to your neighborhood. Thus you each have 100mb. You get more if less people are using it, but you get the idea. You're probably limited to less than that anyway, as neighborhoods generally have more than 50 homes and your contract probably only gives you about 10mb downstream anyway.

DSL is point to point, so you don't get contention ratios.

What most ISP's do is implement a mechanism called traffic shaping. This is where they throttle data based on protocol. VOIP and HTTP are usually given decent priorities, as VOIP needs it and HTTP gives faster browsing. SMTP / POP / IMAP is usually low on the list as simply speaking you're unlikely to notice if your email arrives one minute later. Filesharing is usually done dynamically, based on how much filesharing data is moving around. As there's a bunch of different filesharing protocols, they usually just group them into a generic filesharing rule. It's great, because it means that Johnny can't eat up all the bandwidth on the feed to your neighborhood / termination point with his porno. It sucks because you'll have to wait longer for your new torrented Ubuntu release.

Traffic Shaping / Quality of Service / Throttling etc aren't malicious in intent - they're just implemented to give a fair level of service to all users. They are generally biased towards filesharing though, as if we're all honest, there are few users who legitimately use bittorrent for Linux distro's as opposed to the latest Hollywood flick. So ISP's scale down the bandwidth allowed for filesharing protocols.

Some ISP's do this based on previous usage / monthly data caps / time of day also.
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 18:16   #12
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Re: Anonymous

**** me
Your Tech to English translations have been epic ... Many thanks skiddy

I hear what your saying about it being academic, I would like to see how far the rabbit hole goes

Can I ask a few questions?
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Unread 5 Oct 2010, 23:44   #13
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Re: Anonymous

Go forth and ask
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Unread 6 Oct 2010, 00:16   #14
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Re: Anonymous

what if the VPN provider is outside of the UK and doesn't have any legal
requirement (or otherwise) to divulge infomation?

I notice on the piratebay http://thepiratebay.org/ that they receive legal threats but havent been successfully prosecuted (appeal overturned a previous conviction)

my understanding is they only have the torrents on their servers ie the means/instructions for the p2p users to exchange info and not the actual copyrighted material on their servers. is this accurate?

Seems the seasoned pirates are a step ahead of the media firms do you think this will remain a future trend or do you think this will be clamped down on?
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Unread 6 Oct 2010, 00:38   #15
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Re: Anonymous

Well, if the VPN endpoint (from your perspective) is in another country, then the data protection laws of that country would theoretically cover requests for information from that ISP. If the company pursuing the data doesn't have a legal channel to that VPN provider to get the data, then it's all rosy for the user.

I'm no lawyer though, just a lowly sysadmin.

TPB tended to get away with things due to Sweden's interesting piracy laws. Bittorrent is always going to be a source of friction here though, as the tracker itself (such as TPB) doesn't actually host any copyrighted material. They simply host the torrent file, which has the file details (specifically a reasonably unique number which identifies the actual files you end up downloading).

Once you get the file, the torrent client uses either distributed tracking (think Limewire style) or contacts the tracker server to get a list of users who are sharing this file. After that, it's point to point (well... for simplicities sake it is) to the person who has the file. Hence their legal stance that they're not actually participating in the transfer of copyright material.

Once the torrent is on your client, the client usually lets you see a list of the IP's you're connecting to for that download. Generally, this is where the hunters will start.

For example...

Movie Studio X will contract Bobby to hunt down filesharers.
Bobby will download one of their movie torrents and start the client.
Bobby will make note of the IP's from which he's receiving the files.
Bobby does a 'whois' lookup on the IP to get the ISP that it's assigned to.
Bobby contacts said ISP and demands they give the information based on whatever act applies - sometimes ISP's charge for this info if a court does not demand its release.
Bobby, with info in hand, files a lawsuit against the person on behalf of Movie Studio X
Said person potentially gets ****ed.

Generally at some point Bobby will also contact the site at which he initially got the torrent from and demand that they remove it etc... TPB probably won't. Others do. Depends generally on where there server is hosted - sites in the US will generally take it down pretty sharp.

Torrent data is generally unencrypted also, so ISP's who take proactive approaches to torrent sharing can snoop on the data going back and forth - potentially cutting your connection for breach of service agreement. Some torrent clients allow encryption, but that doesn't hide your IP from the guy at the other end, just the contents of the traffic through the ISP.

If you're on a VPN, then the IP which the Bobby sees is the IP of your VPN server (or whichever IP it routes out of). If it's a legit VPN provider, then that just adds an extra step to the process. If it's not and they don't have logs, then Bobby hits a brick wall on his paper trail.

I think media piracy will be around in one form or another for the lifespan of distributed networks, which is probably greater than the lifespan of many future generations. The media industry is catching up with piracy techniques, but ultimately it'll end up in a circle of one catching up and bettering the other repeat ad infinitum.
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Unread 6 Oct 2010, 21:49   #16
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Re: Anonymous

Quote:
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to skiddy again.
Great posts in this thread skiddy
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Unread 7 Oct 2010, 00:07   #17
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Re: Anonymous

All the above is why I only really download anything when I'm connected to free Wi-Fi hotspots at airports, hotels, customer offices, etc. that don't require a login or acceptance of terms (which creates a paper trail).

If you want to get really sneaky, just change the MAC address of your WiFi client while you're stealing shit, then change it back again when you're done.

If the free Wi-Fi needs a login or acceptance, you could get double-sneaky and run your torrents from a virtual machine, with a complete bullshit MAC address, so once you've grabbed your shit, shut down the VM, both the files and the connection disappears and Robert is the proverbial brother of your father.

I've grown to love VM since I moved to Win7.
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