phun.org

[Pasko]

Something strange is happening, because also one of the most important italian forum about porn (superzeta) has been hacked... I can see the hand of Vatican behind this attacks!

[alexora]

Originally Posted by Pasko

Something strange is happening, because also one of the most important italian forum about porn (superzeta) has been hacked... I can see the hand of Vatican behind this attacks!

I always found superzeta wierd because it forbids members to post links to files uploaded to hosting services (rapid mega etc.), and only allowes streaming content from tube like sites: the exact opposite of PS.

[Pasko]

Originally Posted by alexora

I always found superzeta wierd because it forbids members to post links to files uploaded to hosting services (rapid mega etc.), and only allowes streaming content from tube like sites: the exact opposite of PS.

The weird thing is that on superzeta I talk italian and everyboby misunderstandd me, here at PS I talk english and nobody misunderstand me. Anyway it's a great forum, with people with a deep knowledge of european and american porn, and they can make you laugh at anytime...

[wolfgang5150]

From an hosting review site

Ex-employee brings down several Bittorrent trackers
Updated Flicks the switch on way out
By Lawrence Latif
Mon Oct 18 2010, 14:14

A DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEE has done what the big media mafiaa have failed to do by shuttering several Bittorrent tracker websites.

While the various music recording label and Hollywood movie representatives have spent millions on hiring lawyers and lobbying politicians to take down what they call "the pirates", the actions of a former employee at the web host Reality Check Network have seemingly done far more damage. The outfit hosts numerous Bittorrent tracker websites on its servers and at 11AM BST it suffered what it called a "malicious attack" on its network.

Later the firm said that it wasn't a "network based" attack but rather an old school instance of sabotage by corrupting the master boot records (MBR) of servers, conducted by a ex-employee who had "intimate knowledge" of the network and systems.

Essentially the MBR holds information about where the operating system resides and is read after the system completes BIOS execution at start-up. A corrupted MBR typically doesn't result in a loss of data, however repairing it is a fiddly and time consuming task.

At press time, Reality Check Network's website is still down.

The attack goes to illustrate, once again, the while the Bittorrent protocol might be decentralised, the job of serving up torrent pointers is still very much a centralised operation. While outfits like The Pirate Bay can afford to have redundancy in place, even it has been forced offline, albeit for minutes, from attacks by 'anti-piracy' groups. Smaller torrent trackers such as those hosted on the Reality Check Network are often much smaller operations without the contingency in place to withstand attacks.

Who knows, maybe the big media mafiaa will extend an offer of employment to this disgruntled ex-employee. After all the chap managed to succeed where it has failed miserably, though only because he was an insider.

UPDATE

A follow-up to this article has been published in which the ex-employee mentioned in this article has been absolved of any blame regarding the hacking of servers on the Reality Check Network.

Follow-up article.

Web host absolves ex-employee of hacking blame
Calls the men in black to have a look
By Lawrence Latif
Tue Oct 19 2010, 12:30

THE WEB HOST at the centre of yesterday's Bittorrent tracker website outages has confirmed that it was not conducted by an ex-employee.

As The INQUIRER reported, the downtime of Reality Check Network's (RCN) servers due to corruption of the master boot records (MBR) had resulted in the shuttering of numerous Bittorrent tracker websites. It led to RCN's CEO, Moisey Uretsky, pointing the finger of blame towards an ex-employee who had worked at the firm for three years and had "intimate knowledge" of the internal setup.

Since the report, The INQUIRER has been approached by the ex-employee, who wishes to withhold his name, with evidence that not only did he leave RCN under amicable circumstances with a reference from Uretsky that describes him as "courteous, timely and eager", but that he had nothing to do with the recent outage at RCN.

Not surprisingly, the network engineer who had initially joined RCN as part of a university placement scheme and worked on the firm's network management and storage setup was not happy that Uretsky publicly implied that he was responsible for the hack and wishes Uretsky to absolve him of any implied blame.

Uretsky has confirmed to The INQUIRER that the downtime was not due to an ex-employee as he initially stated and that he has been "assured" by the ex-employee that he was not to blame. Uretsky says that he has filed a report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and will be "relying on them to conduct an investigation".

The notion that the FBI might be investigating and leafing through log files is likely to send shivers down the spine of those Bittorrent tracker websites that carried torrent files which might be viewed as 'questionable' content by the authorities.

The INQUIRER has been forwarded another email in which RCN is advising its customers that another hosting firm, ISPrime, will be taking over those servers that had been hacked. In the email sent out to all customers, Uretsky explains this move was due to "the level of damage that was sustained to both customer servers and infrastructure machines" and that the backup and restoration procedure was "taking too long".

Uretsky advises those customers affected to contact the new hosting firm to arrange contracts. He has since confirmed to The INQUIRER that RCN is working to recover data and setup on "alternative hosts".

At press time RCN's website is still showing a temporary notice page.

I don't think anyone really knows whats really going on. But one thing is for certain - Reality Check is FUUUCKED, thats right with three u's!!!

[rogmax]

just a quick note that pun is back online again as of this mornig

[LouisZ]

Guess we can expect more of these downtimes now that the copyright holders know how easy (and cheap) it can be to get some technicians do some "naughty" things to the infrastructure.