back to article Anonymous plants pirate flag on MPAA website

Hacktivists planted a pirate flag after defacing an MPAA website, according to security analysts. The attack on copyprotected.com – a Motion Picture Association of America that reports violations of the copy protection controls on DVDs and Blu-ray discs - is the latest in a string of assaults against the entertainment business …

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  1. serviceWithASmile
    Heart

    hehehehe

    go anonymous!

    it's good to see somebody fighting back. it feels like in today's world we roll over and accept too many little injustices too often.

    being treated as a suspected criminal when you buy a dvd, for instance. you STILL can't skip those fscking copyright notices...

    I'm glad someone is sending these guys a message.

    Some may argue that it is immature and not the right way to go about it, but to be honest I'd never imagine the MPAA or RIAA or ACS:Law having such things as morals, or even being mature. Right and wrong don't seem to mean much to those people.

    so I say... stick it to the man :D

    1. Mystic Megabyte
      Linux

      VLC?

      "being treated as a suspected criminal when you buy a dvd, for instance. you STILL can't skip those fscking copyright notices..."

      Try using the VLC media player, 90% of the time it skips straight to the "Play Movie" menu.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pirate

      That reminded me

      "being treated as a suspected criminal when you buy a dvd, for instance. you STILL can't skip those fscking copyright notices..."

      That reminded me of:

      http://www.theblogofrecord.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Pirate-DVD-vs.-Legal-DVD.jpg

    3. Wize

      Copy protection... meh

      "being treated as a suspected criminal when you buy a dvd, for instance. you STILL can't skip those fscking copyright notices..."

      Unless you have the pirate version. Not seen a pirate copy in a long time that makes you watch that warning section.

      Plus the pirate version can be played on your viewer of choice (even your smart phone after a bit of resizing/conversion)

      What is the incentive to have a legal copy?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Anonymous 2 - Paytards 0

    See title

  3. adnim

    Misleading title?

    If I understand the article correctly they didn't do anything to the MPAA website, just made DNS point to another server. Am I correct in this assumption?

    If my login to the registrar of the domains I own was hacked, the A records for my domains could be pointed anywhere. Therefore this is not particularly impressive and the MPAA website was not defaced at all.

    1. The Cube
      Stop

      Erm no

      The login to the domain registrar was not hacked, as it says in the article the attack was DNS cache poisoning. This is an attack where you persuade a bunch of the DNS servers that users machines will goto to look up www.mpaaassholes.com to return the IP of the alternative site instead. In its simplest form this attack consists of sending a lookup response to the servers as if they had asked you for the site IP address.

      Secondly, if they have successfully replaced the page that a user sees when pointing their (no doubt Internet Explorer) browser at www.ourfilmsareshitbutwewantthegovernmenttomakeyoupayusanyway.com then the site has been effectively hacked. It makes no odds whether you have replaced the page on the origin server(s), on the CDN actually serving the pages or by attacking DNS, the end result is that www.weareparasites.com now serves up a page that the MPAA did not create.

      1. adnim

        Erm What?

        At first I thought you were trolling, then I saw the downvotes and realised, Its' more of a misunderstanding.

        I think you need to read my post carefully. Then read your own again. Thank you for confirming what I suspected.

        "The login to the domain registrar was not hacked" ... I did not say it was, I wrote *If my* login to the registrar of the domains *I* own was hacked. The DNS could return any IP address desired.

        (as an analogy to cache poisoning, pointing a domain to any desired address)

        "Secondly, if they have successfully replaced the page that a user sees when pointing their (no doubt Internet Explorer) browser at www.ourfilmsareshitbutwewantthegovernmenttomakeyoupayusanyway.com then the site has been effectively hacked. "

        They haven't physically replaced any pages, they created another one hosted somewhere else that appears to be provided by the MPAA. Now If I had said the server on which this site is hosted was not compromised you would agree?

        The site as in the online presence of ... Yes it was hacked. The site and it's actual pages as is physically hosted NO not hacked.

        All this is semantics. My interpretation of site is the real physical data and the hosting platform.

        Your interpretation is what the user sees.

        We could debate for a long time whether or not DNS cache poisoning is website hacking, I personally don't think it is.

        So I stand by what I originally stated.

        "Anonymous plants pirate flag on MPAA website" is a misleading title because the "hackers" went no where near the MPAA website.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TROLOLOLOL

    They will have to search over 9000 IP blocks before they find the secret server.

  5. lithium
    Alert

    Incorrect information about the attack

    Sean-Paul from PandaLabs here. The attack was not carried out via DNS Cache Poisoning, but rather through SQL Injection attack. I have documented the attack in my blog post: http://bit.ly/azgKeG

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Don't know why someone downvoted that?

      It is an interesting read.

  6. James Woods

    heh

    The real pirates are the mpaa and other corporate interests.

    They are the ones engaging in very questionably and thuggish tactics to collect money and to display force.

    Proudly haven't purchased a CD in about 7 years. WIll continue not to do so.

    I remember having one of those anti-piracy sites contacting one of our uplinks to report someone 'illegally' downloading/distributing a copy of software but when we questioned them as to what information was being used to make the accusation we never heard back from them.

    Gee, they wouldn't be breaking the law to enforce the law now would they? Nah.

  7. bexley

    i wonder how long before...

    ....these guys get caught. only a matter of time with all the lip they are giving it,

    Normally i would condemn website defacing or ddos'ing but given the target's own moral standing i have no sympathy

    it is quite nice to see the big boys getting bullied for a change

    1. Stone Fox
      Happy

      you can't catch anonymous

      Anon numbers thousands, maybe tens of thousands all over the planet. Sure, a few of the less able beginners (newfags as they're called) may get v&, but think of it in Darwinian terms. The bulk of them will be behind "Over 9000" proxies... :D

      Anonymous = final boss of the internet.

      1st rule of the internet = don't annoy 4 chan!

  8. John Tserkezis

    @adnim - Misleading title?

    "Therefore this is not particularly impressive and the MPAA website was not defaced at all."

    If you think you can do better, then shut your trap and just do it.

    Or, if you're in the paytard camp, be happy you're paying double price on your now no longer pirated media. Oh, I'm sorry, did you think that prices would come DOWN once piracy was eliminated?

    1. adnim
      WTF?

      Check my previous forum posts

      for my views on corporate greed if you think I like to be financially abused on behalf of shareholders.

      "If you think you can do better, then shut your trap and just do it."... silence.

      1. Anomalous Cowturd
        Coat

        Go Adnim!

        I think the title says it all...

  9. Paul S. Gazo
    Paris Hilton

    What I don't understand...

    Is why sites like this one even exist. Who is the target audience who'd be visiting copyprotected.com? I mean, it's a site "that reports violations of the copy protection controls on DVDs and Blu-ray discs". Is someone at Universal or Sony or Paramount seriously browsing to this place every day to find out if the DRM has been cracked? Who - in a nutshell - gives a rat's ass enough to visit any site associated with the MPAA or RIAA except to find stuff to laugh at?

    Paris because it's evident why someone might visit her.

  10. heyrick Silver badge

    We should set up a website

    ...to record every bit of stupidity on their end.

    Let's start with:

    1. Sony rootkit. I know it was years ago, but if a minor copyright infraction taints your YouTube profile, it is recorded in perpetuity, therefore - Sony attempted to rootkit us. Never forget it.

    2. Every single DVD that contains different "additional content" in the different regions. We can ignore subtitling as region 1 and region 2 will differ wildly in this; we can probably ignore minor cuts as these might be mandated for a specific rating in the target country. But when a region 2 pack without the extras disc costs the same in pounds as the dollar price of a region 1 disc with extras, there's no other feeling other than "what a swizz".

    3. Every single DVD that FORCES you to sit though minutes and minutes of sh!tty adverts for films you have no interest in before you even make it to the menu, never mind the feature.

    4. Ev ery CD that has a woefully screwed up TOC designed to stop ripping, which incidently makes it unplayable on a rather large number of devices.

    5. Every CD that attempts to autorun.ini *anything*.

    6. Every CD (excepting compilation/rehash discs) where at least a third of the CD is content that can be found on other CDs by the same artist/group. This includes reissues with different covers just so that "true fans" will have to buy the alternative version too.

    7. Anything on any media ever created that puts way too much reliance in AutoTune. Once upon a time people had to know how to actually sing. Now so many things sound a little 'too' perfect. Are we hearing the quality of the performance, or the quality of the post-processing?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      you forgot one

      8. Every Audio CD that isn't produced to the red book standard and doesn't bear the digital audio compact disc logo thingy and is thus not a true Audio CD produced for interoperability but some bastard offspring of the standard containing fun extras like DRM or fingerprinting.

      Not that proprietary redbook is really a good thing. At least it is a published standard without support for *idonotwant* making it a good indicator when buying CDs. If they have the logo the wont have any DRM shit.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MPAA is too powerful.

    Good for Anonymous. Piracy is wrong, but these cartels are even worse. They are a dangerous influence on Government. They had their place a long time ago, but it's over for them. There are new business models now that are better for everyone. Thank you technology. Both the artists making the media and the people that consume it are tired of being ripped off, or having inferior products forced on us. If I can get the highest quality product much quicker and easier from a pirated site (as opposed to from the actual distributors), then the distributors are doing something wrong. I'm no freetard, I buy records, movies, software, etc. Almost all my money (aside from food) goes towards media. I just don't think the MPAA and those like it are any more moral than pirates. I'm sorry if I don't think that some people watching a movie they download is pure evil.

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