p2pnet.net News:- The members of the Not-So-Magnificent-Seven major movie studio consortium generated vast amounts of on- and offline mainstream media ink and bytes when their MPAA launched an attack on BitTorrent, in effect.

It won’t do any good, any more than the Big Music cartel’s RIAA has been able to sue people into buying its ‘product’ - corporate-speak for music.

The first big-name BT site to go down was Suprnova. But almost in the blink of an eye, it was replaced by eXeem and, shades of Kazaa and Grokster, with it comes the loathsome Cydoor.

Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Why eXeem shouldn’t be replacing our bittorrent clients
By Joseph Farthing and Taliban/Eremini - Methlabs

From the early days of peer-to-peer (p2p) networking, most of the interest in the p2p scene was centred around Napster. However, this network had a fatal flaw.

In one of the most famous technology lawsuits of recent times, various recording companies managed to shut Napster down in the courts. Their argument was that the Napster network was centralised – totally dependant upon the central Napster servers to transfer files. Thus, Napster themselves were party to the copyright infringement that occurred on the networks, since if these servers were turned off no copyright infringement could happen.

The next step in peer-to-peer networking, at least the type of network that tried to evade censorship, either politically or through civil means, was to decentralise the network. If the system could exist without a central server, at least in part, then it would be harder for the operators of the network to be sued. This worked, and soon networks like the FastTrack (used by KaZaA) and Gnutella2 were capable of operating without anything more centralised than a list of currently connected users.

This tactic worked, at least from the point of view of network developers. The lawsuits against decentralised networks dried up, and it was ruled that users, not operators were responsible for activity on decentralised networks.

However, Bittorrent is now the most popular peer-to-peer system, purportedly accounting for 35% of Internet traffic. Certainly not all Bittorrent traffic is illegal – a large portion of Bittorrent use is used to transfer large legitimate files such as Linux distributions. However, for those who wished to use Bittorrent to download more “questionable” material the network was just too centralised – the network depends upon a central tracker, as well as a source for downloads.

This means that, just like Napster, Bittorrent sites could be taken down by attacking the source – a series of lawsuits and raids by organisations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), who’s former chairman described people who infringe copyright as “Terrorists”, has targeted a number of Bittorrent sites, such as Lokitorrent and, ostensibly, Suprnova, one of the most popular torrent “link” sites.

However, Suprnova closed only after a number of other Bittorrent sites had closed, and it is in this article that we will examine exactly what the reason for the closure of Suprnova was, and will look into the history and existence of eXeem, the new “Suprnova” application.

The majority of torrent sites that were closed were Bittorrent trackers, hosts of the servers that work like the Napster servers used to and are required for downloads to work. Suprnova, on the other hand, was merely a link site, it didn’t host a tracker itself, and so any legal argument against it would be difficult to use in court. As such, it is unlikely that Suprnova was legally attacked by the MPAA.

So, why was Suprnova closed? The website now advertises eXeem, and eXeem was hyped prior to the closure of Suprnova. Is it not possible that the closure of Suprnova was as much to do with eXeem as the MPAA? Didn’t the developers perhaps wait until a large number of other torrent websites were closed down in order to remove suspicion?

Suprnova was a website populated by many adverts, which were in theory used to pay for the bandwidth costs of the Suprnova website. A website that was as large and popular as Suprnova would have had very high hosting costs, and as such any profit made via the adverts would have been quite small.

However, as a distributed, decentralised application eXeem does not cost the developers much to run at all. Any adverts displayed in this program wouldn’t cost anything to produce, but would generate a constant revenue.

The truth is that, for all its hype, eXeem is a closed source, windows only application that is integrated with Cydoor, the spyware application that is rated as high risk by Microsoft and numerous other anti-spyware products, and described, in the case of one client, by the antivirus firm Kaspersky as a “Trojan Downloader”.

On our test machine (Windows XP Professional) we tried installing the new open beta of eXeem. The installation process asked us if we wanted to install an IE toolbar, which we were able to decline. However, it’s licence agreement asks the user to agree too install third party applications, and includes a clause that the licence agreement can be changed without notice.

Can we really trust the eXeem developers? Who are they anyway? What is clear is that they are not directly connected to Suprnova. The Suprnova founder is more of a PR guy than a developer of the application. Isn’t what this is all about – money? Compared to Suprnova, eXeem has the potential to make a far higher profit margin than a tracker website, and combined with the connection to Suprnova it is possible that many people will try this application, if only to see what all the fuss is about over this Suprnova “replacement”.

We used several major anti-spyware applications, including Microsoft’s new anti-spyware system, on our test system, ensuring it was registered clean prior to the eXeem installation. After the install a number of spyware elements were found (15 in the case of Microsoft’s scanner, although we are not sure how it classifies these elements). The key factor was the Cydoor dlls and adcache, which are rated as a “high threat” by Microsoft, and as critical by other companies.

It is ironic that users who will perhaps turn to a decentralised application for extra security and privacy, are going to find their privacy more challenged by the “solution” than the cause.

We are a part of Methlabs, the group who developed the PeerGuardian application and were responsible for much of the original tracking of BayTSP bots and other anti-piracy scanners have a very important message to say: eXeem is less secure for downloaders!

Bittorrent is centralised, and as such it is easy to close down a tracker. However, eXeem is decentralised, and as such it is easier to find users to sue. As a RIAA scanner, you no longer need to track multiple different websites and trackers, but now simply plug right into the network, just like was done with KaZaA, and we all know what happened to that. KaZaA became overrun with fake files and honeypot downloads used to capture file-sharers, and I predict that unless eXeem is policed in some way the same thing will happen.

Interestingly, the very process that would make eXeem safer for it’s users would make it more dangerous for it’s operators. If the eXeem operators could prove that they had enough control to police the network of fake files, then they could in theory be sued for not blocking copyright infringing works.

Since we have already seen that eXeem is most likely run for personal gain rather than community benefit, it is unlikely that the developers would take any risks.

Let’s go over this again:

Why shouldn’t we use eXeem?

• It contains spyware.
• Not only spyware, but Cydoor, arguably one of the worst spyware producers.

It’s closed source.

• Peer-to-peer communities are, to a large extent, based around the concept of sharing. eXeem has taken a protocol that was shared with the world by its creator and locked it into a closed-source, spyware’d application.

It’s windows only.

• Yes, this is important. Bittorrent was designed to be truly multi-platform, so that it could become universally available for any purpose. It is this that to a large extent helps the argument that peer-to-peer should remain legal – it’s ability to adapt to thousands of useful situations is a great asset to the community, and can be used to save the distribution costs of non-profit organisations. eXeem is clearly a money-spinner, and so it will never gain respect.

It’s not as safe as Bittorrent.

• Just because it’s safer for the few, eXeem is actually more dangerous for the average user. Since Bittorrent doesn’t use any encryption or cloaking methods, it’s ridiculously easy for a BayTSP system to monitor eXeem and pick out the IP addresses of those who are sharing copyrighted content.
• Also, as you’re downloading a large number of shared files at one time, there are many more opportunities for infringement capture. In Bittorrent you only share what you are currently downloading, but in eXeem you are sharing everything, and as such are more likely to be sued.

So, lets remember the important message of this essay (or is it a rant?) and shout out: DO NOT USE EXEEM!

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In a new intro to the above item, Farthing says he was, “kind of interested to see some of the reactions its had, especially from the Suprnova admins. A lot of the reactions to this article have been positive, and it’s pretty much achieved my target of getting people to think twice before they believe some hype they read on a flashily designed website. However, the talk from Suprnova is that Cydoor has somehow “changed”, and is now a positive application that can help people.

“Bullshit, I say. These people are just scared about losing the ad revenue from eXeem, which as this article tries to show, is pretty much all they’re interested in.

“Suprnova used to be a website that was anti-scam and anti-spyware. Remember all those “Suprnova.com and .net are scammers!” messages? Well, it isn’t Cydoor that has changed, its the people at Suprnova. Shame on you.

“Just because you’re the ones producing the spyware applications, it’s suddenly OK? This isn’t going to help your reputation guys, I can tell you that. The creator of Bittorrent LIVES off donations from grateful users. We manage to survive on donations and a couple of google text ads (which only appear on the forums, our most bandwidth-intensive area). The very existence of eXeem in it’s current state is a demonstration of its true intention - to make you money.

“Of course, a lot of people at Suprnova agree with me, and a number of admins at that site have left because of the adware in eXeem. I congratulate these people for standing up for their opinions, and for the security of p2p users. I wonder how many other Suprnova have quiet misgivings about Cydoor, but feel that if they speak out they will be banned or attacked.

“Perhaps the admins who are supporting eXeem but not making any cash should be wondering where their cut is. Who told them Cydoor has changed? Cydoor? They’re just interested in getting their product in as many things as possible - they could be lying or just wildly over-exagerating (or rather under-exagerating) the findings of a “report”.

“We can’t trust what Cydoor says, and now we can’t trust what you say either.

“Thats what p2p is based upon - trust. We used to trust your bittorrent links, but now we have a hard time trusting you.”

Something you think we should know about? tips[at]p2pnet.net

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See:-
Suprnova - MPAA ’sue ‘em all’ text, p2pnet, December 15, 2004
Cydoor - Meet eXeem. And Cydoor, p2pnet. January 22, 2005

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2005 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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