Palestinian P2P service flouts system

[megalomania]

I have just heard about a new P2P service called Earth Station 5 (www.es5.com) based in war torn Palestine, deep in the heart of the ghettos. The service is directly challenging the RIAA and the MPAA by saying they can't be touched (nyah nyah nyah!). Indeed Palestine copyright law only protects Palestinian works, but no so much foreign works. Of course being in the war torn ghetto adds another layer of insulation to the service as I doubt too many lawyers will go over there to track them down.

The service is also supposidly inclusive of some anonyminity features that should protect the users of the service from detection. Naturally such a claim should be taken with a grain of salt as P2P anonyminity is difficult to achieve fully, and the RIAA would say impossible. One system it recommends is the one-click proxy ability apparently to automaticially connect to a proxy with the software.

Nevertheless, the new service is flouting their legal safety by offering direct downloads of "Terminator 3" and "Tomb Raider," plus current movies.

The company started about two years ago while Napster was in its last stages. They secured funds from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Russia (can you say "enemies of America?") to start up and do the programming. The company reports it has already been downloaded some 22 million time, and has been translated into a dozen languages.

The software has no spyware or adware of any kind, and it is free. Unfortunatly the software is reported to be a bit cumbersome and buggy. There are also some extras like a dating service, a chat system, IP based phone calls, and streaming video channels of porn.

It sounds to me as if the Palestinians have found another way to stick it to the greedy jews (who control the movie and music industry). I say good for them, and if this service works out there will probably be others who will make better software offering better anonyminity over there in the mideast.

I decided to download the software and see for myself what it can do. It is a 4.2 MB file that uses 10 MB of space when installed. It uses lots of web graphics for the display which takes time to load everytime I would switch from one area to another, somewhat annoying on my slow dialup connection. It does not list how many people are connected, or how much stuff is available, so there is no way to verify how popular it really is.

It gives you more search catagories than Kazaa, but one thing it does not have that I would like to see is the ability to search everything. Every search I made returned plenty of results, so there must be a good number of people using it, but not as many as Kazaa. Some searches did seem to take awhile, rather like Shareaza. The webpages for the movies and chat were unavailable when I tried them, so we shall see if they offer streaming movie files or not.

All in all there is nothing special about it, it dosn't seem all that different than Kazaa or Shareaza except that you can adjust some things to make you anonymous. You would really have to know what you are doing with most of the advanced settings as the documentation dosn't really explain what to do, except for adding proxies.

++++++++++++

Edited to improve readability.

NBK

[nbk2000]

I wouldn't be surprised if this arab P2P is actually a subliminal communications channel for Jihadeen to plot attacks.

I've thought for a while about the practicality of hosting websites and services in countries hostile to the US.

A palestinine-based P2P could give a flying fuck about copyright lawsuits coming from the US. :) I also doubt they'd mind an explosives/weapons themed P2P network very much either. ;)

A libyian ISP would wave their mangy scrouts at anyone telling them to take down a hacker site that's paying them cash.

The North Koreans would likely be glad to host every pedophile site on the planet, for exorberant fees 'natch, if only to have something to bargain for food with. :p

What about a "black" satellite server? Something that's piggybacked by the chinese or indians into orbit as part of a larger commercial launch, and that operates as a high-orbit "undernet" server?

Just the thing for mafia, yakuza, and other "nefarious" types for storing their data where it cant' be seized or tampered with...not without a multi-billion dollar shuttle misson and a MIRACL laser! :D

Sure, the US could shoot it down, but that'd violate the ABM treaty and cause a shitstorm that'd likely not be worth the effort.

There's plenty of 3rd world nations out there that could use the money, and don't like the US not one little bit Sam I Am, so it couldn't be that hard to set up. The only problem is that these kinds of countries are also all but stone-age when it comes to being connected to the net.

And I'd think it likely that the US and it's puppets could block most of the routes in/out of said countries if they felt like doing so. Which is why an "undernet" satellite would be the prefered route, since anyone with a satellite hookup (think IMARSAT) could connect to it...for a fee, of course.

The satelllite wouldn't be for porn surfing (you can do that with AOL), but for trading and storing information (think spreedsheets for money laundering/blackmail) where no one has juristication, or even the ability, to seize it. :cool:

[Nihilist]

I might write a tutorial on proxies and their applications/effectiveness/how-to for the tutorials section, if you want. I can include deatailed instructions on how to set it up in relation to es5.


NBK, that's exactly what warez sites have been doing for years. They base themselves in countries where copyright laws don't apply or where the government isn't friendly with the US.

[a_bab]

Nihilist, I've noticed you seem to be quite knowledgeable in the IT field. So a tutorial about poroxies would be very welcome, as anonymity is one of our main concernings.

[vulture]

Well, so far for anonymous proxies. A dutchman has been arrested lately for blackmailing a large food company by means of the internet. The man communicated with the company through surfola (http://www.surfola.com/) and used steganography to transmit the messages through pictures of cars on a carsale site.

When the dutch authorities tracked the man down to the anonymizer, they asked the help of the FBI, which proceeded to contact Surfola, which revealed the mans identity without even objecting or denying the information.

Surfolas terms of use:

SURFOLA.com will not give out your name, residence address, or e-mail address to any third parties without your permission, for any reason, at any time, ever.

Trust no one.....

[Nihilist]

I have written a brief tutorial detailing the use of proxies, it is however windows specific(anyone who uses a *nix based OS shouldn't need a proxy tutorial). Mac users, sorry, but you're on your own. I don't really have any place that I can post it at the moment, so I was wondering if I could submit it to the tutorials section on the roguesci main page?

[megalomania]

That would be fine. Go ahead and email me a copy at webmaster@roguesci.org

[Jacks Complete]

Sorry to re-open this one, but...

The Dutch man could have used a fake credit card to pay for Surfola, then he wouldn't have got caught.

Far easier would have been to simply go to a net cafe, give a false name if asked, pay cash, and then use any anon. proxy he wants. If they do track it back, it dies at the web cafe. Even better would be via a wireless network, after faking his MAC.

It is possible to string proxies together, using encrypted routes, but I don't actually know how to do that, so I will shut up. :)

[Jacks Complete]

Sorry to re-open this one, but...

The Dutch man could have used a fake credit card to pay for Surfola, then he wouldn't have got caught.

Far easier would have been to simply go to a net cafe, give a false name if asked, pay cash, and then use any anon. proxy he wants. If they do track it back, it dies at the web cafe. Even better would be via a wireless network, after faking his MAC.

It is possible to string proxies together, using encrypted routes, but I don't actually know how to do that, so I will shut up. :)

[Jacks Complete]

Sorry to re-open this one, but...

The Dutch man could have used a fake credit card to pay for Surfola, then he wouldn't have got caught.

Far easier would have been to simply go to a net cafe, give a false name if asked, pay cash, and then use any anon. proxy he wants. If they do track it back, it dies at the web cafe. Even better would be via a wireless network, after faking his MAC.

It is possible to string proxies together, using encrypted routes, but I don't actually know how to do that, so I will shut up. :)

[controlphreak]

Stringproxies along is easy. There are progrmas to do that, or you can just find the proxies you want, and the connect to one, send a connect request to the enxt one and so on and you have chained them together.

As for the encrypted routes, I would think that would be IPsecv4 I think is what we are on or SSH Tunneling that you are refering too.

As for the backtracking, what if the cafe has cameras? They can record things and they can follow up on the people, as for the spooging the mack address yes that too can be done and would be the safest one to do in my oppinion.

controlphreak

[controlphreak]

Stringproxies along is easy. There are progrmas to do that, or you can just find the proxies you want, and the connect to one, send a connect request to the enxt one and so on and you have chained them together.

As for the encrypted routes, I would think that would be IPsecv4 I think is what we are on or SSH Tunneling that you are refering too.

As for the backtracking, what if the cafe has cameras? They can record things and they can follow up on the people, as for the spooging the mack address yes that too can be done and would be the safest one to do in my oppinion.

controlphreak

[controlphreak]

Stringproxies along is easy. There are progrmas to do that, or you can just find the proxies you want, and the connect to one, send a connect request to the enxt one and so on and you have chained them together.

As for the encrypted routes, I would think that would be IPsecv4 I think is what we are on or SSH Tunneling that you are refering too.

As for the backtracking, what if the cafe has cameras? They can record things and they can follow up on the people, as for the spooging the mack address yes that too can be done and would be the safest one to do in my oppinion.

controlphreak

[Jacks Complete]

I know you can daisy chain proxies, I just don't know how to. One is enough, and port switching with all the data stripped is good enough for anything I ever do.

A web cafe with cameras? Possible, but unlikely. I've never seen one with cameras yet, they just don't have the money these days, and you would easily see them. You would soon know, though, just misbehave subtly, and watch for a response. The other way would be to install a program to do the work for you while you weren't there.

The biggest risk would be if they recorded all the traffic - what a way to get credit cards and details!

EDIT: You would, of course, use a string of proxies so it never got back to the cafe!

[Jacks Complete]

I know you can daisy chain proxies, I just don't know how to. One is enough, and port switching with all the data stripped is good enough for anything I ever do.

A web cafe with cameras? Possible, but unlikely. I've never seen one with cameras yet, they just don't have the money these days, and you would easily see them. You would soon know, though, just misbehave subtly, and watch for a response. The other way would be to install a program to do the work for you while you weren't there.

The biggest risk would be if they recorded all the traffic - what a way to get credit cards and details!

EDIT: You would, of course, use a string of proxies so it never got back to the cafe!

[Jacks Complete]

I know you can daisy chain proxies, I just don't know how to. One is enough, and port switching with all the data stripped is good enough for anything I ever do.

A web cafe with cameras? Possible, but unlikely. I've never seen one with cameras yet, they just don't have the money these days, and you would easily see them. You would soon know, though, just misbehave subtly, and watch for a response. The other way would be to install a program to do the work for you while you weren't there.

The biggest risk would be if they recorded all the traffic - what a way to get credit cards and details!

EDIT: You would, of course, use a string of proxies so it never got back to the cafe!

[malzraa]

Friends, you must use TOR. Plausible deniability! tor.eff.org

[malzraa]

Friends, you must use TOR. Plausible deniability! tor.eff.org

[malzraa]

Friends, you must use TOR. Plausible deniability! tor.eff.org