12-09-2010, 10:04 AM
Quote:Hollywood Hiring Cyber Hitmen To Combat Piracy
3:20 PM - September 8, 2010 - By Kevin Parrish - Source : Tom's Guide US
Can't get a torrent site to remove files? DoS attack the site.
ZoomThe movie industry is taking matters into its own hands yet again in regards to fighting piracy. According to reports, "cyber hitmen" are under contract to take down websites hosting illegal movies by using denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. One firm based in India has even come forward to admit that the tactic is used when copyright infringement notices go unheeded.
Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software in India, said that most movies are released locally at 10am on Friday. Later on in the afternoon, those same movies will have leaked onto the Internet, appearing on storage websites and torrent search engines.
"We find the hosting [computer] server and send them a copyright infringement notice because they're not meant to have those links," Kumar said in a telephone interview. "If they don't remove [the link] we send them a second notice and ask them [again] to remove it."
When the second notice goes unheeded, Aiplex Software will then launch a DoS attack. This means that the firm floods the offending website with millions and millions of requests until the site's server is knocked offline.
Kumar admitted that the firm sometimes had to go the extra step to prevent further movie circulation by actually destroying the data. Typically the big offenders are 20 to 25-percent of the current torrent sites.
For now, most of Aiplex Software's business stems from India, however Hollywood is also using their "services" including 20th Century Fox and Star TV.
look for aiplex/evm link