Month: July 2019

Die aktuelle Version 5.2 des Linux-Kernel hat nun Unicode-12.1-Support für das Dateisystem Ext4. Außerdem führt Linux 5.2 ein Feldbus-Subsystem ein, unterstützt jetzt Intels Sound Open Firmware (SOF) und es gibt erstmals Community-Treiber für Mali-GPUs von ARM. (Linux-Kernel, Virtualisierung)

Der Computerhersteller Acer liefert in Deutschland neue Travelmate-Notebooks aus. Die Geräte sind mit Core-i-Prozessoren der achten Generation ausgerüstet und trotz ihres geringen Gewichts robust. (Acer, Business-Notebooks)

Die Rennserie Extreme E hat auf dem Goodwood Festival of Speed einen fahrbereiten Prototyp des Odyssey 21 vorgestellt. Das SUV mit Elektroantrieb beschleunigt von 0 auf 100 km/h in 4,5 Sekunden. (Formel E, Technologie)

Toyota will die Reichweite seiner Plug-in-Hybride durch den Einsatz von Solarzellen auf dem Dach und der Motorhaube erhöhen: Bis zu 45 km Reichweite sollen dank neuer Solarzellen am Tag nachgeladen werden können. (Elektroauto, Technologie)

Lufttaxis könnten in Städten künftig Transportaufgaben von Autos übernehmen. Daimler überlegt daher, in die Fertigung einzusteigen. An Volocopter ist der Konzern bereits beteiligt. (Lufttaxi, Technologie)

Der Verschlüsselungsexperte und Golem.de-Redakteur Hanno Böck gibt einen Workshop zum wichtigsten Verschlüsselungsprotokoll im Netz. Am 24. und 25. Oktober klärt er Admins, Pentester und IT-Sicherheitsexperten in Berlin über Funktionsweisen und Gefahren von TLS auf. (Golem.de, Internet)

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In recent years, various copyright holder groups embraced a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites.

Thus far this has resulted in some notable developments. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites in 2014 and in Denmark and elsewhere there are similar initiatives.

While many rightsholders and advertisers are positive about these developments, there is little international coordination. This is a gap the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) hopes to bridge with a new project. 

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its  ‘BRIP’ Database, short for “Building Respect for Intellectual Property.”

The goal of the project is simple: allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share this list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This will result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit. 

The idea for such a global database was first introduced by WIPO in 2017 and, behind the scenes, it was developed into a fully operational resource. According to a document released in preparation for a future WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement meeting, it is now ready to go public. 

“The BRIP Database is now open for the acceptance of Authorized Contributors from WIPO Member States and Authorized Users from the advertising sector,” WIPO writes.

“It comprises a secure, access-controlled online platform, to which authorized agencies in WIPO Member States may upload lists of websites which deliberately facilitate the infringement of copyright.”

The BRIP database aims to cut revenue to pirate sites. In addition, it’s also useful to major brands who don’t want their products or services appearing on copyright-infringing websites.

“The intention is to reduce the flow of money to illegal website operators, to protect brands from tarnishment and to reduce the risk that legitimate advertising may lend an appearance of legality to illegal websites, to the confusion of consumers,” WIPO clarifies.

Each member state may appoint their own designated submitters who can add suspected pirate sites to the database. The Italian telecom regulator AGCOM and the Korean copyright protection agency KCOPA have already tested it in advance of the official launch. 

In other countries, trade organizations and copyright enforcement bodies will likely join in as well. In the UK, for example, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is likely to join, as they already maintain a similar list.

According to WIPO, international cooperation will ensure that stakeholders from all over the world can benefit from each other’s work. This is also helpful in order to block foreign pirate sites, which may not always be easy to identify due to language barriers. 

Another advantage is that local member states don’t have to set up their own blocklist systems. They can simply use the BRIP system and get going right away. 

There are downsides to the BRIP database as well. For example, it appears that there is little transparency, as the public at large doesn’t have access to the lists of blocked sites. This could be a concern, as WIPO itself states that not all blocked sites are clearly copyright-infringing. 

“The operation of the BRIP Database is not based on any assertion by WIPO that any particular site has, as a matter of law, infringed copyright. Rather, the qualification for inclusion of a national list on the platform is that the list contains ‘sites of concern’,” WIPO writes.

“WIPO defines a site of concern as ‘an online location which is reasonably suspected by an Authorized Contributor of deliberately infringing or facilitating the infringement of copyright and related rights, whether in its country of establishment or elsewhere.”

Since the BRIP database doesn’t include any comprehensive information on why a site is included, this could potentially lead to over-blocking.

WIPO clarifies that it won’t get involved in any infringement related decisions. Its role is to administer the technical platform, to assist contributors and users, and to promote the BRIP database to a broad audience.

“The project responds to increased interest among policy-makers in methods of building respect for intellectual property which rely on voluntary cooperation, rather than on judicial or other compulsory measures,” WIPO notes.

“Its success will, however, depend on the extent to which it is adopted by Member State agencies and the advertising sector.”

The latter part is crucial. While higher-tier advertisers and major brands would like to avoid pirate sites, there are also plenty of advertising outfits that still love to work with pirate sites. 

In fact, there are many players in the advertising industry that specifically target them.

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More information on the BRIP database is available here (pdf), courtesy of the WIPO secretariat.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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In recent weeks, TF was able to speak to a member of The Scene, the shadowy network of individuals and groups sitting right at the apex of the so-called ‘piracy pyramid’.

If the tip of this polyhedron represents the exclusive few, the progressively larger and lower portions constitute the increasing masses, all enjoying the pirated content flooding down, albeit without the consent of those at the very top.

Our introduction dealt with a selection of the basics, from how The Scene is structured to who takes on various roles. Our contact – “Source” – runs his own release group, something we were able to verify by having a unique marker placed in a Scene release. However, he also touched on something that’s rarely discussed in public.

So-called WEB releases are videos obtained from streaming services, particularly Netflix and Amazon. Not to be confused with WEBRip content, which is obtained using technology such as hardware capture cards or software-based ‘capping’ tools, WEB releases involve downloading the raw video files to a computer or server.

“Source” describes himself as a programmer with involvement with WEB releases. For security reasons he wasn’t prepared to identify which groups he’s affiliated with but he did provide an overview of the process.

“Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source content. Whenever you stream a video online, you are downloading chunks of a video file to your computer. Sceners simply save that content and attempt to decrypt it for non-DRM playback later,” he says.

When accessing the content, legitimate premium accounts are used, often paid for using prepaid credit cards supported by bogus identities. It takes just a few minutes to download a video file since they’re served by CDNs with gigabits of bandwidth.

“Once files are downloaded from the streaming platform, however, they are encrypted in the .mp4 container. Attempting to view such video will usually result in a blank screen and nothing else – streams from these sites are protected by DRM.

“The most common, and hard to crack DRM is called Widevine. The way the Scene handles WEB-releases is by using specialized tools coded by The Scene, for The Scene. These tools are extremely private, and only a handful of people in the world have access to the latest version(s),” “Source” notes.

“Without these tools, releasing Widevine content is extremely difficult, if not impossible for most. The tools work by downloading the encrypted video stream from the streaming site, and reverse engineering the encryption.”

Our contact says that decryption is a surprisingly quick process, taking just a few minutes. After starting with a large raw file, the finalized version ready for release is around 30% smaller, around 7GB for a 1080p file. Subtitle files, which can be numerous on a typical WEB release, are not encrypted, meaning there’s nothing further to do.

Although evasive over the name of the WEB groups he’s affiliated with, “Source” told us his role involves creating scripts for downloading content in an automated manner from Widevine-protected sites.

“A simple example is a bot, where you feed a stream URL and a release gets downloaded, packed and uploaded to topsites fully automatically, with no human interaction needed,” he explains.

“Source” says that the decryption tools he’s familiar with mainly target protected content using Windows tools and Google Chrome. He also mentioned exploits for Smart TVs and other platforms but wasn’t able to provide additional details on those or the apparent exploit of iTunes which saw 4K content leak online earlier this year.

However, he did reveal that, in an attempt to ensure that Scene decryption tools don’t leak out to the wider public, some versions of the Scene’s tools only work server-side and are protected by Hardware ID (HWID). The aim here is to restrict which machines are capable of running the software.

Perhaps surprisingly, “Source” went on to send us screenshots of what he said were two Widevine decrypter tools in action. One of them, which has been redacted to hide some sensitive information, is shown below.

Since we’re always protective of our sources, the supply of these screenshots raised alarm bells with us. If these decryption tools are so secretive, why would he put himself at risk by allowing us to publish images of them?

It transpires that in common with other ‘pirate’ content, Scene-only tools sometimes leak out too. “Source” told us that the screenshots he provided were culled from older tools that were leaked and subsequently offered for sale on the wider Internet, so that’s why he is comfortable with them being published.

“There are countless other tools,” he added, “but I can’t publicly say about them.”

He did, however, point us to an online platform where the tools had been offered in exchange for bitcoin.

We spent some time looking around but couldn’t immediately match the screenshots to any specific software on offer. Surprisingly, part of the problem was the sheer number of Netflix and Amazon ripping tools being offered by various anonymous parties.

Given the high prices being attached to these products and their illegal nature (circumvention, in this case, would constitute a breach of the DMCA), we weren’t prepared to buy or test them. However, it is clear that this is an area ripe for exploitation, with several buyers claiming that supplied tools do not work as advertised.

As a result, we can’t say for sure whether any of the software being offered in public is real, currently works, or indeed ever worked. It is obvious, considering the number of releases being made, that tools inside The Scene are working as intended, something that may have been underlined by the recent release of 4K video sourced from Netflix.

But for pirates, this may not be the case for much longer. “Source” says that the flood of WEB releases (also known as WEB-DL in the P2P arena) may start to dry up – at least for a while.

“Widevine is expected to update their DRM, and the only working Windows-based crack (I’m aware of) is strictly regulated, and most groups won’t get access to it, compared to the current older tools not requiring any sort of server-side or hardware verification for use,” he concludes.

Part 3 of this series, dealing with the technical aspects of The Scene, is a work in progress.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.