boycott-riaa.com - Article: Spoof Files On P2P Networks? Tell Us!

Spoof Files On P2P Networks? Tell Us!

Posted by Bill Evans on July 1, 2002 at 11:52 PM (printer friendly)

It's being reported that there are many spoof files being released by the labels on the popular file sharing networks. Have you downloaded one? We want to know about it....

From the article: From Silicon News By Dawn C. Chmielewski

Major record labels have launched an aggressive new guerrilla assault on the underground music networks, flooding online swapping services with bogus copies of popular songs.

The online music sites know they're under attack. Darrell Smith, chief technical officer of StreamCast Networks, parent of the popular file-swapping service Morpheus, said he first noticed the practice about a year ago, but chalked it up to ``rogue teenage hackers just being obnoxious.

``It's more prevalent in the last three months,'' he said. ``It's gotten real, real, real severe.''

Sources at three major labels admit they're deluging popular services like Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster with thousands of decoy music files that look identical to a sought-after song, but are filled with long minutes of silence -- or 30-second loops of a song's chorus.

Entire Article

Perhaps tactics like these are what "Mr Fill My Pockets With Cash" Howard L. Berman had in mind when he proposed the bill that allows the recording companies to hack into your computer. Smith, from StreamCast, said the network is being flooded with bogus files-- all coming from sources that can marshal massive amounts of bandwidth and banks of computers occupying a narrow range of Internet addresses. It's clearly intended to disrupt the file-sharing network, he said.

This sounds like an old fashioned Denial of Service attack to me. It's my understanding this is highly illegal and personally I would happily beat the :poo: out of anyone who tried it on one of my websites, not to mention turn them in to the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security and anyone else I could think of. Remember 4 of the 5 major labels are located in countries other than the US. Even if the attack originates in the US at the request of the label the ultimate responsibility lies in the home office. That is an attack on the US infrastructue. That is CyberCrime folks...

User Comments (These do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of this site)


RyanS	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 1:11 AM I have never downloaded any bogus files as such.. however I do come across songs that were labeled wrong. One I remember, a remix from Nelly, and was some country song that I've never heard before. I think someone doesn't know how to run their tag & rename program..lol

RyanS	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 1:11 AM haha I almost had first post lmfao

RyanS	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 1:15 AM That's true, most of the time.

RyanS	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 1:22 AM I primarly stick with music when I download. I stay away from pr0n and stuff like that. I do download the top 40 and the hip-hop stuff, since some I do like. Plus I like to find out what some of these songs are. Most I have never heard before since I don't listen to radio or watch MTV much. But with these current P2P software and "multiple" downloading, most people would probably go after the files that have 3 or more users instead of one.. well most people I should say.. heh

thumbtack	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 1:40 AM Amen to that Dee...

AdamNG	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 2:25 AM I have run across some spoof files, but at the time I simply thought they were accidentally mislabeled, which maybe true or not. I guess I'll never know for sure. This doesn't surprise me much, but I can't believe the labels are wasting their time doing that. They should know that they're about five years late---at least! I listen to some "mainstream" and some "underground". I don't rule music out simply because it's "mainstream" or "popular music", or "today's music", or whatever you want to call it. I think it's silly to not listen to something simply because it's "today's music", even if you like it. I listen to music that I ENJOY---as everyone should!

Svensta	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 6:35 AM here here, Adam, I don't hate music cause other people like it. I fill my playlists with things that interest me and I don't check the Top 40s for whether they are in good standing or not. From what I know of Dee and Ryan, they are similarly disinterested in things, don't take it to mean we're prejudiced against pop music. For my two cents, I have been collecting the Osbournes family CD and the Mister Deeds soundtrack for the EXPRESS purpose of sharing them online. (my recent jihad will require me to delve into the mainstream stuff alot more to fullfill my 250 downloads a week target.) I have gotten about 75% of the tracks thus far with no spoofing as of yet. I do it mainly through Kazaa(lite) but started to pull them in from Win MX as well. I am sending a good 30 or so copies out a day, if my upload manager is to be trusted, so there ARE good copies out there.... For my PERSONAL enjoyment I just tripped over a little known (to me) British band called de/vision, and I am up to three albums worth (they are now sponsored by BMG, far as I can tell, so there will be no ordering the CD's sorry, De) And I have yet to find a single spoof.

MrXero	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 8:01 AM I still would like to wish a horrible disease on Mr. Berman, one that is painful and uncurable. Hopefully one of the symtoms cause his tiny genetailia to rot and fall off.

horsefucker	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 10:20 AM I downloaded one file that sounded normal except for a pop in the middle of the song. This made the song useless and so I downloaded another copy. I am surprised that the recording industry didn't start spoofing on a large scale sooner since it seems like a reasonable action from their point. However, you can always download several copies of a song and then keep a good copy. This is especially true with broadband connections. Some songs download in 30sec.

princess-angry	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 3:18 PM don;t get songs that have the folowing titeld track04!!s anything with !!s or !!gthing any gif or jpegs that apprear ion audio only searches any jpeags or gif that do the above and including !!s or babe04!!s or any .....!!s and any gifs that are untitled any bitmaps with !!s any mp3s with no name or weird symbols those are your signs people.... I've found 3 allready.... im morpeus and they realese secureity holes and get into your browser settings....

princess-angry	Date: July 2, 2002 @ 3:35 PM please avoid these files at all costs!!!

StephenHinkle	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 3:30 AM Will anyone out there, who downloads a spoof e-mail it to me (Stephen) at stphinkle@aol.com. I would like to hear what one sounds like.

slain666	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 8:35 AM I hate 2days music, apart from tha heavier stuff like slipknot and ill nino, those are about the only (nu korns on tha block) bands that I like, everything else is proper metal, better.

thumbtack	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 11:31 AM I have some questions about this. Are the spoofed files copyrighted and can you be charged for sharing them on a P2P service?

Svensta	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 11:38 AM Dee's got it pegged, just be smart about it. All of Auntie's warnings are files that any pensive filesharer should immediately avoid anyway. I saw a few oddbits when collecting the rest of the MIB II soundtrack, but then I have been seeing odd returns since I was FTPing it 4 years ago. Makes me wonder about that virus that was released into the wild that would respond to ANY search string as a file with the string's EXACT name. A good test run after all, to creatign spoof files that DON'T have suspicious names (but again, as Dee says, the size will be entirely too suspicious) Unless the pad it out. Hmmmmm. Well, the quick avoidance here is to search for a song all ass-backwards. Would YOU download "Turning Vapors Japanese.mp3" ?

princess-angry	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 5:28 PM yep stay away from the fils I mentioned peeps

APlusC	Date: July 3, 2002 @ 9:18 PM Never happened to me. Well actually once I came across a spoofed eminem VIDEO, but that might have been something with my media player. All of this is bull. On blubster you can listen to your file while it's still downloading. If you hear something out of the ordinary, just cancel it.

sweetness912	Date: July 4, 2002 @ 12:07 AM I have actually downloaded A LOT of these, in fact, I downloaded one today off kazaa. Just so you guys know, the ones that I have gotten are complete MP3 files and they are even the same length as the actual song so you can't tell the difference. But these are not the virus ones, but are just the same 30 seconds looped into the whole song. Some of the ones I have come across are tracks from Rock Steady by No Doubt and the one I got today was "Pretty Baby" by Vanessa Carlton. I would email it to you Stephen, but I promptly delete those. I didn't even realize it was the RIAA creating these until I read it here, I mean its such a waste of time on their part cause if I download a spoof, I just delete it and download a different file. Its not stopping me in any way.

EnwTheGood	Date: July 4, 2002 @ 8:02 AM I recently downloaded all of the songs on Papa Roach's lovehatetragedy CD using WinMX. 6 of them were either 30-second loops of the chorus or had 1-minute spots of silence in them. Perhaps this is why.

Svensta	Date: July 4, 2002 @ 8:10 AM Sounds likely. I think the NEXT step would be to populate a spoof file that can actually be malignant. This way when AplusC and others use the various previewing functions (Napster had one I used religiously to avoid crap tracks) it does something malicious to your psp app or otherwise (They've already got CD's that frag your Apple, remember, and that was accidental I believe) I think harmless spoofs are like the alpha virii that go out. More like tests of the delivery system than anything else.

APlusC	Date: July 4, 2002 @ 1:31 PM Proably not Svensta. The people who are responcible for the MP3 format probably took into account the security conmsiderations so that the MP3 files could not be used to distribute malicious code. Well to be more exact, none of the MP3 players actually compile or execute anything, the worst thing the RIAA could do is to make something REALLY LOUD so that it would hurt you when you try to listen to it.

Kewbase	Date: July 5, 2002 @ 4:01 AM There is one hell of a way to get rid of those fakes! Ever heard of Sig2dat? You should surely check out www.fasttrackmovies.com and www.geocities.com/vlaibb Sig2dat brings the quicklinks that we already know in Edonkey to the Fasttracknetwork. It is one nice way to get rid of fake music and movie files. Nice feature is also that it gives you the opportunity to download all tracks of an album without ever running a search. It works like a charm. They only thing we need is more quicklinks for high quality mp3s that are currently on the FastTracknetwork. That�s just a matter of time and exposure, I hope. Maybe we all can do some promotion for sig2dat. Would be great for the filesharingcommunity.

Kewbase	Date: July 5, 2002 @ 4:04 AM Link for Sig2dat info should be www.geocities.com/vlaibb/index.html Sorry

Kewbase	Date: July 5, 2002 @ 4:06 AM Last try. add /vlaibb to geocities.com to get to Sig2dat.

wallofchaos	Date: July 5, 2002 @ 10:54 PM Ive come up with quite a few spoofs lately. The file size is correct and so on. But there is no sound at all. the song playes. counter moves slider moves. Looks totally legit. but the EQ is a flat line. and there is clearly no sound at all. This has just started popping up about 2 weeks ago on kazaa I cant say they are spoof song. but i do know that it is odd all the sudden songs are starting to show up like this. Waste of bandwidth and time.

hillaryrosen...	Date: July 6, 2002 @ 8:45 AM I happened to come across a story on Zeropaid today that indicates who's behind these spoofed files! read on..... A stealth-mode company called OVERPEER has been flooding the p2p networks with fake Eminem files in an attempt to stop the trading of "unauthorized" mp3s. If you've encountered the "loop" files, in which a section of the chorus or hook is repeated over and over, you've been tricked by OVERPEER. OVERPEER are doing this with the full knowlege and consent of Interscope and Universal Music, in fact they are under contract to Universal and other major record labels, and will be doing a LOT MORE of this type of "interdiction" in the near future. OVERPEER are an interesting firm, their CEO used to be a VP at ASCAP, the big American performing-rights organization, so he's majorly connected to the top levels of the U.S. music business. His father has been on the ASCAP board of directors for decades. Strangely, the company was actually started and funded by a Korean conglomerate called SK Industries. SK Industries are the second-largest corporation in Korea, a firm with many energy and IT infrastructure holdings. In fact they were partners with Enron! They have tons of money, and they're not going to quit, give up, or go away. OVERPEER's mission is to kill p2p by poisoning the networks with fake, bogus files. They hope to discourage users away from Gnutella, KaZaA and other free networks, and drive everyone to the industry-approved Pressplay and MusicNet services. For more on OVERPEER, visit http://www.sk.com/news/newsletter/current/essay.asp If you don't agree with OVERPEER's mission to destroy p2p, let them know! Their headquarters are at: 110 E. 55th Street, 14th Fl. New York, NY 10022 TEL: 212-906-8143 FAX: 212-906-8149

goldenpi	Date: July 9, 2002 @ 3:51 AM Hmmm....This needs work. For now I think a mass-mirroring system should buy time at least. I want everyone to start checking any files they share. Any music which may be at risk from the spoofers should be shared to increase the availability of good copies. Should help. If they want to cause trouble we might as well make it hard for them. Now, to get a bit more active I suggest a DDoS. Those things only have a limited ammount of bandwidth, im sure if we got enough people with cable modems downloading the trash and piping to null it would annoy them. It should also mess up the system they use to count the duds and bill the labels :-). If you want throw in a syn flood for good measure. Any other suggestions?

-Lowkey-	Date: July 9, 2002 @ 5:05 AM Yeah, I got a bunch of emimens tracks that are just loops. Noticed a lot of tracks marked 'NO LOOPS' and now I know why. Some people are adding their names to the tracks to let you know the tracks are good... A bunch of Chemical Brothers tracks are sabotaged too. Another thing - clearly a lot of folks are downloading the spoofed tracks and sharing them out again. FFS delete them! LK

goldenpi	Date: July 9, 2002 @ 1:06 PM Im sure the nastys are adding no_loops as well :-) Thats why I asked everyone to revalidate their collection.

DaEder	Date: July 9, 2002 @ 4:39 PM @ Svensta: De/Vision's not a british Band, they are from Germany. In some songs, they have a single line of text in german, while the remaining text is english. They also cooperated with Green Court, a german trance project, for at least two songs. On topic: I ran over a half-fake once, a mix by Paul Oakenfold which took more than 200 megs, but nearly half of the file was shattered - the latter half, as you can imagine.

IvanIv	Date: July 10, 2002 @ 1:28 AM I think i got the idea on how deal with the little critters. You can make a program that will calulate the size of a file that u want to download using it's bitrate and time of the song. All of these should be in the file description, if the description is fabricated then you just compare two files the bigger one is most probably the right one (not the spoof file)

-Lowkey-	Date: July 10, 2002 @ 8:29 AM nice idea BUT none of that will work for looped files... the file size, bitrate and track times are identical to the original. LK

Twizted-Linkz	Date: July 28, 2002 @ 11:24 PM Here is just a little known hint...listen to your dl as you are getting it. If you find it to be spoofed then ping the ip then us a lookup this way you can see if it is really those jerks! If it is and you have proof send it to twiztedlinks@hotmail.com subject "proof"

Twizted-Linkz	Date: July 28, 2002 @ 11:26 PM P.S. You have to do the above while the dl is in progress. *I know a few friends that will teach them a thing or two about spoofing.......... baaahahahaaaahaa

napstersghost	Date: July 8, 2003 @ 7:11 PM One of the Foo Fighters songs is spoofed. It's called Normal. The spoofed version is labeled Normal from now on.

hellpilot	Date: December 3, 2003 @ 11:34 PM one thing i've also noticed is the filenames. while a regular mp3 file, for example never let down by the album 'the wolf' andrew wk, normally would be named andrew wk - never let down.mp3, these crap files pretty much always tend to have names like never let down_the wolf-andrew wk.mp3, or the wolf-andrew wk_never let down.mp3 (or for example red morning light by kings of leon, something like red morning light_kings of leon_esc etc.) another odd thing is that the bandwidths, at least from what i've experienced, are almost always at 466. by taking notice of these things, you should be able to avoid the crap files and get the real stuff. one might think. the problem is, with some artists; there are no real files! for example with andrew wk's album the wolf: i think i've downloaded about 30 versions of the same song, all of different sizes, and they all were bogus ones. i've downloaded every file that've come up when i searched a song, and they have all been fake. which leads me to believe that not only are the bastards spreading bogus files, they are also in some way keeping people from spreading the real ones. this is all very strange.

hellpilot	Date: December 3, 2003 @ 11:49 PM another strange thing: not one of the users having these files (with one particular file i tried to mess about 40 of them) are accepting incoming messages. and it have been like this all the time.