Tag Archives: domain name

ISP Telenor Will Block The Pirate Bay in Sweden Without a Shot Fired

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/isp-telenor-will-block-the-pirate-bay-in-sweden-without-a-shot-fired-180520/

Back in 2014, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry filed a lawsuit against Bredbandsbolaget, one of Sweden’s largest ISPs.

The copyright holders asked the Stockholm District Court to order the ISP to block The Pirate Bay and streaming site Swefilmer, claiming that the provider knowingly facilitated access to the pirate platforms and assisted their pirating users.

Soon after the ISP fought back, refusing to block the sites in a determined response to the Court.

“Bredbandsbolaget’s role is to provide its subscribers with access to the Internet, thereby contributing to the free flow of information and the ability for people to reach each other and communicate,” the company said in a statement.

“Bredbandsbolaget does not block content or services based on individual organizations’ requests. There is no legal obligation for operators to block either The Pirate Bay or Swefilmer.”

In February 2015 the parties met in court, with Bredbandsbolaget arguing in favor of the “important principle” that ISPs should not be held responsible for content exchanged over the Internet, in the same way the postal service isn’t responsible for the contents of an envelope.

But with TV companies SVT, TV4 Group, MTG TV, SBS Discovery and C More teaming up with the IFPI alongside Paramount, Disney, Warner and Sony in the case, Bredbandsbolaget would need to pull out all the stops to obtain victory. The company worked hard and initially the news was good.

In November 2015, the Stockholm District Court decided that the copyright holders could not force Bredbandsbolaget to block the pirate sites, ruling that the ISP’s operations did not amount to participation in the copyright infringement offenses carried out by some of its ‘pirate’ subscribers.

However, the case subsequently went to appeal, with the brand new Patent and Market Court of Appeal hearing arguments. In February 2017 it handed down its decision, which overruled the earlier ruling of the District Court and ordered Bredbandsbolaget to implement “technical measures” to prevent its customers accessing the ‘pirate’ sites through a number of domain names and URLs.

With nowhere left to go, Bredbandsbolaget and owner Telenor were left hanging onto their original statement which vehemently opposed site-blocking.

“It is a dangerous path to go down, which forces Internet providers to monitor and evaluate content on the Internet and block websites with illegal content in order to avoid becoming accomplices,” they said.

In March 2017, Bredbandsbolaget blocked The Pirate Bay but said it would not give up the fight.

“We are now forced to contest any future blocking demands. It is the only way for us and other Internet operators to ensure that private players should not have the last word regarding the content that should be accessible on the Internet,” Bredbandsbolaget said.

While it’s not clear whether any additional blocking demands have been filed with the ISP, this week an announcement by Bredbandsbolaget parent company Telenor revealed an unexpected knock-on effect. Seemingly without a single shot being fired, The Pirate Bay will now be blocked by Telenor too.

The background lies in Telenor’s acquisition of Bredbandsbolaget back in 2005. Until this week the companies operated under separate brands but will now merge into one entity.

“Telenor Sweden and Bredbandsbolaget today take the final step on their joint trip and become the same company with the same name. As a result, Telenor becomes a comprehensive provider of broadband, TV and mobile communications,” the company said in a statement this week.

“Telenor Sweden and Bredbandsbolaget have shared both logo and organization for the last 13 years. Today, we take the last step in the relationship and consolidate the companies under the same name.”

Up until this final merger, 600,000 Bredbandsbolaget broadband customers were denied access to The Pirate Bay. Now it appears that Telenor’s 700,000 fiber and broadband customers will be affected too. The new single-brand company says it has decided to block the notorious torrent site across its entire network.

“We have not discontinued Bredbandsbolaget, but we have merged Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget and become one,” the company said.

“When we share the same network, The Pirate Bay is blocked by both Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget and there is nothing we plan to change in the future.”

TorrentFreak contacted the PR departments of both Telenor and Bredbandsbolaget requesting information on why a court order aimed at only the latter’s customers would now affect those of the former too, more than doubling the blockade’s reach. Neither company responded which leaves only speculation as to its motives.

On the one hand, the decision to voluntarily implement an expanded blockade could perhaps be viewed as a little unusual given how much time, effort and money has been invested in fighting web-blockades in Sweden.

On the other, the merger of the companies may present legal difficulties as far as the court order goes and it could certainly cause friction among the customer base of Telenor if some customers could access TPB, and others could not.

In any event, the legal basis for web-blocking on copyright infringement grounds was firmly established last year at the EU level, which means that Telenor would lose any future legal battle, should it decide to dig in its heels. On that basis alone, the decision to block all customers probably makes perfect commercial sense.

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

The Pirating Elephant in Uncle Sam’s Room

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirating-elephant-in-uncle-sams-room-180413/

It’s not a secret that, in sheer numbers, America is the country that harbors most online pirates.

Perhaps no surprise, since it has a large and well-connected population, but it’s important to note considering what we’re about to write today.

Over the past decade, online piracy has presented itself as a massive problem for the US and its entertainment industries. It’s a global issue that’s hard to contain, but Hollywood and the major record labels are doing what they can.

Two of the key strategies they’ve employed in recent years are website blocking and domain seizures. US companies have traveled to courts all over the world to have ISP blockades put in place, with quite a bit of success.

At the same time, US rightsholders also push foreign domain registrars and registries to suspend or seize domains. The US Government is even jumping in, applying pressure against pirate domains as well.

Previously, the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica threatened to have the country’s domain name registry shut down, unless it suspended ThePirateBay.cr. This hasn’t happened, yet, but it was a clear signal.

What’s odd, though, is that ThePirateBay.cr is a relatively meaningless proxy site. The real Pirate Bay operates from an .org domain name, which happens to be managed by the US-based Public Interest Registry (PIR).

So, if the US authorities threaten to shut down Costa Rica’s domain registry over a proxy, why is the US-based PIR registry still in action? After all, it’s the registry that ‘manages’ the domain name of the largest pirate site on the entire web, and has done for nearly 15 years.

Also of note is that the entertainment industries previously launched an overseas lawsuit to seize The Pirate Bay’s .se and .is domains, but never attempted to do the same with the US-based .org domain.

There are more of these strange observations. Let’s move back to website blocking, for example.

In a detailed overview, the Motion Picture Association recently reported that ISP blocking measures, which are in place in more than two dozen countries, help to reduce piracy significantly. This is further backed up by industry-supported reports and independent academic research.

In an ideal world, the US entertainment industries would like ISPs in every country to block pirate sites. While this is all fine and understandable from the perspective of these companies, there’s also an elephant in the room.

Over the past decade, US companies have worked hard to spread their blocking message around the world, while they yet have to attempt the same on their home turf. And this happens to be the country with the most pirates of all, which could make a massive impact.

Sure, it was a major success when a court in Iceland ordered local ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. But with roughly 130,000 Internet subscriptions in the entire country, that’s peanuts compared to the US.

So why is the US, the largest “pirate nation,” ignored?

From what we’ve heard, the entertainment industries are not pushing for ISP blockades in US courts because they fear a SOPA-like backlash. This likely applies to domain suspensions as well, which aren’t all that hard to accomplish in the US.

Instead, the major entertainment companies are focusing their efforts elsewhere.

While these entertainment companies are well within their rights to lobby for these measures, there’s an elephant in the room that is hard to ignore. Personally, I can’t help but cringe every time Hollywood pushes the blocking agenda to a new country or demands domain seizures abroad.

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

Iconic Megaupload.com Domain Has a New Owner

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/iconic-megaupload-com-domain-has-a-new-owner-180509/

Following the 2012 raid on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, U.S. and New Zealand authorities seized millions of dollars in cash and other property, located around the world.

Claiming the assets were obtained through copyright and money laundering crimes, the U.S. government launched separate civil cases in which it asked the court to forfeit a wide variety of seized possessions of the Megaupload defendants.

One of these cases was lost after the U.S. branded Dotcom and his colleagues as “fugitives”.The defense team appealed the ruling, but lost again, and a subsequent petition at the Supreme Court was denied.

As a result, Dotcom had to leave behind several bank accounts and servers, as well as all hope of getting some of his dearly treasured domain names back. This includes the most valuable domain of all, Megaupload.com.

The forfeiture was made final earlier this year but since then little was known about the fate of the domain names. This week, however, it became clear that the US Government didn’t plan to hold on to it, as Megaupload.com now has a new owner.

According to the latest Whois information, which was updated late last week, RegistrarAds Inc is now the official Megaupload.com owner. This previously was Megaupload Limited, under FBI control.

New owner

RegistrarAds is a company based in Vancouver, Washington, which specializes in buying domain names. While we could not find a corporate website, the web is littered with domain disputes and other references to domain name issues.

Michelin North America, for example, filed a complaint against RegistrarAds because it registered the michelin-group.com domain, witch success. Similarly, the California Milk Processor Board, most famous for its Got Milk? ads, won a WIPO domain dispute over gotpuremilk.com.

How RegistrarAds obtained the Megaupload domain name isn’t entirely clear. It wasn’t dropped by the registry, but it might be possible that it was scooped up in an auction. Theoretically, the US Government could have sold it too, but we see no evidence for that.

It’s also unknown what the company’s plans are for Megaupload.com. However, given the company’s track record it’s unlikely that it will do anything file-sharing related. The domain hasn’t updated its nameservers yet and remains unreachable at the time of writing.

TorrentFreak reached out to RegistrarAds, hoping to find out more, but we have yet to hear back.

Megaupload.com is not the only domain that changed owners recently. The same happened to Megaclick.com, which is now registered to Buydomains.com. Several of the other seized Megaupload domain names remain in possession of US authorities, for now.

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

Developer Accidentally Makes Available 390,000 ‘Pirated’ eBooks

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/developer-accidentally-makes-available-390000-pirated-ebooks-180509/

Considering the effort it takes to set one up, pirate sites are clearly always intentional. One doesn’t make available hundreds of thousands of potentially infringing works accidentally.

Unless you’re developer Nick Janetakis, that is.

“About 2 years ago I was recording a video course that dealt with setting up HTTPS on a domain name. In all of my courses, I make sure to ‘really’ do it on video so that you can see the entire process from end to end,” Nick wrote this week.

“Back then I used nickjanetakis.com for all of my courses, so I didn’t have a dedicated domain name for the course I was working on.”

So instead, Nick set up an A record to point ssl.nickjanetakis.com to a DigitalOcean droplet (a cloud server) so anyone accessing the sub-domain could access the droplet (and his content) via his sub-domain.

That was all very straightforward and all Nick needed to do was delete the A record after he was done to ensure that he wasn’t pointing to someone else’s IP address when the droplet was eventually allocated to someone else. But he forgot, with some interesting side effects that didn’t come to light until years later.

“I have Google Alerts set up so I get emailed when people link to my site. A few months ago I started to receive an absurd amount of notifications, but I ignored them. I chalked it up to ‘Google is probably on drugs’,” Nick explains.

However, the developer paid more attention when he received an email from a subscriber to his courses who warned that Nick’s site might have been compromised. A Google search revealed a worrying amount of apparently unauthorized eBook content being made available via Nick’s domain.

350,000 items? Whoops! (credit: Nick Janetakis)

Of course, Nick wasn’t distributing any content himself, but as far as Google was concerned, his domain was completely responsible. For confirmation, TorrentFreak looked up Nick’s domain on Google’s Transparency report and found at least nine copyright holders and two reporting organizations complaining of copyright infringement.

“No one from Google contacted me and none of the copyright infringement people reached out to me. I wish they would have,” Nick told us.

The earliest complaint was filed with Google on April 22, 2018, suggesting that the IP address/domain name collision causing the supposed infringement took place fairly recently. From there came a steady flow of reports, but not the tidal wave one might have expected given the volume of results.

Complaints courtesy of LumenDatabase.org

A little puzzled, TorrentFreak asked Nick if he’d managed to find out from DigitalOcean which pirates had been inadvertently using his domain. He said he’d asked, but the company wouldn’t assist.

“I asked DigitalOcean to get the email contact of the person who owned the IP address but they denied me. I just wanted to know for my own sanity,” he says.

With results now dropping off Google very quickly, TF carried out some tests using Google’s cache. None of the tests led us to any recognizable pirate site but something was definitely amiss.

The ‘pirate’ links (which can be found using a ‘site:ssl.nickjanetakis.com’ search in Google) open documents (sample) which contain links to the domain BookFreeNow.com, which looks very much like a pirate site but suggests it will only hand over PDF files after the user joins up, ostensibly for free.

However, experience with this kind of platform tells us that eventually, there would probably be some kind of cost involved, if indirect.



So, after clicking the registration link (or automatically, if you wait a few seconds) we weren’t entirely shocked when we were redirected briefly to an affiliate site that pays generously. From there we were sent to an advert server which caused a MalwareBytes alert, which was enough for us to back right out of there.

While something amazing might have sat behind the doors of BookFreeNow, we suspect that rather than being a regular pirate site, it’s actually set up to give the impression of being one, in order to generate business in other ways.

Certainly, copyright holders are suspicious of it, and have sent numerous complaints to Google.

In any event, Nick Janetakis should be very grateful that his domain is no longer connected to the platform since a basic pirate site, while troublesome, would be much more straightforward to explain. In the meantime, Nick has some helpful tips on how to avoid such a situation in the future.

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

MPAA-Seized Popcorn Time Domain Now Redirects to Pirate Site

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-seized-popcorn-time-domain-now-redirects-to-pirate-site-180503/

Four years ago Popcorn Time took the Internet by storm.

The software amassed millions of users by offering BitTorrent-powered streaming in an easy-to-use Netflix-style interface.

While the original developers shut down their project after a few months, following pressure from Hollywood, others forked the application and took over.

PopcornTime.io swiftly became the main Popcorn Time fork. The spin-off soon had millions of users and updates were pushed out on a regular basis. At the end of 2015, however, this fork also disappeared from the web.

The MPAA took credit for the fall announcing that it had filed a lawsuit against several people in Canada. In response to these legal threats, several key developers backed out.

Soon after, the MPAA also assumed control of the main domain name, ensuring that it could not fall into the wrong hands.

This worked well, initially, but this week we noticed that PopcornTime.io is active again. The domain now links to the pirate streaming site Stream.cr, which welcomes its new visitors with a special message.

Redirection landing page

“Notice: If you’re looking for Popcorn Time(App) for it’s P2P torrent streaming, it’s over at popcorntime.sh. Otherwise, if you’re looking for streaming. Welcome to StreamCR!” a message on the site reads.

This is odd, considering that the PopcornTime.io domain name is still registered to the MPAA.

Popcorntime.io Whois

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the PopcornTime.io domain registrar is listed as MarkMonitor, which is a well-known brand protection company, often used to prevent domain troubles.

“Protect your critical assets by partnering with a corporate-only domain registrar who has a strong security culture and is committed to providing the most secure and reliable solution in the industry,” MarkMonitor writes

However, since PopcornTime.io now links to a pirate site, something clearly went wrong.

It’s hard to say with certainty what happened. A likely option is that the domain’s nameservers, which point to DNS Made Easy, were not configured properly and that the people behind Stream.cr used that oversight to redirect the domain to their own site.

TorrentFreak spoke to a source unrelated to this case who says he was previously able to redirect traffic from a domain that was seized by the MPAA, simply by adding it to his own DNS Made Easy account. That worked, until the nameservers were updated to MarkMonitor’s DNS servers.

Whether the fault, in this instance, lies with the MPAA, MarkMonitor, or another party is hard to say without further details.

In any case, the MPAA is not going to be happy with the end result, and neither is MarkMonitor. The Stream.cr operators, meanwhile, are probably celebrating and they can enjoy the free traffic while it lasts.

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

Pirate IPTV Blocking Case is No Slam Dunk Says Federal Court Judge

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-iptv-blocking-case-is-no-slam-dunk-says-federal-court-judge-180502/

Last year, Hong Kong-based broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) applied for a blocking injunction against several unauthorized IPTV services.

Under the Copyright Act, the broadcaster asked the Federal Court to order ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, and TPG plus their subsidiaries to block access to seven Android-based services named as A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5.

Unlike torrent site and streaming portal blocks granted earlier, it soon became clear that this case would present unique difficulties. TVB not only wants Internet locations (URLs, domains, IP addresses) related to the technical operation of the services blocked, but also hosting services akin to Google Play and Apple’s App Store that host the app.

Furthermore, it is far from clear whether China-focused live programming is eligible for copyright protection in Australia. If China had been a party to the 1961 Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations, it would receive protection. As it stands, it does not.

That causes complications in respect of Section 115a of the Copyright Act which allows rightsholders to apply for an injunction to have “overseas online locations” blocked if they facilitate access to copyrighted content. Furthermore, the section requires that the “primary purpose” of the location is to infringe copyrights recognized in Australia. If it does not, then there’s no blocking option available.

“If most of what is occurring here is a reproduction of broadcasts that are not protected by copyright, then the primary purpose is not to facilitate copyright infringement,” Justice Nicholas said in April.

This morning TVB returned to Federal Court for a scheduled hearing. The ISPs were a no-show again, leaving the broadcaster’s legal team to battle it out with Justice Nicholas alone. According to details published by ComputerWorld, he isn’t making it easy for the overseas company.

The Judge put it to TVB that “the purpose of this system [the set-top boxes] is to make available a broadcast that’s not copyright protected in this country, in this country,” he said.

“If 10 per cent of the content was infringing content, how could you say the primary purpose is infringing copyright?” the Judge asked.

But despite the Judge’s reservations, TVB believes that the pirate IPTV services clearly infringe its rights, since alongside live programming, the devices also reproduce TVB movies which do receive protection in Australia. However, the company is also getting creative in an effort to sidestep the ‘live TV’ conundrum.

TVB counsel Julian Cooke told the Court that live TVB broadcasts are first reproduced on foreign servers from where they are communicated to set-top devices in Australia with a delay of between one and four minutes. This is a common feature of all pirate IPTV services which potentially calls into question the nature of the ‘live’ broadcasts. The same servers also carry recorded content too, he argued.

“Because the way the system is set up, it compounds itself … in a number of instances, a particular domain name, which we refer to as the portal target domain name, allows a communication path not just to live TV, but it’s also the communication path to other applications such as replay and video on demand,” Cooke said, as quoted by ZDNet.

Cooke told the Court that he wasn’t sure whether the threshold for “primary purpose” was set at 50% of infringing content but noted that the majority of the content available through the boxes is infringing and the nature of the servers is even more pronounced.

“It compounds the submission that the primary purpose of the online location which is the facilitating server is to facilitate the infringement of copyright using that communication path,” he said.

As TF predicted in our earlier coverage, TVB today got creative by highlighting other content that it does receive copyright protection for in Australia. Previously in the UK, the Premier League successfully stated that it owns copyright in the logos presented in a live broadcast.

This morning, Cooke told the court that TVB “literary works” – scripts used on news shows and subtitling services – receive copyright protection in Australia so urged the Court to consider the full package.

“If one had concerns about live TV, one shouldn’t based on the analysis we’ve done … if one adds that live TV infringements together with video on demand together with replay, there could be no doubt that the primary purpose of the online locations is to infringe copyright,” he said.

Due to the apparent complexity of the case, Justice Nicholas reserved his decision, telling TVB that his ruling could take a couple of months after receiving his “close attention.”

Last week, Village Roadshow and several major Hollywood studios won a blocking injunction against a different pirate IPTV service. HD Subs Plus delivers around 600 live premium channels plus hundreds of movies on demand, but the service will now be blocked by ISPs across Australia.

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

Cloudflare and RIAA Agree on Tailored Site Blocking Process

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-and-riaa-agree-on-tailored-site-blocking-process-180501/

Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against pirate site MP3Skull three years ago.

With millions of visitors per month, the MP3 download portal had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time.

In 2016, the record labels won their case , but the site initially ignored the court order and continued to operate. This prompted the RIAA to go after third-party services including Cloudflare, demanding that they block associated domain names.

Cloudflare objected and argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. However, the court ruled that the DMCA doesn’t apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering.

The court stressed that, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still had to be determined whether the CDN provider is “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site. This has yet to happen. Since MP3Skull has ceased its operations, the RIAA has shown little interest in pursuing the matter any further.

While there is no longer an immediate site blocking threat, the order opened the door to similar blocking requests in the future. Cloudflare, therefore, asked the court to throw the order out, arguing that since MP3Skull is no longer available the issue is moot.

A month ago, US District Court Judge Marcia Cooke denied that request, urging the parties to go back to the negotiating table and find a solution both sides can live with.

In short, the solution that Cloudflare and the RIAA agreed on is that the record labels can file an emergency motion requiring the CDN provider to block new domain names of MP3Skull, if the site resurfaces.

“Plaintiffs may request in such an amendment a specific direction to Cloudflare to cease providing services to websites at specified domains without needing to show that Cloudflare is in active concert or participation with the Defendants with respect to such services,” the order reads.

The RIAA must inform Cloudflare in advance if it plans to file such a request, which then has the option to respond. If there are no objections, the CDN provider is required to take action within 24 hours, or a full business day, whichever is longer.

This is essentially what the RIAA was after, but Cloudflare was sure to make it clear that the ruling does not mean that they are seen as operating “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site.

“For the sake of clarity, the Court’s direction to Cloudflare […] is not a finding that Cloudflare is ‘in active concert or participation’ with Defendants as provided in Rule 65(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,” it reads.

This means that the order, as with the previous injunction, leaves many options open and questions unanswered. It is specifically tailored to one site, without setting in stone how similar cases will be dealt with in the future.

But considering the recent pressure from rightsholders on Cloudflare, it wouldn’t be a surprise if this battle is renewed in a new arena in the future.

Meanwhile, MP3Skull, the site which got this all started, hasn’t been seen online for over a year.

—

A copy of US District Court Judge Marcia Cooke’s order is available here (pdf).

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

Enhanced Domain Protections for Amazon CloudFront Requests

Post Syndicated from Colm MacCarthaigh original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/enhanced-domain-protections-for-amazon-cloudfront-requests/

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be adding enhanced domain protections to Amazon CloudFront. The short version is this: the new measures are designed to ensure that requests handled by CloudFront are handled on behalf of legitimate domain owners.

Using CloudFront to receive traffic for a domain you aren’t authorized to use is already a violation of our AWS Terms of Service. When we become aware of this type of activity, we deal with it behind the scenes by disabling abusive accounts. Now we’re integrating checks directly into the CloudFront API and Content Distribution service, as well.

Enhanced Protection against Dangling DNS entries
To use CloudFront with your domain, you must configure your domain to point at CloudFront. You may use a traditional CNAME, or an Amazon Route 53 “ALIAS” record.

A problem can arise if you delete your CloudFront distribution, but leave your DNS still pointing at CloudFront, popularly known as a “dangling” DNS entry. Thankfully, this is very rare, as the domain will no longer work, but we occasionally see customers who leave their old domains dormant. This can also happen if you leave this kind of “dangling” DNS entry pointing at other infrastructure you no longer control. For example, if you leave a domain pointing at an IP address that you don’t control, then there is a risk that someone may come along and “claim” traffic destined for your domain.

In an even more rare set of circumstances, an abuser can exploit a subdomain of a domain that you are actively using. For example, if a customer left “images.example.com” dangling and pointing to a deleted CloudFront distribution which is no longer in use, but they still actively use the parent domain “example.com”, then an abuser could come along and register “images.example.com” as an alternative name on their own distribution and claim traffic that they aren’t entitled to. This also means that cookies may be set and intercepted for HTTP traffic potentially including the parent domain. HTTPS traffic remains protected if you’ve removed the certificate associated with the original CloudFront distribution.

Of course, the best fix for this kind of risk is not to leave dangling DNS entries in the first place. Earlier in February, 2018, we added a new warning to our systems. With this warning, if you remove an alternate domain name from a distribution, you are reminded to delete any DNS entries that may still be pointing at CloudFront.

We also have long-standing checks in the CloudFront API that ensure this kind of domain claiming can’t occur when you are using wildcard domains. If you attempt to add *.example.com to your CloudFront distribution, but another account has already registered www.example.com, then the attempt will fail.

With the new enhanced domain protection, CloudFront will now also check your DNS whenever you remove an alternate domain. If we determine that the domain is still pointing at your CloudFront distribution, the API call will fail and no other accounts will be able to claim this traffic in the future.

Enhanced Protection against Domain Fronting
CloudFront will also be soon be implementing enhanced protections against so-called “Domain Fronting”. Domain Fronting is when a non-standard client makes a TLS/SSL connection to a certain name, but then makes a HTTPS request for an unrelated name. For example, the TLS connection may connect to “www.example.com” but then issue a request for “www.example.org”.

In certain circumstances this is normal and expected. For example, browsers can re-use persistent connections for any domain that is listed in the same SSL Certificate, and these are considered related domains. But in other cases, tools including malware can use this technique between completely unrelated domains to evade restrictions and blocks that can be imposed at the TLS/SSL layer.

To be clear, this technique can’t be used to impersonate domains. The clients are non-standard and are working around the usual TLS/SSL checks that ordinary clients impose. But clearly, no customer ever wants to find that someone else is masquerading as their innocent, ordinary domain. Although these cases are also already handled as a breach of our AWS Terms of Service, in the coming weeks we will be checking that the account that owns the certificate we serve for a particular connection always matches the account that owns the request we handle on that connection. As ever, the security of our customers is our top priority, and we will continue to provide enhanced protection against misconfigurations and abuse from unrelated parties.

Interested in additional AWS Security news? Follow the AWS Security Blog on Twitter.

Aussie Federal Court Orders ISPs to Block Pirate IPTV Service

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/aussie-federal-court-orders-isps-to-block-pirate-iptv-service-180427/

After successful applying for ISP blocks against dozens of traditional torrent and streaming portals, Village Roadshow and a coalition of movie studios switched tack last year.

With the threat of pirate subscription IPTV services looming large, Roadshow, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount targeted HDSubs+ (also known as PressPlayPlus), a fairly well-known service that provides hundreds of otherwise premium live channels, movies, and sports for a relatively small monthly fee.

The injunction, which was filed last October, targets Australia’s largest ISPs including Telstra, Optus, TPG, and Vocus, plus subsidiaries.

Unlike blocking injunctions targeting regular sites, the studios sought to have several elements of HD Subs+ infrastructure rendered inaccessible, so that its sales platform, EPG (electronic program guide), software (such as an Android and set-top box app), updates, and sundry other services would fail to operate in Australia.

After a six month wait, the Federal Court granted the application earlier today, compelling Australia’s ISPs to block “16 online locations” associated with the HD Subs+ service, rendering its TV services inaccessible Down Under.

“Each respondent must, within 15 business days of service of these orders, take reasonable steps to disable access to the target online locations,” said Justice Nicholas, as quoted by ZDNet.

A small selection of channels in the HDSubs+ package

The ISPs were given flexibility in how to implement the ban, with the Judge noting that DNS blocking, IP address blocking or rerouting, URL blocking, or “any alternative technical means for disabling access”, would be acceptable.

The rightsholders are required to pay a fee of AU$50 fee for each domain they want to block but Village Roadshow says it doesn’t mind doing so, since blocking is in “public interest”. Continuing a pattern established last year, none of the ISPs showed up to the judgment.

A similar IPTV blocking application was filed by Hong Kong-based broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) last year.

TVB wants ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, and TPG plus their subsidiaries to block access to seven Android-based services named as A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5.

The application was previously heard alongside the HD Subs+ case but will now be handled separately following complications. In April it was revealed that TVB not only wants to block Internet locations related to the technical operation of the service, but also hosting sites that fulfill a role similar to that of Google Play or Apple’s App Store.

TVB wants to have these app marketplaces blocked by Australian ISPs, which would not only render the illicit apps inaccessible to the public but all of the non-infringing ones too.

Justice Nicholas will now have to decide whether the “primary purpose” of these marketplaces is to infringe or facilitate the infringement of TVB’s copyrights. However, there is also a question of whether China-focused live programming has copyright status in Australia. An additional hearing is scheduled for May 2 for these matters to be addressed.

Also on Friday, Foxtel filed yet another blocking application targeting “15 online locations” involving 27 domain names connected to traditional BitTorrent and streaming services.

According to ComputerWorld the injunction targets the same set of ISPs but this time around, Foxtel is trying to save on costs.

The company doesn’t want to have expert witnesses present in court, doesn’t want to stage live demos of websites, and would like to rely on videos and screenshots instead. Foxtel also says that if the ISPs agree, it won’t serve its evidence on them as it has done previously.

The company asked Justice Nicholas to deal with the injunction application “on paper” but he declined, setting a hearing for June 18 but accepting screenshots and videos as evidence.

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

How to centralize DNS management in a multi-account environment

Post Syndicated from Mahmoud Matouk original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-centralize-dns-management-in-a-multi-account-environment/

In a multi-account environment where you require connectivity between accounts, and perhaps connectivity between cloud and on-premises workloads, the demand for a robust Domain Name Service (DNS) that’s capable of name resolution across all connected environments will be high.

The most common solution is to implement local DNS in each account and use conditional forwarders for DNS resolutions outside of this account. While this solution might be efficient for a single-account environment, it becomes complex in a multi-account environment.

In this post, I will provide a solution to implement central DNS for multiple accounts. This solution reduces the number of DNS servers and forwarders needed to implement cross-account domain resolution. I will show you how to configure this solution in four steps:

  1. Set up your Central DNS account.
  2. Set up each participating account.
  3. Create Route53 associations.
  4. Configure on-premises DNS (if applicable).

Solution overview

In this solution, you use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) as a DNS service in a dedicated account in a Virtual Private Cloud (DNS-VPC).

The DNS service included in AWS Managed Microsoft AD uses conditional forwarders to forward domain resolution to either Amazon Route 53 (for domains in the awscloud.com zone) or to on-premises DNS servers (for domains in the example.com zone). You’ll use AWS Managed Microsoft AD as the primary DNS server for other application accounts in the multi-account environment (participating accounts).

A participating account is any application account that hosts a VPC and uses the centralized AWS Managed Microsoft AD as the primary DNS server for that VPC. Each participating account has a private, hosted zone with a unique zone name to represent this account (for example, business_unit.awscloud.com).

You associate the DNS-VPC with the unique hosted zone in each of the participating accounts, this allows AWS Managed Microsoft AD to use Route 53 to resolve all registered domains in private, hosted zones in participating accounts.

The following diagram shows how the various services work together:
 

Diagram showing the relationship between all the various services

Figure 1: Diagram showing the relationship between all the various services

 

In this diagram, all VPCs in participating accounts use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) option sets. The option sets configure EC2 instances to use the centralized AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC as their default DNS Server. You also configure AWS Managed Microsoft AD to use conditional forwarders to send domain queries to Route53 or on-premises DNS servers based on query zone. For domain resolution across accounts to work, we associate DNS-VPC with each hosted zone in participating accounts.

If, for example, server.pa1.awscloud.com needs to resolve addresses in the pa3.awscloud.com domain, the sequence shown in the following diagram happens:
 

How domain resolution across accounts works

Figure 2: How domain resolution across accounts works

 

  • 1.1: server.pa1.awscloud.com sends domain name lookup to default DNS server for the name server.pa3.awscloud.com. The request is forwarded to the DNS server defined in the DHCP option set (AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC).
  • 1.2: AWS Managed Microsoft AD forwards name resolution to Route53 because it’s in the awscloud.com zone.
  • 1.3: Route53 resolves the name to the IP address of server.pa3.awscloud.com because DNS-VPC is associated with the private hosted zone pa3.awscloud.com.

Similarly, if server.example.com needs to resolve server.pa3.awscloud.com, the following happens:

  • 2.1: server.example.com sends domain name lookup to on-premise DNS server for the name server.pa3.awscloud.com.
  • 2.2: on-premise DNS server using conditional forwarder forwards domain lookup to AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC.
  • 1.2: AWS Managed Microsoft AD forwards name resolution to Route53 because it’s in the awscloud.com zone.
  • 1.3: Route53 resolves the name to the IP address of server.pa3.awscloud.com because DNS-VPC is associated with the private hosted zone pa3.awscloud.com.

Step 1: Set up a centralized DNS account

In previous AWS Security Blog posts, Drew Dennis covered a couple of options for establishing DNS resolution between on-premises networks and Amazon VPC. In this post, he showed how you can use AWS Managed Microsoft AD (provisioned with AWS Directory Service) to provide DNS resolution with forwarding capabilities.

To set up a centralized DNS account, you can follow the same steps in Drew’s post to create AWS Managed Microsoft AD and configure the forwarders to send DNS queries for awscloud.com to default, VPC-provided DNS and to forward example.com queries to the on-premise DNS server.

Here are a few considerations while setting up central DNS:

  • The VPC that hosts AWS Managed Microsoft AD (DNS-VPC) will be associated with all private hosted zones in participating accounts.
  • To be able to resolve domain names across AWS and on-premises, connectivity through Direct Connect or VPN must be in place.

Step 2: Set up participating accounts

The steps I suggest in this section should be applied individually in each application account that’s participating in central DNS resolution.

  1. Create the VPC(s) that will host your resources in participating account.
  2. Create VPC Peering between local VPC(s) in each participating account and DNS-VPC.
  3. Create a private hosted zone in Route 53. Hosted zone domain names must be unique across all accounts. In the diagram above, we used pa1.awscloud.com / pa2.awscloud.com / pa3.awscloud.com. You could also use a combination of environment and business unit: for example, you could use pa1.dev.awscloud.com to achieve uniqueness.
  4. Associate VPC(s) in each participating account with the local private hosted zone.

The next step is to change the default DNS servers on each VPC using DHCP option set:

  1. Follow these steps to create a new DHCP option set. Make sure in the DNS Servers to put the private IP addresses of the two AWS Managed Microsoft AD servers that were created in DNS-VPC:
     
    The "Create DHCP options set" dialog box

    Figure 3: The “Create DHCP options set” dialog box

     

  2. Follow these steps to assign the DHCP option set to your VPC(s) in participating account.

Step 3: Associate DNS-VPC with private hosted zones in each participating account

The next steps will associate DNS-VPC with the private, hosted zone in each participating account. This allows instances in DNS-VPC to resolve domain records created in these hosted zones. If you need them, here are more details on associating a private, hosted zone with VPC on a different account.

  1. In each participating account, create the authorization using the private hosted zone ID from the previous step, the region, and the VPC ID that you want to associate (DNS-VPC).
     
    aws route53 create-vpc-association-authorization –hosted-zone-id <hosted-zone-id> –vpc VPCRegion=<region>,VPCId=<vpc-id>
     
  2. In the centralized DNS account, associate DNS-VPC with the hosted zone in each participating account.
     
    aws route53 associate-vpc-with-hosted-zone –hosted-zone-id <hosted-zone-id> –vpc VPCRegion=<region>,VPCId=<vpc-id>
     

After completing these steps, AWS Managed Microsoft AD in the centralized DNS account should be able to resolve domain records in the private, hosted zone in each participating account.

Step 4: Setting up on-premises DNS servers

This step is necessary if you would like to resolve AWS private domains from on-premises servers and this task comes down to configuring forwarders on-premise to forward DNS queries to AWS Managed Microsoft AD in DNS-VPC for all domains in the awscloud.com zone.

The steps to implement conditional forwarders vary by DNS product. Follow your product’s documentation to complete this configuration.

Summary

I introduced a simplified solution to implement central DNS resolution in a multi-account environment that could be also extended to support DNS resolution between on-premise resources and AWS. This can help reduce operations effort and the number of resources needed to implement cross-account domain resolution.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Directory Service forum or contact AWS Support.

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New .BOT gTLD from Amazon

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-bot-gtld-from-amazon/

Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of .BOT, a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) from Amazon. Customers can use .BOT domains to provide an identity and portal for their bots. Fitness bots, slack bots, e-commerce bots, and more can all benefit from an easy-to-access .BOT domain. The phrase “bot” was the 4th most registered domain keyword within the .COM TLD in 2016 with more than 6000 domains per month. A .BOT domain allows customers to provide a definitive internet identity for their bots as well as enhancing SEO performance.

At the time of this writing .BOT domains start at $75 each and must be verified and published with a supported tool like: Amazon Lex, Botkit Studio, Dialogflow, Gupshup, Microsoft Bot Framework, or Pandorabots. You can expect support for more tools over time and if your favorite bot framework isn’t supported feel free to contact us here: [email protected].

Below, I’ll walk through the experience of registering and provisioning a domain for my bot, whereml.bot. Then we’ll look at setting up the domain as a hosted zone in Amazon Route 53. Let’s get started.

Registering a .BOT domain

First, I’ll head over to https://amazonregistry.com/bot, type in a new domain, and click magnifying class to make sure my domain is available and get taken to the registration wizard.

Next, I have the opportunity to choose how I want to verify my bot. I build all of my bots with Amazon Lex so I’ll select that in the drop down and get prompted for instructions specific to AWS. If I had my bot hosted somewhere else I would need to follow the unique verification instructions for that particular framework.

To verify my Lex bot I need to give the Amazon Registry permissions to invoke the bot and verify it’s existence. I’ll do this by creating an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) cross account role and providing the AmazonLexReadOnly permissions to that role. This is easily accomplished in the AWS Console. Be sure to provide the account number and external ID shown on the registration page.

Now I’ll add read only permissions to our Amazon Lex bots.

I’ll give my role a fancy name like DotBotCrossAccountVerifyRole and a description so it’s easy to remember why I made this then I’ll click create to create the role and be transported to the role summary page.

Finally, I’ll copy the ARN from the created role and save it for my next step.

Here I’ll add all the details of my Amazon Lex bot. If you haven’t made a bot yet you can follow the tutorial to build a basic bot. I can refer to any alias I’ve deployed but if I just want to grab the latest published bot I can pass in $LATEST as the alias. Finally I’ll click Validate and proceed to registering my domain.

Amazon Registry works with a partner EnCirca to register our domains so we’ll select them and optionally grab Site Builder. I know how to sling some HTML and Javascript together so I’ll pass on the Site Builder side of things.

 

After I click continue we’re taken to EnCirca’s website to finalize the registration and with any luck within a few minutes of purchasing and completing the registration we should receive an email with some good news:

Alright, now that we have a domain name let’s find out how to host things on it.

Using Amazon Route53 with a .BOT domain

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable DNS with robust APIs, healthchecks, service discovery, and many other features. I definitely want to use this to host my new domain. The first thing I’ll do is navigate to the Route53 console and create a hosted zone with the same name as my domain.


Great! Now, I need to take the Name Server (NS) records that Route53 created for me and use EnCirca’s portal to add these as the authoritative nameservers on the domain.

Now I just add my records to my hosted zone and I should be able to serve traffic! Way cool, I’ve got my very own .bot domain for @WhereML.

Next Steps

  • I could and should add to the security of my site by creating TLS certificates for people who intend to access my domain over TLS. Luckily with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) this is extremely straightforward and I’ve got my subdomains and root domain verified in just a few clicks.
  • I could create a cloudfront distrobution to front an S3 static single page application to host my entire chatbot and invoke Amazon Lex with a cognito identity right from the browser.

– Randall

Registrars Suspend 11 Pirate Site Domains, 89 More in the Crosshairs

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/registrars-suspend-11-pirate-site-domains-89-more-in-the-crosshairs-180423/

In addition to website blocking which is running rampant across dozens of countries right now, targeting the domains of pirate sites is considered to be a somewhat effective anti-piracy tool.

The vast majority of websites are found using a recognizable name so when they become inaccessible, site operators have to work quickly to get the message out to fans. That can mean losing visitors, at least in the short term, and also contributes to the rise of copy-cat sites that may not have users’ best interests at heart.

Nevertheless, crime-fighting has always been about disrupting the ability of the enemy to do business so with this in mind, authorities in India began taking advice from the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) a couple of years ago.

After studying the model developed by PIPCU, India formed its Digital Crime Unit (DCU), which follows a multi-stage plan.

Initially, pirate sites and their partners are told to cease-and-desist. Next, complaints are filed with advertisers, who are asked to stop funding site activities. Service providers and domain registrars also receive a written complaint from the DCU, asking them to suspend services to the sites in question.

Last July, the DCU earmarked around 9,000 sites where pirated content was being made available. From there, 1,300 were placed on a shortlist for targeted action. Precisely how many have been contacted thus far is unclear but authorities are now reporting success.

According to local reports, the Maharashtra government’s Digital Crime Unit has managed to have 11 pirate site domains suspended following complaints from players in the entertainment industry.

As is often the case (and to avoid them receiving even more attention) the sites in question aren’t being named but according to Brijesh Singh, special Inspector General of Police in Maharashtra, the sites had a significant number of visitors.

Their domain registrars were sent a notice under Section 149 of the Code Of Criminal Procedure, which grants police the power to take preventative action when a crime is suspected. It’s yet to be confirmed officially but it seems likely that pirate sites utilizing local registrars were targeted by the authorities.

“Responding to our notice, the domain names of all these websites, that had a collective viewership of over 80 million, were suspended,” Singh said.

Laxman Kamble, a police inspector attached to the state government’s Cyber Cell, said the pilot project was launched after the government received complaints from Viacom and Star but back in January there were reports that the MPAA had also become involved.

Using the model pioneered by London’s PIPCU, 19 parameters were applied to list of pirate sites in order to place them on the shortlist. They are reported to include the type of content being uploaded, downloaded, and the number of downloads overall.

Kamble reports that a further 89 websites, that have domains registered abroad but are very popular in India, are now being targeted. Whether overseas registrars will prove as compliant will remain to be seen. After booking initial success, even PIPCU itself experienced problems keeping up the momentum with registrars.

In 2014, information obtained by TorrentFreak following a Freedom of Information request revealed that only five out of 70 domain registrars had complied with police requests to suspend domains.

A year later, PIPCU confirmed that suspending pirate domain names was no longer a priority for them after ICANN ruled that registrars don’t have to suspend domain names without a valid court order.

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

The Pirate Bay Suffers Extended Downtime, Tor Domain Is Up

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-suffers-extended-downtime-tor-domain/

pirate bayThe main Pirate Bay domain has been offline for the last one-and-a-half days.

For most people, the site currently displays a Cloudflare error message across the entire site, with the CDN provider referring to a “bad gateway.”

No further details are available to us and there is no known ETA for the site’s full return. Judging from past experience, however, it’s likely a small technical hiccup that needs fixing.

There are no issues with the domain name itself and Cloudflare seems to be fully functional as well.

Pirate Bay downtime, bad gateway

TorrentFreak hasn’t heard anything from the TPB team but these type of outages are not unusual. The Pirate Bay has had quite a few stints of downtime in recent months. The popular torrent site usually returns after several hours.

Amid the downtime, there’s still some good news for those who desperately need to access the notorious torrent site. TPB is still available via its .onion address on the Tor network, accessible using the popular Tor Browser, for example.

The site’s Tor traffic goes through a separate server and works just fine. However, based on the irregular uploads, that’s not going completely smoothly either.

In addition, some of The Pirate Bay’s unofficial proxy sites are still working fine and showing new torrents.

As always, more details on The Pirate Bay’s current status are available on the official forum, but don’t expect any ETA there.

“Patience is the game we are all playing for now,” TPB moderator demonS notes.

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

Steam Censors MEGA.nz Links in Chats and Forum Posts

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/steam-censors-mega-nz-links-in-chats-and-forum-posts-180421/

With more than 150 million registered accounts, Steam is much more than just a game distribution platform.

For many people, it’s also a social hangout and a communication channel.

Steam’s instant messaging tool, for example, is widely used for chats with friends. About games of course, but also to discuss lots of other stuff.

While Valve doesn’t mind people socializing on its platform, there are certain things the company doesn’t want Steam users to share. This includes links to the cloud hosting service Mega.

Users who’d like to show off some gaming footage, or even a collection of cat pictures they stored on Mega, are unable to do so. As it turns out, Steam actively censors these type of links from forum posts and chats.

In forum posts, these offending links are replaced by the text {LINK REMOVED} and private chats get the same treatment. Instead of the Mega link, people on the other end only get a mention that a link was removed.

Mega link removed from chat

While Mega operates as a regular company that offers cloud hosting services, Steam notes on their website that the website is “potentially malicious.”

“The site could contain malicious content or be known for stealing user credentials,” Steam’s link checker warns.

Potentially malicious…

It’s unclear what malicious means in this context. Mega has never been flagged by Google’s Safe Browsing program, which is regarded as one of the industry standards for malware and other unwanted software.

What’s more likely is that Mega’s piracy stigma has something to do with the censoring. As it turns out, Steam also censors 4shared.com, as well as Pirate Bay’s former .se domain name.

Other “malicious sites” which get the same treatment are more game oriented, such as cheathappens.com and the CSGO Skin Screenshot site metjm.net. While it’s understandable some game developers don’t like these, malicious is a rather broad term in this regard.

Mega clearly refutes that they are doing anything wrong. Mega Chairman Stephen Hall tells TorrentFreak that the company swiftly removes any malicious content, once it receives an abuse notice.

“It is crazy for sites to block Mega links as we respond very quickly to disable any links that are reported as malware, generally much quicker than our competitors,” Hall says.

Valve did not immediately reply to our request for clarification so the precise reason for the link censoring remains unknown.

That said, when something’s censored the public tends to work around any restrictions. Mega links are still being shared on Steam, with a slightly altered URL. In addition, Mega’s backup domain Mega.co.nz still works fine too.

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

WHOIS Limits Under GDPR Will Make Pirates Harder to Catch, Groups Fear

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/whois-limits-under-gdpr-will-make-pirates-harder-to-catch-groups-fear-180413/

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in EU law covering data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union.

As more and more personal data is gathered, stored and (ab)used online, the aim of the GDPR is to protect EU citizens from breaches of privacy. The regulation applies to all companies processing the personal data of subjects residing in the Union, no matter where in the world the company is located.

Penalties for non-compliance can be severe. While there is a tiered approach according to severity, organizations can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greater. Needless to say, the regulations will need to be taken seriously.

Among those affected are domain name registries and registrars who publish the personal details of domain name owners in the public WHOIS database. In a full entry, a person or organization’s name, address, telephone numbers and email addresses can often be found.

This raises a serious issue. While registries and registrars are instructed and contractually obliged to publish data in the WHOIS database by global domain name authority ICANN, in millions of cases this conflicts with the requirements of the GDPR, which prevents the details of private individuals being made freely available on the Internet.

As explained in detail by the EFF, ICANN has been trying to resolve this clash. Its proposed interim model for GDPR compliance (pdf) envisions registrars continuing to collect full WHOIS data but not necessarily publishing it, to “allow the existing data
to be preserved while the community discussions continue on the next generation of WHOIS.”

But the proposed changes that will inevitably restrict free access to WHOIS information has plenty of people spooked, including thousands of companies belonging to entertainment industry groups such as the MPAA, IFPI, RIAA and the Copyright Alliance.

In a letter sent to Vice President Andrus Ansip of the European Commission, these groups and dozens of others warn that restricted access to WHOIS will have a serious effect on their ability to protect their intellectual property rights from “cybercriminals” which pose a threat to their businesses.

Signed by 50 organizations involved in IP protection and other areas of online security, the letter expresses concern that in attempting to comply with the GDPR, ICANN is on a course to “over-correct” while disregarding proportionality, accountability and transparency.

A small sample of the groups calling on ICANN

“We strongly assert that this model does not properly account for the critical public and legitimate interests served by maintaining a sufficient amount of data publicly available while respecting privacy interests of registrants by instituting a tiered or layered access system for the vast majority of personal data as defined by the GDPR,” the groups write.

The letter focuses on two aspects of “over-correction”, the first being ICANN’s proposal that no personal data whatsoever of a domain name registrant will be made available “without appropriate consideration or balancing of the countervailing interests in public disclosure of a limited amount of such data.”

In response to ICANN’s proposal that only the province/state and country of a domain name registrant be made publicly available, the groups advise the organization that publishing “a natural person registrant’s e-mail address” in a publicly accessible WHOIS directory will not constitute a breach of the GDPR.

“[W]e strongly believe that the continued public availability of the registrant’s e-mail address – specifically the e-mail address that the registrant supplies to the registrar at the time the domain name is purchased and which e-mail address the registrar is required to validate – is critical for several reasons,” the groups write.

“First, it is the data element that is typically the most important to have readily available for law enforcement, consumer protection, particularly child protection, intellectual property enforcement and cybersecurity/anti-malware purposes.

“Second, the public accessibility of the registrant’s e-mail address permits a broad array of threats and illegal activities to be addressed quickly and the damage from such threats mitigated and contained in a timely manner, particularly where the abusive/illegal activity may be spawned from a variety of different domain names on different generic Top Level Domains,” they add.

The groups also argue that since making email addresses is effectively required in light of Article 5.1(c) ECD, “there is no legitimate justification to discontinue public availability of the registrant’s e-mail address in the WHOIS directory and especially not in light of other legitimate purposes.”

The EFF, on the other hand, says that being able to contact a domain owner wouldn’t necessarily require an email address to be made public.

“There are other cases in which it makes sense to allow members of the public to contact the owner of a domain, without having to obtain a court order,” EFF writes.

“But this could be achieved very simply if ICANN were simply to provide something like a CAPTCHA-protected contact form, which would deliver email to the appropriate contact point with no need to reveal the registrant’s actual email address.”

The groups’ second main concern is that ICANN reportedly makes no distinction between name registrants that are “natural persons versus those that are legal entities” and intends to treat them all as if they are subject to the GDPR, despite the fact that the regulation only applies to data associated with an “identified or identifiable natural person”.

They say it is imperative that EU Data Protection Authorities are made to understand that when registrants obtain a domain for illegal purposes, they often only register it as a “natural person” when registering as a legal person (legal entity) would be more appropriate, despite that granting them less privacy.

“Consequently, the test for differentiating between a legal and natural person should not merely be the legal status of the registrant, but also whether the registrant is, in fact, acting as a legal or natural person vis a vis the use of the domain name,” the groups note.

“We therefore urge that ICANN be given appropriate guidance as to the importance of maintaining a distinction between natural person and legal person registrants and keeping as much data about legal person domain name registrants as publicly accessible as possible,” they conclude.

What will happen with WHOIS on May 25 still isn’t clear. It wasn’t until October 2017 that ICANN finally determined that it would be affected by the GDPR, meaning that it’s been scrambling ever since to meet the compliance date. And it still is, according to the latest available documentation (pdf).

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

Publisher Gets Carte Blanche to Seize New Sci-Hub Domains

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/publisher-gets-carte-blanche-to-seize-new-sci-hub-domains-180410/

While Sci-Hub is loved by thousands of researchers and academics around the world, copyright holders are doing everything in their power to wipe if off the web.

Following a $15 million defeat against Elsevier last June, the American Chemical Society (ACS) won a default judgment of $4.8 million in copyright damages a few months later.

The publisher was further granted a broad injunction, requiring various third-party services to stop providing access to the site. This includes domain registries, hosting companies and search engines.

Soon after the order was signed, several of Sci-Hub’s domain names became unreachable as domain registries and Cloudflare complied with the court order. Still, Sci-Hub remained available all this time, with help from several newly registered domain names.

Frustrated by Sci-Hub’s resilience, ACS recently went back to court asking for an amended injunction. The publisher requested the authority to seize any and all Sci-Hub domain names, also those that will be registered in the future.

“Plaintiff has been forced to engage in a game of ‘whac-a-mole’ whereby new ‘sci-hub’ domain names emerge,” ACS informed the court.

“Further complicating matters, some registries, registrars, and Internet service providers have refused to disable newer Sci-Hub domain names that were not specifically identified in the Complaint or the injunction”

Soon after the request was submitted, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed to the amended language.

The amended injunction now requires search engines, hosting companies, domain registrars, and other service or software providers, to cease facilitating access to Sci-Hub. This includes, but is not limited to, the following domain names.

‘sci-hub.ac, scihub.biz, sci-hub.bz, sci-hub.cc, sci-hub.cf, sci-hub.cn, sci-hub.ga, sci-hub.gq, scihub.hk, sci-hub.is, sci-hub.la, sci-hub.name, sci-hub.nu, sci-hub.nz, sci-hub.onion, scihub22266oqcxt.onion, sci-hub.tw, and sci-hub.ws.’

From the injunction

The new injunction makes ACS’ enforcement efforts much more effective. It effectively means that third-party services can no longer refuse to comply because a Sci-Hub domain is not listed in the complaint or injunction.

This already appears to have had some effect, as several domain names including sci-hub.la and sci-hub.tv became inaccessible soon after the paperwork was signed. Still, it is unlikely that it will help to shut down the site completely.

Several service providers are not receptive to US Court orders. One example is Iceland’s domain registry ISNIC and indeed, at the time of writing, Sci-Hub.is is still widely available.

Seizing .onion domain names, which are used on the Tor network, may also prove to be a challenge. After all, there is no central registration organization involved.

For now, Sci-Hub founder and operator Alexandra Elbakyan appears determined to keep the site online, whatever it takes. While it may be a hassle for users to find the latest working domain names, the new court order is not the end of the “whac-a-mole” just yet.

—

A copy of the amended injunction is available here (pdf).

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

Popular Torrent Site Loses Domain After Copyright Complaint

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/popular-torrent-site-loses-domain-after-copyright-complaint-180409/

With millions of visitors per month, Yggtorrent is one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet.

Catering to a French audience, it’s not widely known everywhere, but in France, it’s getting close to a spot among the 100 most visited sites in the country.

Yggtorrent is not the typical torrent indexer. It sees itself as a community instead and has a dedicated tracker, something that’s quite rare these days. The site is really only a few months old and filled the gap T411 left behind when it closed last year.

Its popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed by copyright holders either. In addition to sending thousands of DMCA notices, local anti-piracy group SACEM went a step further a few weeks ago, asking Yggtorrent’s domain registrar Internet.bs for help.

In a letter sent on behalf of SACEM, BrandAnalytic pointed out that the torrent site is offering copyrighted content without permission from the owners, thereby violating the law.

“This contravening domain name provides users with copyright-protected works without any express or tacit permission of the societies or their authors, composers and publishers,” the complaint reads.

BrandAnalytic/SACEM’s complaint

Strangely enough, the letter also accuses the site of phishing. As evidence, BrandAnalytic sent a screenshot of the site’s registration page while mentioning that it automatically installs cookies on users’ computers.

Since Yggtorrent uses a Whois privacy service, BrandAnalytic says it can’t identify the owners. They, therefore, ask Internet.bs to step in and take the domain offline.

“As you are the Registrar of this contravening domain name, we count on your prompt and amicable collaboration to remove it from the global domain tree,” BrandAnalytic writes.

The complaint was sent late February and Internet.bs forwarded it to the torrent site at the time, so it could respond appropriately. However, Yggtorrent did not respond at all.

After a reminder, the registrar decided to put the torrent site’s .com domain name on hold a few days ago, which means that it became inaccessible.

TorrentFreak spoke to an operator of Yggtorrent who explains that the site receives thousands of DMCA complaints and that it’s impossible to answer them all. They’ll now leave the .com domain domain behind and move to a new one, Yggtorrent.is.

Instead of using Internet.bs as registrar, the new domain name was purchased through Njalla, the privacy-oriented domain registration service that was founded by former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde.

“Now, we know that we should not use internet.bs anymore. This is not the first time they suspend a domain name like this. It happened to Extratorrent in the past.

“We use Njalla right now, it’s safe,” Yggtorrent’s operator adds.

While the site is indeed back online, older torrents may not function as usual, as the tracker of the .com domain is no longer accessible. The site, therefore, recommends users to update the tracker address manually got get them going again.

Yggtorrent, which came under new management recently, appears to come out of this issue relatively unscathed. However, being in the crosshairs of SACEM is not without risk. The organization previously took out What.cd and Zone-Telechargement, among others.

Yggtorrent’s homepage

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Cloudflare Fails to Eliminate ‘Moot’ Pirate Site Blocking Threat

Post Syndicated from Ernesto original https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-fails-eliminate-moot-pirate-site-blocking-threat/

Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against pirate site MP3Skull three years ago.

With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time.

In 2016, the record labels won their case against the MP3 download portal but the site initially ignored the court order and continued to operate. This prompted the RIAA to go after third-party services including Cloudflare, demanding that they block associated domain names.

Cloudflare objected and argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. However, the court ruled that the DMCA doesn’t apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering.

The court stressed that, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still had to be determined whether the CDN provider is “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site. However, this has yet to happen. Since MP3Skull has ceased its operations the RIAA has shown little interest in pursuing the matter any further.

While there is no longer an immediate site blocking threat, it makes it easier for rightsholders to request similar blocking requests in the future. Cloudflare, therefore, asked the court to throw the order out, arguing that since MP3Skull is no longer available the issue is moot.

This week, US District Court Judge Marcia Cooke denied that request.

Denied

This is, of course, music to the ears of the RIAA and its members.

The RIAA wants to keep the door open for similar blocking requests in the future. This potential liability for pirates sites is the main reason why the CDN provider asked the court to vacate the order, the RIAA said previously.

While the order remains in place, Judge Cooke suggests that both parties are working on some kind of compromise or clarification and gave two weeks to draft this into a new proposal.

“The parties may draft and submit a joint proposed order addressing the issues raised at the hearing on or before April 10, 2018,” Judge Cooke writes.

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Amazon ECS Service Discovery

Post Syndicated from Randall Hunt original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-ecs-service-discovery/

Amazon ECS now includes integrated service discovery. This makes it possible for an ECS service to automatically register itself with a predictable and friendly DNS name in Amazon Route 53. As your services scale up or down in response to load or container health, the Route 53 hosted zone is kept up to date, allowing other services to lookup where they need to make connections based on the state of each service. You can see a demo of service discovery in an imaginary social networking app over at: https://servicediscovery.ranman.com/.

Service Discovery


Part of the transition to microservices and modern architectures involves having dynamic, autoscaling, and robust services that can respond quickly to failures and changing loads. Your services probably have complex dependency graphs of services they rely on and services they provide. A modern architectural best practice is to loosely couple these services by allowing them to specify their own dependencies, but this can be complicated in dynamic environments as your individual services are forced to find their own connection points.

Traditional approaches to service discovery like consul, etcd, or zookeeper all solve this problem well, but they require provisioning and maintaining additional infrastructure or installation of agents in your containers or on your instances. Previously, to ensure that services were able to discover and connect with each other, you had to configure and run your own service discovery system or connect every service to a load balancer. Now, you can enable service discovery for your containerized services in the ECS console, AWS CLI, or using the ECS API.

Introducing Amazon Route 53 Service Registry and Auto Naming APIs

Amazon ECS Service Discovery works by communicating with the Amazon Route 53 Service Registry and Auto Naming APIs. Since we haven’t talked about it before on this blog, I want to briefly outline how these Route 53 APIs work. First, some vocabulary:

  • Namespaces – A namespace specifies a domain name you want to route traffic to (e.g. internal, local, corp). You can think of it as a logical boundary between which services should be able to discover each other. You can create a namespace with a call to the aws servicediscovery create-private-dns-namespace command or in the ECS console. Namespaces are roughly equivalent to hosted zones in Route 53. A namespace contains services, our next vocabulary word.
  • Service – A service is a specific application or set of applications in your namespace like “auth”, “timeline”, or “worker”. A service contains service instances.
  • Service Instance – A service instance contains information about how Route 53 should respond to DNS queries for a resource.

Route 53 provides APIs to create: namespaces, A records per task IP, and SRV records per task IP + port.

When we ask Route 53 for something like: worker.corp we should get back a set of possible IPs that could fulfill that request. If the application we’re connecting to exposes dynamic ports then the calling application can easily query the SRV record to get more information.

ECS service discovery is built on top of the Route 53 APIs and manages all of the underlying API calls for you. Now that we understand how the service registry, works lets take a look at the ECS side to see service discovery in action.

Amazon ECS Service Discovery

Let’s launch an application with service discovery! First, I’ll create two task definitions: “flask-backend” and “flask-worker”. Both are simple AWS Fargate tasks with a single container serving HTTP requests. I’ll have flask-backend ask worker.corp to do some work and I’ll return the response as well as the address Route 53 returned for worker. Something like the code below:

@app.route("/")
namespace = os.getenv("namespace")
worker_host = "worker" + namespace
def backend():
    r = requests.get("http://"+worker_host)
    worker = socket.gethostbyname(worker_host)
    return "Worker Message: {]\nFrom: {}".format(r.content, worker)

 

Now, with my containers and task definitions in place, I’ll create a service in the console.

As I move to step two in the service wizard I’ll fill out the service discovery section and have ECS create a new namespace for me.

I’ll also tell ECS to monitor the health of the tasks in my service and add or remove them from Route 53 as needed. Then I’ll set a TTL of 10 seconds on the A records we’ll use.

I’ll repeat those same steps for my “worker” service and after a minute or so most of my tasks should be up and running.

Over in the Route 53 console I can see all the records for my tasks!

We can use the Route 53 service discovery APIs to list all of our available services and tasks and programmatically reach out to each one. We could easily extend to any number of services past just backend and worker. I’ve created a simple demo of an imaginary social network with services like “auth”, “feed”, “timeline”, “worker”, “user” and more here: https://servicediscovery.ranman.com/. You can see the code used to run that page on github.

Available Now
Amazon ECS service discovery is available now in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and EU (Ireland). AWS Fargate is currently only available in US East (N. Virginia). When you use ECS service discovery, you pay for the Route 53 resources that you consume, including each namespace that you create, and for the lookup queries your services make. Container level health checks are provided at no cost. For more information on pricing check out the documentation.

Please let us know what you’ll be building or refactoring with service discovery either in the comments or on Twitter!

– Randall

 

P.S. Every blog post I write is made with a tremendous amount of help from numerous AWS colleagues. To everyone that helped build service discovery across all of our teams – thank you :)!