Norwegian BitTorrent tracker under DDoS attack

Sunday, September 21, 2008 by Mzer0 , , , , ,


NorbitsNorway’s largest BitTorrent tracker Norbits (norbits.net) with approximately 10,000 users, is currently under a DDoS attack launched from a group known as MORRADi, which is also speculating that it has managed to compromise the tracker and is threatening to release personal details of its users including IPs, until the tracker is closed :

“In an NFO file obtained by IT-Avisen, a group called MORRADi takes responsibility for the attack on Norbits. “Once again we show our power! Once again we show your foolishness! This is not the first time we have done it, and it won’t be the last,” they write (translated).

“Enough is enough, you are becoming a real nuisance, and you are also a bunch of idiots that try to hide, so it’s high time we punish you! P2P is not something we want, when will you understand that? Do we have to take it as far as publishing your user database online?””

This is the second time the tracker has been under a DDoS attack for the past two years, and no matter how futile the ambitions of the attackers are in respect to targeting the tracker due to the fact that it’s promoting the use of P2P, the success of Norbits seems to have already pissed off the local warez scene.

Further investigation indicates a conflict of interest on the Norwegian warez scene, with old school FTP warez groupsDDoS statement clearly not in favor of emerging technologies like P2P directly undermining their outdated (pirated) content distribution models. The attack is very similar to an apparently still active campaign courtesy of old school warez traders, named “Destroying The P2P’s, One Step at a Time“, whose objective is to expose the owners of BitTorrent trackers, compromise their security and leak personally identifiable information of its users — if such exists at the first place — in order to damage their reputations.

Just when you through that the major threat a BitTorrent tracker faces is the threat from the entertainment industry and the local intellectual property enforcing organizations, fractions of the “warez scene” are waging a war against P2P. Will they also start targeting the mainstream torrent trackers?

[Source: zdnet]

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