!! DC Program hidden in Kazaa !!

[SoulAssassin]

Via /.

Check this out.

A California company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn on" people's PCs, welding them into a new network of its own.

Brilliant Digital Entertainment, a California-based digital advertising technology company, has been distributing its 3D ad technology along with the Kazaa software since late last fall. But in a federal securities filing Monday, the company revealed it also has been installing more ambitious technology that could turn every computer running Kazaa into a node in a new network controlled by Brilliant Digital.

The company plans to wake up the millions of computers that have installed its software in as soon as four weeks. It plans to use the machines--with their owners' permission--to host and distribute other companies' content, such as advertising or music.
Alternatively, it might borrow people's unused processing power to help with other companies' complicated computing tasks.

...

However, people who accept "terms of service" already distributed with Brilliant's and Kazaa's software are already agreeing to let their computers be used without any payment at all.

"You hereby grant (Brilliant) the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing," the terms of service read. "The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation."

Anybody who declines this provision is not able to install the Kazaa file-swapping software.

 

[conjur]

:Q

 

[Robor]

Hopefully a hack will be released to "turn off" that feature! :|

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[wdb1966]

KazaaLite

or

Grokster without the spyware

 

[RaySun2Be]

Great. Just great.

That's the kind of devious, back-door behavior that will hurt distributed computing, and efforts to use unused PC power for DC projects. :|

You can bet that kazaa, and thus their "dc" app, has been installed on business PCs. As soon as the word gets out, or IT/Security folks find out about it, they will start blocking it aggressively. Since it is a "distributed computing", it will hurt legitimate, public DC projects, and sour the "powers that be" towards DC projects, and thus hurt our and other project/teams assimilation and usage efforts.

/me grabs his cane, dusts it off, then starts *whacking* the shysters that came up with this. :|

 

[RustyNale]

<< /me grabs his cane, dusts it off, then starts *whacking* the shysters that came up with this. :| >>



/me grabs loaner cane and heads off with Ray to whack losers too/. :|:disgust::|

 

[BadThad]

.....IS SUCK. These file sharing apps are nothing but trouble I tell you. I recently fixed a virus laden PC that also had every possible file sharing app you can get installed. After I killed the three viruses it had, I ran ad-aware and it found 67 instances of spyware/adware...argggggg. This crap is getting as BAD AS VIRUSES. They all take over your machine and the average, computer illiterate user has no idea all these processes are even running. Spyware/adware is becoming WORSE than viruses, hiding on your PC, sucking resources, and watching your every move.

I've told all of my users to ALWAY ANSWER NO to pop-ups while surfing, e.g. "Do you want to download and install Comet Cursor, Bonzi Buddy, Gator, etc.?". They don't realize this is freaking spyware. All they see is "FREE" and they think it's ok just so they can have fancy mouse pointer or whatever....blaaaaaa. Between porn, gambling, spyware, adware and viruses it's a dangerous world out there for the ignorant. I repair about 5 PC's/week and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them has some sort of garbage on it, never fails.

When this crap ruins legitimate DC for the REAL projects I'm going "postal", hehehehe.

 

[Smoke]

Will a simple uninstall get rid of these spyware programs? I've just uninstalled Kazaa after reading this thread. I wonder if Kazaa and the other named culprits are just vehicles that carry these spyware programs and then set them free. If that is the case, a simple uninstall may not get rid of the spies?

 

[Djewst]

Sounds like an april fool to me. No way that such a program is allowed without permission of the user.

 

[wdb1966]

<< Sounds like an april fool to me. No way that such a program is allowed without permission of the user. >>



Yep, its called the EULA which every piece of software you put on your rig has...you know, that thing that everybody clicks "yes" or "I agree" so its there and its not an April fools joke, its on ZDnet and Yahoo too.

 

[ElFenix]

the permission is granted when you click "I Agree" on the license. this is the sort of back-door crap that hurts real projects. who knows what these guys are going to do. they might do something nice like medical research, but i'm gonna guess not. and though the license agreement tells you that they have power over the computer it probably doesn't mention what sort of thing can/will be installed.


i wonder if adaware can catch the DC project on kazaa or if i'm going to really start monitoring my task manager so that the project of my explicit choice gets all the processor time i want to give it, not some phantom project that i don't know whats going on with.

 

[Smoke]

I just used Ad Aware and it found 14 spies on my computer. What really surprised me though is that Ad Aware found some of these spies on my hidden partition where I keep Disk Image. :Q

Very thorough.

/I've got to not look at those XXX popups!

 

[Assimilator1]

Adaware does not pick up on the sneaked DC project ,I had the std Kazaa last week ,adaware only picked up on the spyware

Smokeball & BT
Kazaa lite has the spyware removed & some banners too ,dunno about the sneak DC projects though

Ray
I hear you ,this could be real bad news

 

[Logix]

Boy, the KaZaA story just gets better and better. :disgust:

Don't worry, though. They'll get shutdown inevitably.

Edit: It's funny to read how many people on /. thought this was an April fools joke just because the story's on news.com.com.

Unfortunately, it's no joke. :|

 

[Hellburner]

My experience with the install was that there where about 6 software packages installed by default, however that was configurable and the media desktop could be installed exclusive of any of the others.

As far as junk running, learn to love regedit

 

[SoulAssassin]

<<
Edit: It's funny to read how many people on /. thought this was an April fools joke just because the story's on news.com.com.

Unfortunately, it's no joke. :| >>



I hesitated to post this for a few minutes since the article was actually posted yesterday and god knows there was enough fake stories running around yesterday (anyone from Canada?) but this is something I woulndn't put past Kazaa.

Personally, I'm running the hacked version of Grokster for all my attempts to find unsigned bands and downloading of other freeware utilities (riiiiiight).

 

[whitelight]

wow, had no idea all this crap was behind kazaa... i'm getting rid of it now. thanks for the info.

 

[ViRGE]

<< Great. Just great.

That's the kind of devious, back-door behavior that will hurt distributed computing, and efforts to use unused PC power for DC projects. :|

You can bet that kazaa, and thus their "dc" app, has been installed on business PCs. As soon as the word gets out, or IT/Security folks find out about it, they will start blocking it aggressively. Since it is a "distributed computing", it will hurt legitimate, public DC projects, and sour the "powers that be" towards DC projects, and thus hurt our and other project/teams assimilation and usage efforts.

/me grabs his cane, dusts it off, then starts *whacking* the shysters that came up with this. :| >>



Ditto. This will be what destroys/prevents DC, people doing stupid things with the idea. Managers and such are already hesitant to use DC, since it involves letting your data(or pieces of it) reach less-secure hands. Now if they get the idea that it's associated with Kazza, a program designed to fileshare/steal, they're going to associate DC with letting people steal your data. Up until now, I've alway believed the stupid person was he who did too little; now I believe it's he who does too much, but does too little thinking.:|

 

[dmcowen674]

This was an April Fools joke as a takeoff of the Georgia case. They used a $1 per hour figure instead of 59 cents a second.

David

People are still learning about the whole thing. There has been a few thousand hits between freemcowen.com and mcowen.com over last couple of days because of it.

 

[wdb1966]

<< This was an April Fools joke as a takeoff of the Georgia case. They used a $1 per hour figure instead of 59 cents a second.

David

People are still learning about the whole thing. There has been a few thousand hits between freemcowen.com and mcowen.com over last couple of days because of it. >>



What...you speaking of the Kazaa thing? If you want to think that, ok,...but its not an April fools joke, it is real and can be confirmed from many sources over the last two days.

 

[BadThad]

From MSN Today!

 

[Darkone]

ok so i wrote a nice long, informative reply and the stupid server bombed me out.. so here goes with another one......

well... i was sceptical, but Ive just installed a fresh copy of the Kazaa Media Desktop v 1.5.1 and lo and behold....

From their "Termz Of Service" (nice and l33t these guys at Sharman Networks!)

I noticed that actually Sharman Networks (the writers of Kazaa) dont actually have it in THEIR end user licence agreement, and that is all that they advertise on their www site. Their www site DOES NOT show you the terms and conditions for the 3rd party tools that you DONT have the option not to install, this includes Brilliant Digital and Cydoor.

Anyhow.. I quote from the Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. END USER AGREEMENT..... (not quite so f**king brilliant are they.......)

4. Upgrades and Access.
(a) You acknowledge that BDE may from time to time provide future programming fixes, updates and upgrades to you ("b3d Updates"), including automatic updates to KaZaA and other software bundled with KaZaA, through automatic electronic dissemination and other means. You consent to such automatic updates and agree that the terms and conditions of this Agreement will apply to all such b3d Updates.
(b) You hereby grant BDE the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer/s and/or internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing. The user acknowledges and authorizes this use without the right of compensation. Notwithstanding the above, in the event usage of your computer is initiated by a party other than you, BDE will grant you the ability to deny access.

So.. yes they can run 3rd party DC projects, but if this right is utilised by a 3rd party other than "BDE" then you can deny this use, whatever that means.. surely its one and the same.


So how do we stop them doing this ?

If you have your security settings correctly setup on your machine, then you should get notified of any updates to the software and have the ability to deny them.... I'm assuming that any software update will act like any other setup program from the web and ask you if you wish to accept the software. (Such as when you open a .exe from the web instead of saving to disk)....

You could if you could be arsed, find their hosting providers IP addresses and assume that they would be "pushing" these "updates" from those servers and in which case also assume that your software will make an attempt to connect to one of these sites at some point to alert them to your presence and check for the "updates", in which case, find the dns name that these servers go by and add them to your HOSTS file redirected to 127.0.0.1 (localhost)

Or you could just use Kazaa Lite and be done with it

HTH
D



UPDATE EDIT: I just installed Grokster (you can find it here ) which is, in no uncertain terms, exactly the same piece of software as Kazaa and, despite it still having Cydoor the spyware program (which adware should remove) it DOES NOT come bundled with BDE's software and hence is NOT vunerable to the installation of DC projects without your knowledge......... for now......

Theres also no mention of it in ANY of Groksters Termz of service....

D

 

[dmcowen674]

Wow folks,

It does appear to be real.

I am very curious to see how the State of Georgia reacts to this latest version of the technology.

 

[networkman]

How would Georgia have a problem with it? As long as the user clicks "Yes" or "I agree", the conditions of the license for use of the software have been met; just because the user didn't take the time to read over the terms of service isn't an out.

When I bought my house, it took about 4 hours to close, 'cuz I spent the time going over the contract in detail and I found three items that my realtor had missed!

Still, this whole Kazaa/DC thing does seem a little under-handed in the way it was implemented.. almost like something we'd expect from that software company based in Redmond, WA.

 

[hughesjr]

The BDE projector (b3d projector in ADD/Remove programs in control panel) and the \Windows\BDE directory can be removed after the Kazaa install. Kazaa will still start and work with BDE removed.

The Cydoor software can be handled via this link (Grokster without spyware)(which was included in a previous link). This works to remove cydoor for both grokster and kazaa...