Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we now have proof of the things we've been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.

While browsing through the email we identified the companies that are also active in Sweden and we have tonight reported these incidents to the police. The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level.

The companies that are being reported are the following:

• Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
• Emi Music Sweden AB
• Universal Music Group Sweden AB
• Universal Pictures Nordic AB
• Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
• Atari Nordic AB
• Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
• Ubisoft Sweden AB
• Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
• Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB

Stay tuned for updates.

The whole mail database was converted to HTML by Forrest F. (JRWR), and is hosted by the nicest guy on the planet.

Do note that this is not the official MediaDefender-Defenders website, just a browseable copy of the e-mail leak that snowballed. We're also not the guys that acquired these e-mails, we just nabbed them off of BitTorrent and converted them.

We got pulled offline by No-ip.com, who seemed to take offense and took jrwr.hopto.org offline. You can now find us here at mediadefender-defenders.com. However, as the world really should learn - whenever you take one site down, twelve new ones will spring online.

Update: We moved to the domain which.. one of the IRC guys got, and recieved our first C&D letter. More soon.

Feel free to come meet us at #MediaDefender-Defenders @ EFNet, and some new site features will be coming shortly.

Unfortunately for Media Defender - a company dedicated to mitigating the effects of internet leaks - they can do nothing about being the subject of the biggest BitTorrent leak of all time. Over 700mb of their own internal emails, dating back over 6 months have been leaked to the internet in what will be a devastating blow to the company. Many are very recent, having September 2007 dates and the majority involve the most senior people in the company. Apparently this is not the first time that a MediaDefender email leaked onto the Internet.

According to the .nfo file posted with the Mbox file the emails were obtained by a group called “MediaDefender-Defenders”. It states: “By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contains information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services,” and “A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account”

Note: The mbox formatted file is circulating publicly on BitTorrent, completely unedited. However, for publication here we have removed the username and password logins for Media Defender’s servers, and replaced them with asterisks and avoided publishing emails of a personal nature, e.g pay negotiations etc. We believe that the emails are the real deal and all the info posted here serves the public interest.

FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and report back to a government server, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Wired News.

The court filing offers the first public glimpse into the bureau's long-suspected spyware capability, in which the FBI adopts techniques more common to online criminals.

The software was sent to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against Timberline High School near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who on Monday pleaded guilty to making bomb threats, identity theft and felony harassment.

This morning, while having a little fun with VMWare Server, I stumbled on VMWare’s list of free virtualized environments. If you have any VMWare product installed on your box, you’ll definitely want to check this list out. Anyhow, like I already said, I stumbled on this list and quickly browsed the available products. That’s when I ended up on a very interesting security package named JanusVM. JanusVM is a virtualized security environment that allows you to surf the internet absolutely securely and privately. It was designed to run on VMware Player (or Server) and brings together openVPN, Tor, Squid, Privoxy and dns-proxy-tor to give you a transparent layer of security that is compatible with most TCP based applications.

JanusVM Features:

• WiFi Support.
• Supports multiple users in a LAN.
• Protects you from most man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Protects you from Javascript, Java, and Flash based side-channel privacy attacks.
• Protects your identity and your true location by masking your IP Address.
• Encrypts and re-routes your DNS request and ALL TCP traffic to ensure strong privacy.
• Strips out most privacy sensitive information your web browser may leak.
• Blocks popups, annoying ads, banners, and other obnoxious Internet junk.
• Very simple setup and operation.
• Works transparently for applications using TCP.

Setup is very easy. Just download and install VMWare player, download JanusVM and follow these simple instructions.

After setting up the environment, if you decide to keep JanusVM running on your box, please consider giving a small donation to the developer. Your donations will surely encourage him to keep on working on this fantastic project.

A breakthrough in X-ray detection technology, AS&E's Z Backscatter Van (ZBV) is a low-cost, extremely maneuverable screening system built into a commercially available delivery van. The ZBV allows for immediate deployment in response to security threats, and its high throughput capability facilitates rapid inspections. The system's unique "drive-by" capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of suspect vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past.

The ZBV can also be operated in stationary mode* by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by. Screening can also be accomplished remotely while the system is parked. Remote operation allows scanning to be done safely, even in dangerous environments, while maintaining low-profile operation. The system is unobtrusive, as it maintains the outward appearance of an ordinary van.

Millions of files consigned to paper shredders in the late days of the East German regime will be pieced together by computer. The massive job of reassembling this puzzle from the late Cold War was performed, until now, by hand.

It's been years in the making, but finally software designed to electronically piece together some 45 million shredded documents from the East German secret police went into service in Berlin on Wednesday. Now, a puzzle that would take 30 diligent Germans 600 to 800 years to finish by hand, according to one estimate, might be solved by computer in seven.

Prior to the airline hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration's "no-fly list" contained 11 names.

Soon after the attacks, the Transportation Security Administration was created, and given direct authority over airline security screening and the watch list. The list soon began to expand almost daily, according to government documents. The last credible report on the list put its length at 119,000 names, though the TSA says it has since narrowed it to a smaller number that must remain a secret.

While it was expanding the no-fly list, the TSA was also busy carving out a second list of people who were allowed to fly, but would be screened extra closely on their way to the gates. The government initially denied this "selectee list" existed, but a watchdog group eventually got the goods in a Freedom of Information Act request.

Of course, the TSA isn't the only agency making lists these days. Here's a quick Wired News field guide to post-9/11 watch lists.

The warrantless cyber-search was justified by the "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment, because "the administrator reasonably believed the computer had been used to gain unauthorized access to confidential records on a university computer," the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.