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Cleaning spam from swapping networks
March 18, 2005 -
Loudeye snags antipiracy start-up
March 2, 2004 -
Start-ups try to dupe file-swappers
July 15, 2002
The company, which took the top prize at a recent Finnish emerging-technology competition, says it has been working with BMG Finland to protect local music releases on file-swapping networks for more than a year.
The company's method involves piggybacking on modern file-swapping networks' ability to download from several sources at once. It mimics the digital signature of a desired song, movie or game, and then adds junk data into the download stream, corrupting the file.
The technology "mixes together files in P2P networks in a way that the illegal downloader will end up downloading useless garbage instead of real music, movie or game content," the company said in a press release outlining its technique. "Our...technology is capable of destroying already-shared functional files from peer-to-peer networks."
The company is entering an anti-P2P market that has already contributed much to clogging the biggest networks, such as Kazaa, with numerous "spoofed" files and decoys, making them much more difficult for the average person to use.
Companies such as the Loudeye-owned Overpeer have worked with record companies, movie studios and game companies for several years to protect files on the network. Loudeye claims that it can offer a 99 percent level of effectiveness in protecting its clients' files.
Viralg makes the same assertions, saying its technique is more effective than past versions. It has not divulged details about its service but says that it can artificially mimic the digital signature, or "hash," of valid files on a network so that the peer-to-peer client can't distinguish between the junk and good data.
The company is keeping a low profile for now, though it is seeking international clients and investors. Viralg's marketing director declined to give the names of the founders or executives, or to reveal the size of the company.
Finnish business reports have said the company is led by managing director Jaakko Happonen and founder Juha Natunen, and that its current clients include a "global game console producer," as well as local music and movie producers.
See more CNET content tagged:
anti-P2P,
Loudeye Corp.,
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P2P,
file-swapping network
But the real way to circumvent their technique and any other technique that spreads garbage into the P2P networks is to build reputaion services into the networks that can recognize that certain searches produce faulty files (e.g., by users reporting that) and alerting users making these searches of the low probability of getting a good file. If just this is done then the downloader knows not to download (because the download would probably be useless) and the party trying to discourage downloading succeds in discouraging downloading with less frustration for the user (who is probably a "fan"). But there's a better way that can actually discourage the use of "poisoning techniques": if in the case downloads have high probability of failure the software would suggest to the user "similar content", then the use of poisoning techniques would amount to sending your fans to the competition, and there would be much lower incentive to use those techniques. Another advantage of this is that it can work to promote less well known artists, and would also encourage users to prefer downloading legal content by refering them to available legal content (or at least content whose "owner" hasn't bothered to "poison") that is likely to interest them!
It doesn?t really matter if the Finish company keeps low profile or not, it has revealed the method and if say eMule developers re-evaluate their usage of hash strings and improve the program, if needed, then this new method of stopping p2p will go by unnoticed.
And getting the hash values of legitimate files can be almost completely automated, just search for, say, Britney on eMule, get the hashes of result files and put them on your black list, ... when people ask for them you send them back garbage. Annoying at best, but not a p2p killer. One way to combat this, would be to make a public blacklist of fake source IPs and ignore them, this could also be automated, as clients discover machines that consistently send garbage then could add those ips to the global blacklist which is shared by say all 2 million active eMule clients.
It's not the first time someone sells a product that doesn't exist.
For example... i can sell vacum fueled warp engines... i just need a **** load of money to work out some minor problems :)
follow.