Fingerprinting P2P pirates using ‘Audible Magic’ technology

This would simply mean that the next generation of P2P software will use encryption of some sort. Oops.

If this is copying the data, you are going to need a huge ass set of HD's to store all this on, otherwise it will be information overload.

Would it fall fowl of internet privacy laws? Or does it not reveal users details? Surely if used, end users would need to be notified of it's use, thereby they can make other arrangements, encryption, zipping a text file with an MP3, then renaming it back to MP3, possibly passwording the ZIP file...whatever...

ES5 looks like it's a reality and not just hype. If it's true and works as advertised it will blow all this crap about fingerprinting and other shit out of the water. www.es5.com

ES5 is certainly going to be worth while, I'm wondering if it will be FREE?!

Fuck them, someone will get the info before it goes to the Router. The world doesnt seem too understand the Hackers and Crackers are the most intelligent lifeforms on this planet :4 Greetz From The Diplomat :8

It is good to here that this Audible Magic Technology probably won't work. Even if it does, P2P programs will be invented that can get around the blocking they try to do of copyrighted songs.

What the fuck is so special about es5. I go to the website and it gives me zero information on what it does. And everybody else talks about how great it is, but instead of saying what it does they leave the web address which as of right now tells me shit.

Webpage just gives a stupid release date. No info on the program whatsoever.

chsbiking we reported on ES5 two times which will give you some more information, link 1 and link 2. Let's hope ES5 will soon become a reality..

but this programme requires to be installed on every single isp server out there´, to sit between the user who tries to download and the internet. maybe some universities will install this programme, but I doubt that every single isp will install it. Let's say AOL implements it. but who guarantees that also russian, chinese and german isps will also install it? You simply can't monitor the entire internet traffic and filter it. you can't. besides, I often think, why don't isps implement filters which protect their customers. Just yesterday I continued my battle in which I fight sites that spread dialers and spyware and found and blocked with webwasher over 300 sites, which load the same site in a frame, where dialers are installed. This was a hell of work, but the result is that only I am protected, not other people. If isp admins did the same as I and blocked those sites in the hosts files on the isp servers, our lives would be much easier. Instead, the only thing that is installed is some software that checks for copyright violations.

WRFan is right. ISPs from other countries is not going to give a F**K about this programme. 96% piracy in Vietnam, 92% piracy in China, etc. As if these countries suddenly have a conscience and installed this crap on their ISP networks. Wake up! Internet policing is MISSION IMPOSSIBLE! U R the worst kind of ignorant fool who think u can police the internet. Anyway, as long as computer and software are made up of 0s and 1s, they can be cracked and hacked...end of story :4

Actually, it doesn't have to sit on every ISP's server. All it really needs to do is sit on a server that is connected to the major border routers and monitor from there. If they work out deals with all the major backbone providers, that is all they need to monitor ANYONE using the Internet. They also don't need to store exact copies of the files either, but rather a cached version of it which will contain all the necessary information they need to track who the file came from. Like the web archive that allows a person to see what web sites looked like from years back - which they cache and it still displays the same way.

So X number pf ISPs from different cities may all be using the same backbone provider, their main gateway to different places would all be from the same border router - such as a few Cisco GXR 12000 series. Have a pass-thru connection to some SAN w/32,000RMP HDDs allowing 12TB of data storage and there you have a nice solution. BTW, I design networks like this for a living so I know that this can be done since it IS being done - but for different applications and/or reasons.

Tarbaby - I'm a security specialist for one of the largest integrator's in the US and I can tell you that this technology will be completely useless and I'll tell you why. There is a growning movement towards encryption-at-the-router as more and more companies have realized that having a "dedicated circuit" exposes you to intellectual theft by the company you buy your circuit from (i.e. Sprint) or someone who hacks into them. Cisco is pushing 3DES code (and soon AES) as hard as they can and pretty soon most of the traffic running across the internet will be IPSEC traffic and immune to any "fingerprinting" device. In fact Microsoft built IPSEC into Windows 2000 and above. All you have to do is enable it and what comes out of your ethernet card is encrypted. P2P clients will eventually move to IPSEC/UDP/ProxyPeer scenerios and network monitoring will become a wasted effort. Your "nice solution" will just capture gobs and gobs of encrypted junk. Why do you think Cisco hasn't been pushing caching at the router level in the backbone??? Because data will never be cacheable and replayable as more of it gets encrypted. Cisco's SAN solution are strictly data oriented SAN's or AVVID related (Cisco's roadmap for voice and video convergence).

Tarbaby - Oh...and I forgot to mention that 3Com and soon other vendors are building NIC's that have built on firewall and VPN features releaving the CPU intensive tasks from the PC further proving my point that in the next few years nearly all data crossing the public networks and even the typical LAN will be encrypted.

kain: U took the words right out of my mouth....well, in not so many words. But the bottomline is encryption -- whether it's AES, Triple DES, etc -- will defeat Audible Magic or similar technology. Internet policing is a waste of time and resources.

in case anyone was wondering what IPSEC/UDP/ProxyPeer meant, here are the definitions: IPSEC: Short for IP Security, a set of protocols developed by the IETF to support secure exchange of packets at the IP layer. IPsec has been deployed widely to implement Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). IPsec supports two encryption modes: Transport and Tunnel. Transport mode encrypts only the data portion (payload) of each packet, but leaves the header untouched. The more secure Tunnel mode encrypts both the header and the payload. On the receiving side, an IPSec-compliant device decrypts each packet. For IPsec to work, the sending and receiving devices must share a public key. This is accomplished through a protocol known as Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol/Oakley (ISAKMP/Oakley), which allows the receiver to obtain a public key and authenticate the sender using digital certificates. UDP: Short for User Datagram Protocol, a connectionless protocol that, like TCP, runs on top of IP networks. Unlike TCP/IP, UDP/IP provides very few error recovery services, offering instead a direct way to send and receive datagrams over an IP network. It's used primarily for broadcasting messages over a network. For more explanation of technical jargon go to: http://www.webopedia.com

...and by ProxyPeer I mean using a proxy in P2P filesharing to ensure the sharer remains anonymous. Can be implemented as: A requests file from B who passes request to C and C sends file directly to A. or the more secure A requests file from B in 3rd World country who sends request to C who sends file back to B who sends it to A. Unfortunately, all the ways to hide identities and create clouds of servers instead of a centralized server (like Napster was) has exponentially flooded the internet (Gnutella for example). Eventually it is in the service provider's best interests to tell the music industry to go f#%& a goat because their policing for copyright infringements is bogging down the internet as hard-core file sharers attempt circumvention. If the damn music industry would lower music prices...quit producing crap...quit hassling internet users then things might change. Honestly, I pulled out some of my old music the other day from the 80's and thought "hell...no wonder I don't buy CD's anymore..." Today's music isn't as well written or performed except for a few exceptions. Face it...gangsta (c)rap and Brittany Spears aren't going to be played 20 years from now by old-schoolers lamenting that the 2000's had the best music.

BTW, if this goes through (yeah right) they don't have to keep a copy of the file, be it mp3 or avi, they can just keep the figerprint of it, such as the CRC and match it to any file. And the authentication file/number is only a few bytes long, so it's very minimal space hog.

animecabbit: You just missed the crux of the whole last discussion. Fingerprints, CRC's, or whatever WON'T WORK because the file is encrypted. In fact it's encrypted differently (different key) every single time so there won't be a fingerprint to ID it with. Only sender and receiver know it's contents. :8

And what is really funny: for the rare individuals for whom this fingerprinting system does work, your system admin is pirating YOUR wArEz and songs (and every else's on the network), making them even bigger criminals than you. Ah hah hah!

Question for some of the experts as I don't know nearly as much as I think I do <g>: Wouldn't there be a header of some type that indicates encryption to the recieving machine. Coulnd't a router filter for the header information that indicates there is encryption going on and just filter it out? Maybe that doesn't make sence but it's worth a shot at getting an answer. Thanks.

aztechya: Sure...you could block all GRE and IPSEC traffic but that would be a bad idea since that's how most people use VPN back to their office. Microsoft's Terminal services (and remote access) packages use similar encryption. You'd block lots of legitimate uses. But playing the devil's advocate...let's say the music industry forces all ISP's to shut down IPSEC traffic. All you have to do is encrypt the file and send it over the wire plaintext. The file wouldn't have a fingerprint or header, but still be encrypted. Only the receiving party could unencrypt it and it wouldn't show up to a filter as being encrypted because there is no way to tell (no header). You're just doing it at the file level as opposed to the packet level. You could also split files up into chunks and send Reed-Soloman style chunks (similar to how SmartPAR works for those familiar with newsgroup file trading) and the receiving system just keeps receiving recovery packets until it can assemble a complete file...again no fingerprint. If an ISP blocks a port...move the encryption to another port (even have it ride on the DNS port which an ISP can't block). You have to remember...the DOD designed the internet to survive a nuclear holocost. IP is VERY versatile and for every one way to block something, there is 1000's of ways to do it differently. Encryption was designed to be transparent and unbreakable. It protects against replay attacks, eavesdropping, identity theft, etc. Fingerprinting is a wasted and useless effort.