Megaupload (Because I was guilted into it)

Greetings sports fans. So I did say I was going to this post in my last post (I've added a link this in there) and I'm actually doing it. The main reason is that my friend Jamie mentioned me in the his podcast (highly recommended) and said that he would provide his listeners with a link to this if and when I do write it. Commence guilt trip. But, that's enough blabbering from me, down to the matter at hand: Why nobody has Megaupload go-ed bye-bye?

So, if you are reading this, you are either connected to the Internet or I finally got that book deal I wanted. For now, let's assume you have Internet access. One of the really interesting uses of the Internet is storing files online so that they can be accessed by many people. There were several really creative and some down right moronic ways thought of to this, but the one that really took off were called "file lockers."

Anywho, the concept of a file locker is simple: You sign up and you get some storage space on a server. You can then upload files and manage who can access them. You make it public, so that anybody can download it, or private, so that only you and/or selected other persons could download it. Of course, we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch, so "where's the money?" you ask. Well, let me tell you.

Some file lockers charged for their services, but some, like Megauplaod, were freemium. What they did is they put ads on the site and before you download something, unless you paid the membership fees. Sounds reasonable, right? Yes and then it gets hinky. So, not only did you have ads, but it seems that the site paid uploaders every time a file was downloaded. Not only that, but files that were not downloaded frequently enough were removed. But, it gets even more sinister and here's where the illegality comes in.

It's obvious that if somebody uploads illegal copies of TV, movies and music, then it will get downloaded more often than a picture of me on the beach. This pretty much encourages illegal file sharing. If offending content was found, it was removed, however it is alleged that the user accounts were not suspended or terminated. I have a distinct memory of reading somewhere that uploaders could pay to upload anonymously, thus even if the content was marked as illegal, it could be taken down, but not traced back to them. I cannot for the life of me find that article again and thus state this as a recollection that I can not back up. Moving swiftly on.

There was also the related website Megavideo, which was also somewhat devious. It has been alleged that all this infringing content was not searchable through the site's main search functionality, but was accessible to those who had the link. Again there is the same allegations of content being taken down without punishing the offenders and so on and so forth. Although there was a de jure legal use for the site, the de facto primary use was for the distribution of illegal content. So, the United States Government decided to do something about this.

About 2 years ago (2009), criminal investigations were started into the activities of Megaupload Inc., with a whole lot of red tape. The company itself is based in Hong Kong and a lot of the key people, including founder and chief Kim Dotcom, were in New Zealand. Well this went on for 2 years and we arrive in the present. Actually more like the recent past, but here we go.

A few months earlier, the US government had brought forth two acts called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Proctect IP Act (PIPA) and this got everybody up in arms. That's a whole other kettle of fish, to be fried on another day. The main point is on January 18th 2012, a large number of websites "blacked out" and replaced their normal content with a page explaining why they are protesting SOPA and PIPA. On January 20th 2012, Dotcom and associates were arrested (alt article) and several assets were seized in a multi-country raid.

A large number of people think that this was a sort of backlash reaction to the blackouts, but it was in fact timed to coincide with a party Dotcom was hosting at his house, so that all the eggs would be in one basket, so to speak. These arrests were the culmination of a 2 year long investigation, with the cooperation of the police in all countries involved. Of course, nobody bothered to check that and Anonymous did their usual retaliation bit. Although the charges are being laid by the US, the police in all the countries involved were a part of the investigation, thus solving any jurisdictional issues.

I will be a little evil at this time and point out that there were millions of dollars worth of stuff seized, including some art, tech and a few luxury cars.There were also large accounts frozen and so on. The irony here is a large number of people justify piracy by saying it only affects the super rich guys in the super rich studios/labels, which kind of describes these guys. Not really sure why everybody is so vociferously supporting them, but I'm sure they have some really good reasons. Let's look at how exactly Megaupload is defending themselves.

The main defense that has been put forward is either "The majority of our traffic (and therefore business) was legitimate" or "we always took down infringing content." The first defense is, in my opinion, a big steaming pile of shit. That is like saying "You can't shut down my shop because only 10% of my income is from selling drugs." I don't at all doubt that there were users who were using in a fully legal manner, but that's really beside the point. The point put forward is that those in charge were aware of this infringement and actively promoted it. As for the second argument, takedowns were only effected if provided if a notice was provided and as said before there was no real punishment for the uploaders.

There is sort of the further complication that of them trying to rip off youtube, but that's something I haven't really looked at and don't feel well informed enough to comment. I would recommend that you read the linked article.

So, in all of this a lot of facts got jumbled up and a lot of people assumed things that were not true. There facts a touch murky, but with a bit of time, one can wade through and see what's going on. I guess it was a matter of bad timing on a couple of fronts. The bottom line is that they have been arrested, denied bail and will face an extradition hearing on February 22 2012. For now, Megaupload is gone and I don't think it's going to come back any time soon.

When responsible disclosure is not the responsible thing to do.

Greetings sports fans! (I really like this. Yeah, this is going to be a thing from now on.) Today I want to fill you into one of the most asked question in the field of computer security: "Who should I tell about my latest discovery?" There are few possible answers to that questions, most commonly (in order of size): nobody, the people involved, the people affected, the research community, everybody and for completeness TeH I/\/t3W3bzzz!!1!! It's not always clear what the real answer is, or even if there is a real answer, as we shall soon see.

So, lets start of with the case I am most familiar with, as it is what I do, theoretical constructive cryptography. Sounds fancy, don't it? Basically, what I do is I look at existing schemes and try to make a better one, by either improving the extant scheme or creating a new one. In this case it's obvious that what you have now found should be shared with at least the research community and maybe the whole world if it has any real-world applications/impacts/etc. The same goes for the implementation side of cryptography.

one would assume advances in constructions or protocols are somewhat non-threating to the security of any other system. That is normally, the case, if we consider only the security of a system. A better version of a extant protocol may pose a financial threat to any parties selling the afore mentioned protocol, but it would not compromise it in any other way. The real difference is on "The Other Side of the Coin." (Heyooo!)

All silly self-referencing puns aside, what I am really referring to is cryptanalysis. These are the guys whose job it is to take cryptographic schemes and find ways to break them. They sound evil, right? Well they aren't. The idea behind cryptanalysis is to find out which schemes can and can not be broken by using a variety of techniques. If a given scheme, or indeed a class of schemes, is broken, it gives cryptographers insight to what they should not do. You may think of cryptanalysts as safety inspectors.

Now, here's the problem. Consider this, I make a new and particularly bad crypto scheme, let call it AVeryBadIdea or AVBI (C)(TM)(Pat. Pend.). I publish this scheme and I'm happy. A cryptanalyst has a look at it and breaks it completely within days of its publication. They publish the attack and life goes on. Number of people affected: 2. Doesn't sound like a problem? Well, consider the following scenario: I sell this very same cryptosystem to a couple of small time businesses to secure their data, blah, blah. Now when the attack comes out, number of people affected: 2 + all the people who bought AVBI.

Let's take this a step further. What is AVBI is used for something important, say credit cards. Well, then when if they system is broken, we have a problem. Now every credit card in existence is at threat of being used by malicious parties. Affected people: 2 + banks + credit institutions + everybody who has a credit card. Here the responsible thing to do is to tell the banks and credit institutions and they can try and find a remedy for it. The wrong thing to do is tell everybody else first.

Then you get into more complex issues. A large number of schemes have one "master secret." The gist of it is that if anybody knew this they could do whatever they wanted and not be found out. Suppose AVBI is now an industry standard of some description or the other. Somebody comes up with an attack that allows them to recover the master secret and indeed they do. What do they do? Tell the industry governing body? Sounds like a good idea right?

It is, if the concerned party/parties are not overtly hostile. The classical example of this is HDCP, as explained by Niels Ferguson. On the flip side you have the Stony Brook researchers who released the source code that allows you to do this. It's quite a grey area and I'm not sure there is a real right answer to this. There is a middle ground, which is publishing the idea of the attack, but not releasing the implementation. I believe this is what has been done by my colleagues at the Ruhr University of Bochum wrt their recent work on HDCP. However, this does also leave open the question: Could someone develop a similar attack on their own? It's possible, but then consider that the master secret is already out there, so is it really a bigger threat?

There is scope for even more potential pitfalls and possible permutations of the present problem regarding all participating parties (that's a lot of p's) and the water can get even more murky. Yes, there are clear cut consequences of cryptographic and cryptanalytic creations (and a few c's), but not always. There is so much room for error and personal judgment and it can be quite a burden trying to tackle such a dilemma. So in short, responsible disclosure can be an irresponsible thing to do.