Media Defender internal emails leaked to Torrent

Media Defender, a company which offers services to snuff out copyright infringement, has just suffered probably one of the largest blows that any company would have to endure; nearly 700MB of internal emails, spanning 9 months, have been leaked to the Internet.

The e-mails are available as, ironically, a Torrent file, the same network that Media Defender tries to infect on a daily basis. A group known as MediaDefender-Defenders posted the file early Saturday morning; though, we know that MediaDefender-Defenders didn’t exist prior to uploading this torrent.

MediaDefender-Defenders proudly presents 9 months worth of
internal MediaDefender emails

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.

A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire
email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail
account, and using the really highly secure password: *******

So here it is, we hope this is enough to create a viable
defense to the tactics used by these companies, also there
should be enough fuel to keep the p2p bloggers busy for
quite some time.

A couple months ago, we reported that MediaDefender was setting up fake sites, specifically MiiVii.com, in an attempt to lure unsuspecting downloaders. Despite claims from MediaDefender that they had no intent to  ’lure’ people though the phony site, MiiVii.com, the registrar information was changed and the site was almost instantly taken down after the news broke, raising extreme suspicion on MediaDefenders part.

MediaDefender’s reaction, as per the leaked emails:

From: Ben Grodsky
Sent: Tue 03-Jul-07 20:19
To: MIIVI; Randy Saaf; Octavio Herrera; Steve Lyons
Subject: MiiVi got Dugg

Looks like the domain transfer has screwed us over:
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-gang-launches-their-own
-video-download-site-to-trap-people/
http://digg.com/users/AcePup/news/dugg

-Ben

Randy Saaf replied:

This is really fucked.
Let’s pull miivi offline.

 Afterwards, Ben Grodsky from Media Defender wrote:

Subject: care in interviewing

Given all the recent Digg, SlashDot and derivative online articles about MD, be careful what you say in job interviews. Specifically, I’m concerned about giving any information BEYOND what’s already on the mediadefender.com website. I’m worried about someone interviewing for a position just for the purpose of getting more info to post online. For example, if anyone asks anything about MiiVi, just reiterate what Randy has said online (it was an internal video project that we probably should have password protected; we were in no way directed to, or working with, the MPAA on that project; NO part of the project was a honeypot designed to trap downloaders).

 It’s certainly suspicious that Grodsky had to reiterate to the company that “NO part of the project (MiiVii.com) was a honeypot designed to trap downloaders.”

While the authenticity of the e-mails certainly cannot be verified, it seems unlikely that anyone would fabricate 700MB (134MB compressed) worth of emails; a quick read over the emails is certainly enough to make anyone believe they’re real.

The source of the emails were masked by an alias, so as to protect the good name of the people who leaked the information; however, a little research and intuition will reveal the source (which has held these e-mails for over a month now).

• Oh, the irony!: The Pirate Bay uses MediaDefender’s leaked emails to launch criminal case
• MPAA’s Media Defender sets up ‘fake’ site to catch pirates
• Media giants hire MediaDefender to hack torrent servers
• Media Defender up to old tricks? P2P.net just purchased
• MediaDefender suffers another blow, as anti-piracy tools leaked