‘The Hobbit’ Most Pirated Film of 2013

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‘The Hobbit’ Most Pirated Film of 2013

As 2013 nears its conclusion we follow up our most pirated TV-shows chart by taking a look at the most pirated movies of the year. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out on top, and aside from other usual suspects such as box office hits Iron Man 3 and Fast and Furious 6, the list has a few notable absentees.

With well over eight million downloads The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey leads our list of most-shared movies on BitTorrent networks in 2013.

Django Unchained and Fast And Furious 6 are not far behind, coming in at second and third place respectively.
As is the case every year, the top 10 list has a few notable absentees in 2013. The top grossing The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is missing for example, and Man of Steel didn’t make the cut either.
Gangster Squad is perhaps the biggest surprise in this year’s list, as it grossed the least of all films, $105,200,903 worldwide.
The list shows that movie piracy remains popular, especially for films that are not yet available for download or streaming due to release delays.
Whether all these pirated downloads threaten box office revenues is unclear though. Previously researchers found no evidence that BitTorrent piracy hurts US box office returns.
And indeed, with roughly $11 billion in revenues the U.S. box office is about to close its best year in history. That said, DVD sales, rentals and on-demand services are perhaps more likely to be impacted.
Below we have compiled a list of the most-pirated films on BitTorrent networks in 2013. The data is estimated by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers. Files downloaded between January 1st and mid-December are counted, which means that the list has a bias towards films that were released earlier in the year.
It is worth noting that online streaming and cyberlocker downloads are not included since there are no public sources to draw data from. The total piracy numbers will therefore be significantly higher.

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2013 Results: Most Pirated TV Show
Added: Saturday, January 4th, 2014

Game of Thrones has become the most pirated show once again, with almost 6 million downloads via BitTorrent. It is followed by Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Over 50% of downloads occurred in the first week after Game of Thrones aired, and the total exceeds the number of traditional viewers in the United States. Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead accounted for 4.2 and 3.6 million downloads accordingly. Another piracy record broken by Game of Thrones is more than 170,000 people sharing a copy of an episode simultaneously.



There are lots of reasons why Internet users prefer to pirate TV shows. The industry experts admit that HBO can be blamed for the massive piracy, as it keeps access to the show “exclusive” – even Netflix couldn’t buy the rights for any price.

However, the huge number of illegal downloads don’t bother the series’ makers all that much – instead, they admitted that piracy generated much-needed “cultural buzz” around Game of Thrones. In addition, CEO of HBO’s parent company stated that piracy brought more subscriptions for Time Warner and that the title of “most-pirated” is “better than an Emmy”.

In the meantime, the creators of The Walking Dead claimed that illegal downloads aren’t necessarily the blessing and don’t develop a habit to pay for it. Actually, they have a point, because it isn’t always easy for existing pirates to give up their habit – not even when the legal options appear and free. For instance, The Walking Dead was downloaded massively in the United States, despite the fact that AMC streamed it for free.

Apparently, this debate about whether online piracy is good or bad for movies and TV shows will continue throughout 2014, and beyond.

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Not So Anonymous VPN Uses Edward Snowden For PR

Ernesto
January 1, 2014


After the Snowden revelations interest in privacy services including VPNs has skyrocketed. This hasn’t gone unnoticed to HideMyAss, one of the largest VPN providers, who are now using Snowden’s name to promote their product. Some may think that’s a clever move, but it is rather ironic since HideMyAss previously handed over personal details of a Lulzsec member to the U.S. Government.

HMA-logoOver the past couple of months the revelations of Edward Snowden’s leaks have dominated the news.

As a result, interest in anonymity services such as Tor and VPNs has increased as even regular Internet users don’t like the idea of being monitored.

The increased demand for privacy has given an enormous boost to many VPN providers, many of which claim they can protect users from the prying eyes of “monitoring” outfits, to a certain degree.

One VPN service takes its response one step further, as it explicitly uses Snowden’s name for PR purposes. As can be seen below, the popular VPN HideMyAss lists a screenshot of an account with the username ESnowden in the App Store.

This ESnowden is apparently trying to connect to a United States IP-address from Russia, a reference to the current location of the NSA leaker.

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How Anti-Piracy Trolls Tried and Failed to Ruin Christmas

Andy
December 25, 2013


Copyright trolls do not care about people. Copyright trolls do not care about family life. Copyright trolls do not care if they ruin someone’s reputation. What copyright trolls care about is money, as much money as they can get their greedy hands on. Nevertheless, some people have been standing up to them and today they will enjoy the fruits of their patience, sharing Christmas day with family and spending their money on those who matter.

xmastrollFor the last couple of years TorrentFreak has run semi-regular articles on the efforts of GoldenEye International, an adult movie outfit affiliated with the Ben Dover porn brand and one that realized there’s money to be made from the bullying game.

Just like most other trolls their business model is simple. Send threatening letters to ISP account holders telling them that they have been caught watching some pretty embarrassingly titled movies and inform them that paying a cash settlement is the only way to remedy the situation.

TorrentFreak invited people targeted by the company to contact us and over the past year we’ve had a steady stream of terribly worried individuals email us with requests for information. The more of these emails you read, the more you appreciate the scale of the heartbreak for all of those involved.

At this point we should be clear – some people we spoke with clearly knew more than they were prepared to admit and some probably did download some content without permission. However, many others obviously did not and when you come across these cases you can see that companies like GoldenEye really do not give a damn about who they hurt, and they will brush off collateral damage like it doesn’t exist.

If GoldenEye only took the time to speak to the people that we have, they might see what their threats are doing. One retired lady we spoke with said she had no idea what she was going to do. Threatening court action, GoldenEye had demanded around £500 for a movie she is extremely unlikely to have been interested in. The only money she had in the world was around £1,500 in savings and now this company wanted a third of that.

One young man told us that his parents had gone crazy when his father, as the bill payer, had been accused of downloading porn. Trying to protect himself against the wrath of his wife, the finger of blame naturally got pointed by the father at his son who in turn contacted us, desperate for a solution to clear his name. Another told us how his mother could no longer cope after receiving a third letter asking for money despite her innocence.

In cases like these where we believe that people have been wrongly accused we are more than happy to help. Throughout the year we corresponded with a couple of dozen individuals, half a dozen or so on a regular basis, in order to keep pace with their cases.

And guess what?

Of those who stuck in their heels, stood by their principles and refused to pay, GoldenEye stopped threatening 100% of them. After the initial three or four letters bounced back and forth, the company backed off, a characteristic of most bullies when they realize their intended victim is refusing to become one.

As a result, today these people are able to enjoy Christmas with their families. Rather than finding themselves £500 in the hole in order to finance GoldenEye’s Christmas party or Ben Dover’s festive lunch, that money is being spent were it should be.

“The final letter GoldenEye sent said that they were going to review my case and then make a decision on whether they were going to proceed or not. At that point I started to understand what was going on finally,” says ‘John’, a recipient of a £500 threat letter.

“GoldenEye are a company who just send letters to people to try and threaten and bully them into paying money, but do not take it any further. It was just like a game of poker to me as they were bluffing all the time so I played the game and won as I didn’t back down to their demands.”

“I am relieved I don’t have to pay any money to them as I don’t have that kind of money to give away. I can get on with my own life now without the extra worry of dealing with these legal scam artists,” he continues. “I am not letting people like this get what they want from me. They have to fight me in court if they want their money.”

Sure, it’s likely that GoldenEye have managed to get payments from a lot of people this year, but their complete lack of compassion has been hit head on by those who refused to give in. And for those people, Christmas this year will be all the more special.

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Erasable Web Could Harm Google
Added: Thursday, January 2nd, 2014

This year, a small application Snapchat managed to put the fear into Google and even government spooks. The app quickly became popular amongst teenagers and college students as it sent messages, pictures and captions which disappear a few seconds after being opened.



The fears were that such self-destructing made all sorts of things possible, including the end of the power of Google. Although it will probably die out like most teen fads, the enormous success shows that there’s a demand for a type of message which, when opened, can never be seen again.

Snapchat messages can’t be searched, intercepted, stored or found by anyone, and the suggestions are that in 2014 we’ll start to see the rise of the erasable web. Apparently, it would effectively be a more private network, without the fear of every ill-considered photo turning up to haunt your job interviews. Although it might be less useful and impractical as a method to store old pictures or data, other less legally friendly and secure application will emerge.

Today the industry is spouting about how important mass storage on the cloud is, but at the same time it might appear that there’s a new market in getting data off the Internet. How can this harm Google? Today the search engine depends on snuffling as much information as it can on users to serve them up adverts. Once people start sending messages through systems that cannot be monitored and indexed, Google loses a lot of its magic ability. Although the tech giant still will be able to search traditional Internet pages, its personal edge of knowing everything about users will be lost.

With the pressure towards no-tracking and other privacy moves the tech giant is on a back foot fighting a trend away from information collection and into data privacy. Some industry observers predict that 2014 will be the beginning of a war between big data and secret data, and Google may lose this fight.

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Syrian Hackers Broke into Skype
Added: Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

The hacker group loyal to Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad has recently managed to break into the online calling service Skype. A few days ago the Syrian Electronic Army published the contact information of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, suggesting that someone might want to call him.

It seems that the Syrian Electronic Army is upset that the tech giant is monitoring all Skype calls for the American spooks. Although most people would consider this outrageous, it doesn’t tend to generate so much outrage as what else Syria can do.

A message published on Skype's official Twitter feed on the first day of the year, apparently by the hacking group (as it included hashtag #SEA), recommended people not to use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), as those were monitoring all accounts and selling the data to the governments.

Messages like those were also posted on Skype's official Facebook pages and on its website blog. Millions of people could see them before they were removed in late afternoon. However, the Syrian Electronic Army later tweeted out copies of that message "for those who missed it”.

It should be noted that this week a monitoring group claimed the death toll in Syria's civil war, which started three years ago as peaceful protests against 40 years of rule by Assad's family, had increased to at least 130,000.

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BBC Server Hacked by Russian
Added: Tuesday, January 7th, 2014


A Russian hacker breached a computer server at the BBC before Christmas to sell access to other hackers. The BBC’s security team admitted that it managed to secure the website only on the 28th of December, after it had been broken into via a server used to upload large files.


The intruder is known on the Internet as “HASH” or “Rev0lver”. He offered proof that he managed to break in by posting a screenshot of the server and files it contained on an underground forum and was trying to sell access on Christmas.

Security experts said that the hacker did not set a price for access to BBC server, but its value wasn’t the same as that of hacking credit card details. Although the BBC doesn’t store millions of credit cards, they still have something as valuable. Indeed, a person who is able to fabricate a news story could crash financial markets. For instance, when Syrian hackers managed to break into the Associated Press account in 2013 and faked a story about an attack on the White House, the American stock market dropped by 143 points in mere seconds.

Security experts admitted they often see high-profile companies like the BBC getting breached. The giants are targeted more because intruders can easily monetize their gains. In this case, it is unclear whether “HASH” found any buyers or stole any information, but very fact of being able to sell such access can be used as a bargaining chip to get control of other servers.

The attack was carried out against a server which is used for file uploads and downloads from the BBC. Getting access can be only a first step to taking control of a server and using it either to store stolen files and information or to create a command centre for large networks of targeted machined that in turn are used for spam and phishing attacks online. Although the Russian hacker was only offering access to an obscure FTP server, some potential buyers can see it as a way to access other assets within the BBC.

It is known that media companies have been targeted by the Syrian Electronic Army and other hacker activist groups which defaced websites and took over Twitter accounts. A year ago, The New York Times had been repeatedly attacked over 4 months by Chinese hackers who got employees’ passwords. It wasn’t the first attack for BBC either – back in 2012 the company was subjected to a hacker attack, allegedly from Iran, which knocked out its Persian service.

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Huawei Proved to Have Backdoors, Just Like Everyone Else
Wednesday, January 8th, 2014


Proof was found that products manufactured by the Chinese tech giant Huawei have backdoors which allow access to spying. Actually, this is why US Senators banned the company from taking US government projects - it had been claimed that Huawei was a tool of the Chinese military. The only problem was that the backdoors in the Huawei equipment were put there because American spooks wanted to spy on everyone - in other words, the Chinese tech giant was just doing what it was told.

It turned out that if you chose traditional and reliable US companies because of your fear of Chinese intrusion, they would have exactly the same backdoor installed. The researchers presented a snapshot of dozens of “zero-day” exploits used to spy on both American citizens and foreigners. It seems that the National Security Agency is able to use zero-day exploits to track communications passing via the switches and routers of all the world’s largest networking vendors, Dell Cisco, Juniper Networks and Huawei.

It was proved that Dell and HP servers also have a backdoor, and Apple and Samsung devices were not an exception. It looks like the backdoor is in the server hardware systems at the BIOS level.

In the meantime, the reports of the National Security Agency admit that such exploits work across servers running the Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and even Sun Solaris operating systems, which may give away the spook's plan - after all, how many terrorists are using Solaris?

The experts confirmed that Dell's best-selling PowerEdge servers (1850, 2850, 1950, 2950) all have a vulnerability which lets the NSA post spyware into the BIOS through either remote access or the inserting of a USB drive.

Similar NSA exploit, so-called GODSURGE, exploits a JTAG debugging interface in the Dell PowerEdge 1950 and 2950, which is normally used to test the BIOS/firmware for bugs. It turned out that it can also be used to reflash the BIOS from scratch.

Finally, HP’s Proliant 380DL G5 server can also be opened with IRONCHEF. The latter can extract information from the server via two-way RF communication.

Moreover, the National Security Agency has also developed an exploit for tapping Apple's iPhone dubbed DROPOUTJEEP and another for Vole's Windows Phone called TOTEGHOSTLY.

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Huawei is a chinese agency front company, spying on everybody, there chip is bug, the server have backdoor. yea ever one buy there cloud computer so they can read every thing, NSA has nothing on the chinese.

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Pirate Party Turns the Tables and Spies On Intelligence Agency

In an attempt to turn the tables on a local intelligence agency, several members of the Swedish Pirate Party’s youth division set up shop yesterday outside the headquarters of the Swedish NSA. Armed with a surveillance van the Pirates planned to listen in on one of the country’s most secretive outfits. Unfortunately for them they were unable to gather much data, as armed guards turned up quickly and threatened arrests.

Pirate parties worldwide are known for their aversion of both on- and offline surveillance.

So, when the Swedish Pirate Party found out that their local intelligence agency FRA was helping the NSA to spy on Russian leaders, something had to be done.

Turning the tables on the spying agency, three members of the Swedish Pirate Party’s youth division drove up to FRA’s headquarters yesterday, hoping they could find out more about the agency’s secretive plans.

“No politician or FRA executive wants to tell the public what they actually are doing. So we thought that we need to do a bit of signal intelligence ourselves,” Gustav Nipe, Chairman of Young Pirate tells TorrentFreak.

Armed with a large antenna the Pirates parked their purple van a few meters outside the FRA building. However, before they could set up their surveillance rig armed guards came rushing in to put a stop to their plans.


Ready to spy



The ‘spies’ were held for 45 minutes while their vehicle was searched, with the guards filming every minute detail. The pirates were eventually released, but not before they were warned that any attempt to activate their equipment would lead to their arrest.

Looking back, the Young Pirate chairman is surprised that they were approached this aggressively, as they were not trespassing or carrying out any other type of illegal activity. “Everybody is allowed to scan the air for signals in Sweden,” Nipe tells TorrentFreak.

“It’s clear that FRA have something to hide, otherwise they wouldn’t have sent armed guards at us,” he adds.


Spying on the spies



The Pirates hope that their actions have at least helped to raise public awareness about the secret surveillance practices, and the fact that those who are responsible refuse to explain what they are doing, and why.

“It is up to us citizens to try to find out what is going on. Who and what is FRA spying on? Our constitution states that all public power emanates from the people, but when we are not entrusted to know what is done with this power, we need to seek the answers ourselves,” Nipe concludes.

Perhaps a drone may come in handy next time? That worked pretty well for the German Pirate Party.