HBO also noticed this bonus episode through its anti-piracy partner Marketly and took action in response. A takedown notice posted in the Lumen Database shows that the company asked Google to remove an “infringing” link to the non-existent release earlier this week.
They’re claiming to own the copyright to the Trojan horse?
I think they’re issuing a take down notice for using the name and posing as them.
“Takedown notice” has legal meaning, it’s not some random cease-and-desist letter that you can draft for anything you want and that has no legal weight other than that it might be scary.
Using someone else’s IP, such as claiming that something you’re distributing is an episode of their show, most certainly qualifies for a valid DMCA takedown notice.
DMCA is about copyright (that’s what the “C” is). The name of a show isn’t copyrighted, it’s trademarked. Different type of IP altogether.
Suspect Sonarr users didn’t have any issues, as it wouldn’t have gone looking for an episode 9.
Indeed, it’s only showing 8.
They need to go through tvdb anyway and then it would need to be added by a user. Afaik it takes a while to be propagated to sonarrs skyhook/tvdb integration.
Mindlessly downloading an episode that doesn’t get a mention on the wiki page is amateur hour.
The torrent was titled as .mkv (normal and expected) but the actual file was .lnk (not normal)… so you would have had to open a weird random .lnk file to activate the trojan?
Windows hides extensions by default.
Unhiding extensions is one of the first things I do when setting up windows, but it will still hide the .lnk extension on shortcuts, so it’s still a vector for phishing attacks (specifically, tricking the user to do something that runs malicious code).
Experienced pirates will get into the habit of taking precautions against malware attacks and will distrust downloads until they are sufficiently vetted,
The comments from obvious teenagers on 1337x on pretty much every torrent suggests that a lot of people do this
Basic computer usage skill level does seem to be in decline, doesn’t it lol.
I believe the torrent included both an .mkv and a malicious .lnk file.
.lnk files are dangerous because they can evade detection and automatically open other files or executable on a computer; AFAIK you would not have had to open the .lnk file yourself.
I wonder if an automated setup would play it without caring about the extension. If someone had something like Sonarr dropping episodes on a Plex drive, for example.
Well, the good news is that it wasn’t actually another episode.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think entities that deliberately spread and use malware should be punished and held accountable. Too bad these entities help write the laws.
Anybody got a link?
Link for what?
Episod
