Albania Pirate Group thrown off Facebook for second time in a month

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Hackers who have been sharing information publicly on Facebook about how to break into computer systems have had their pages shut down for the second time in a month.

The Albania Pirate Group (APG) was first thrown off the social network earlier this month, after Sophos researchers contacted Facebook's Security Team.

Smarting slightly, the group appears to have attempted to regroup on Facebook - creating a new page and - again - openly sharing passwords of breached systems.

In the Facebook page we discovered yesterday, we found that the Albania Pirate Group had been posting details of Twitter accounts they had hacked, and usernames and passwords for RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) servers - making it simple for hackers to get unauthorised remote access to computer systems.

The RDP usernames and passwords which were posted on the Facebook page make for depressing reading - demonstrating that many people are using very poorly chosen passwords.

Sophos has contacted Facebook Security, which has promptly shut down the page.

Our thanks go to the Facebook security team for shutting down the page so promptly. Of course, this is something like a game of whack-a-mole for Facebook's security team, and it wouldn't be a surprise if the hacking group reared its head again.

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Facebook shuts down Albania Pirate Group, after stolen passwords shared

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It's easy to understand how hacking groups, involved in undercover cybercrime, might want to keep their activities hidden from the-powers-that-be and law enforcement agencies, and conduct their crimes in secrecy.

Which makes it all the more surprising when you stumble across a group apparently engaged in stealing and sharing login passwords for third party systems, doing so not just on a public-facing website, but on a page hosted by the world's biggest social network.

A reader of Naked Security, who works at a Yorkshire-based security company, contacted us last week to tell us about a particular Facebook page they had stumbled across belonging to the Albania Pirate Group.

On its Facebook page, 600+ fans and members of the Albania Pirate Group were sharing RDP (Windows Remote Desktop) logins, giving hackers unauthorised access to computer systems, and what appeared to be compromised banking details.

The potentially sensitive information was free for anyone to view, even if you hadn't "Liked" the page.

Curiously, the Albania Pirate Group has a similar logo to the Kosova Hacker's Group, who breached servers belonging to the US National Weather Service last month.

Sophos contacted Facebook, and within the hour the social network's security team had closed down the page.

Remember that pages and groups on Facebook are not pre-vetted, and anyone can create a page with ease and use it for illegal purposes. If you stumble across a Facebook page that you believe is involved in law-breaking or breaches the terms and conditions of the site, you should report it to Facebook.

Our thanks go to the Facebook security team for shutting down the page so promptly.

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The Pirate Bay gives thumbs-down on Anonymous DDoS attack on Virgin Media

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File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has denounced an Anonymous DDoS campaign that took down Virgin Media, calling it an "ugly" method that's no better than the UK court order for ISPs to block users from getting to The Pirate Bay.

On Tuesday, The Pirate Bay tweeted and posted to Facebook their disapproval.

The Facebook post recommends a list of actions that The Pirate Bay would much rather see - in essence, just about anything, including calling your mum, as opposed to DDoS or government-mandated site blockage:

The DDoS that rattled The Pirate Bay's bones was an Anonymous-branded outage imposed on virginmedia.com as payback for Virgin Media's having been the first ISP to comply with the court's command to block access to the file-sharing site.

The court order mandates the country's ISPs - Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media - to stop users from accessing the file-sharing site, which includes many torrent links to pirated movies, music and TV shows, as well as original music released and promoted exclusively on The Pirate Bay.

As far as the Anonymous DDoS goes, Virgin Media put out a statement that said the attack lasted one hour.

Virgin Media also reiterated that it didn't have a choice to block The Pirate Bay; rather, the government forced its hand.

From Virgin Media's statement:

As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour.

The irony of Anonymous's OpTPB is that the court-ordered block actually didn't seem to stop anybody from getting to the site - in fact, just the opposite.

As Sophos's Carole Theriault reported last week, the block was more like free advertising on all the major news outlets.

Thanks to all the coverage, The Pirate Bay actually walked away from the feeble, so-called block boasting 12 million more visitors than the site had ever seen.

The Pirate Bay opted to take advantage of the extra serving of eyeballs by giving tutorials on how to skirt censorship.

From their site:

"As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use googles DNS servers... we could go on..."

TorrentFreak, in reporting on the traffic boost, offers a wealth of additional tips to get around the block.

It's worth noting, of course, that pirating copyrighted material can get you into trouble. It's illegal.

A lot of people don't care. And a lot of those people are going to be provoked as more ISPs are forced to bend to the government decree.

That doesn't make ISPs the bad guys, though. ISPs like Virgin Media are just the middlemen. It won't help matters to take them down.

What might matter is advocacy, as The Pirate Bay suggests. Contacting your ISP to voice your opinion on the block could matter. Writing to politicians could matter.

The bonus? Those actions are legal.

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Pirate Party censored from helping people bypass Pirate Bay block

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The Pirate Bay and Pirate Party are big news recently, and the Dutch courts have turned on the spotlight on the issues of censorship, internet freedom and copyright infringement with this week's court rulings.

A court in The Hague has ruled that Dutch internet providers - UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile, and Telfort - follow the lead of dutch ISP big dogs, Ziggo and XS4ALL, and block users from accessing one of the world's biggest file-sharing sites, The Pirate Bay.

The court has also ordered that the Pirate Party, a political party in favour of free sharing of information and data, remove all links and workaround instructions on how to bypass the ISP block on The Pirate Bay.

The Dutch Pirate Party has been providing information and links to its visitors to help them circumvent the recent Pirate Bay ISP blocks.

Copyright lobby group BREIN foundation, a trade body looking after the interests of the Dutch recording industry, made the case that The Pirate Bay allowed file sharing without authors' consent. It then went after the Pirate Party for providing links to get around The Pirate Bay block.

The Pirate Party has been ordered by the courts "to cease & desist presenting direct links to other The Pirate Bay dedicated proxies".

An official Dutch Pirate Party article states:

Direct links to reverse proxies appear to be forbidden everywhere for the Pirate Party now, and on top of that, tpb.piratenpartij.nl is no longer allowed to hold any information, or even links to information, on how to circumvent the block. With copyright at its side, BREIN has been successful in literally censoring a political party from giving information on how to circumvent censorship itself.

The Dutch Pirate Party says that it is analysing the verdict to decide on its next steps, but that it now must comply with the ruling, "albeit under loud protest."

The post invites donations from its supporters to meet the €10,000 fine, should they want to see the site ignore the court ruling.

The Pirate Bay, which has an estimated 30+ million users, is designed to allow users to freely share files using torrents and peer-to-peer networks. The objective of block order is to limit access to the site's four-million-plus torrents of movies, music and TV shows.

You might expect the number of torrents to decrease after the initial court-ordered Pirate Bay blocks that ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL put in place. But University of Amsterdam researchers demonstrated that the blocks has had no impact on the number of BitTorrent pirates.

The Pirate Bay also said that they received a surge of traffic when bans were put in place.

UK ISPs - Virgin, Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2 - faced similar orders last week.

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file sharing image courtesy of Shutterstock
Dutch flag image courtesy of Shutterstock

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