Security expert Graham Cluley identifies possible Mac attack

If you have any interest in the sporting world, you undoubtedly have heard about the recent video depicting an exposed Erin Andrews--a high-profile sports reporter for ESPN--filmed through a peephole at her hotel room. This video is now being tied to security issues on both PCs and Macs.

Although, as Graham Cluley notes, Ms. Andrew's lawyers have threatened lawsuits for any Web site distributing the video, several sites have set up pages claiming to offer the footage. Cluley writes on his blog:

"And - surprise surprise - if you visit those webpages you could be putting the security of your computer at real risk. For instance, in the video I have made I show how a website has been set up to look like a genuine CNN video page - but in fact, it tries to fool you into thinking that your browser's popup blocker has prevented the peephole video from playing and tries to make you download a malicious program.

Your popup blocker has blocked access to the Video Player. To view your video, please launch the Live Video Player below.

It's not just this bogus CNN webpage though - there are lots more sites out there pretending to host the Erin Andrews peephole video, but really hosting malicious software."

For Mac users Cluley has identified the malware as the blog post regarding the Erin Andrews video.

Well, I’m not trying to get anyone to download it, but it is easily available on “The Pirate Bay” BitTorrent site... (a P2P client piece of software required, which is free).

And you won’t find any trojans or viruses there, because users tag that right away and it’s deleted from the site. If something has been up for any longer than a day, you’ll get comment on the “torrents” that say there is a problem.

While I know in some parts of the Internet that viruses and trojans exists for various things, I suspect that many of these types of warnings are designed to keep some users *away from* some files and stuff like that... LOL...

I only heard about the file yesterday, from some other thread on Free Republic, but apparently this file has been out on the Internet for months.

> Incidentally, this is not just a Apple Mac Trojan attack, it also downloads a Windows PC Trojan if that is your OS...

Yeah, but PC attacks are yawners, while Mac attacks are Big News!!!

Except that of course this is a USER ATTACK:

"You wish to see porn. Please download this software to view the porn."

Well, d-uh...

> It is just another version of the CODEC TROJAN that's been around for a long time.

And at this rate will remain around for a long time...

You asked — How does someone find out how to use pirate bay and is it legal?

—

Peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading/uploading is legal, it’s how you use it that makes something legal or illegal. If you download some music from the Beatles that someone else uploaded, that would be considered illegal. If you downloaded something that is freely distributed, and doesn’t have restrictions, then that’s not illegal. And things may vary from country to country.

If you’re using a Macintosh, try “Transmission” an open source P2P program. It’s free. That’s your download/upload client.

The website that allows you to find “torrents” (what those files are called that people upload/download is...

http://piratebay.org/

It’s based in Sweden (if I remember correctly) and they have more liberal laws regarding how this website can operate. Thus, they, themselves don’t get into trouble.

The idea for how people use it is that the “files” are actually on other people’s computers and you’re accessing just that file and getting “pieces” of the file from several different computers. For one download that you make, it’s sort of expected that you’ll allow it to be uploaded to others for “three times” (i.e., three times the size of the file, which would be the equivalent of you allowing three people to get the file from you). You have control over those parameters and you can specify how you want to allow that to be done.

Also, you can limit upload bandwidth and download bandwidth, on a file-by-file basis if you want or limit it globally, across all files that you have.

And your whole computer and all its files are not accessible by this program, but only the specific files that you very specifically designate, and they have to be done in a special format (i.e, a “torrent”) in order for it to be done. So, it’s limited to just that program and no other files on your computer.

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