Anti P2P Organization Blocking

• File sharing notes on The Technology Muse
• Systems

The tools used to keep you safe when downloading from file-sharing networks can be used by the organizations to snare you!



Simply blocking the access to a peer list that comprises a torrent download does not stop ANYONE accessing the same .torrent and viewing the list of those participating in file sharing. Above is a peer list from an active download showing a list of peers that were currently connected to the "pool". If an "Anti P2P" organization were to be connected to this "pool" using an IP obscuring software program you would see their FALSE IP address along with your OWN. If this list were to be used to reverse look-up these IP address's you can be identified (unless you are also using a program to obscure your IP.

Aircrack Windows XP VMWare Player

This is aircrack-ng running on an Asus 1000HE Windows XP Netbook running a Debian Linux Virtual Appliance in VMWare Player.

Shown is the airoscript console. Connection to the wireless adapter in the Netbook has been established as this screen-shot was mailed from this machine.

Experiments with packet sniffing and injection can now be started.

The Host operating system is Windows XP Home, the o/s that the Asus was supplied with. The virtual appliance was downloaded and configured using VMWare Player. A torrent package of Mac OS Leopard contained a copy of VMWare Workstation 6.5.1-126130.exe - but this was not used for this configuration.

Pages relating to Aircrack-ng on this blog:

• Aircrack for Windows
• CoWPAtty for Windows

Downloading VMWare Player:

• VMWare website - VMWare Player - I recommend that you download the player from the VMWare website, the authors of the player rather than a 3rd party download site.

Performing a Reverse IP Look-up

• How your individual computer can be identified by an APO
• Is a VPN useless for torrent anonymity?

There are many on-line services that allow you to get a first order idea of where an IP address is located.

Shown below is a peer list taken from a uTorrent client that was seeding the movie Deep Impact.

Taking the first in the list it appears that the P2P downloader is located on a network run by a company in Saudi Arabia.

If you click on the image above and scroll down you will see the contact information for this ISP. THIS IS WHAT AN ANTI-P2P ORGANIZATION WOULD DO!

If the ISP keeps records of who has been assigned an IP address, they can and they do, they can be forced to hand over your personal details if served with a court order. In the case shown here it is not clear whether the copyright owners for the movie in question would have any authority in Saudi Arabia.

If you are using a service to obscure your IP address, like BTGuard or TorrentPrivacy, then their IP address will appear in the list. Consequently if they are served with a court order they also are legally bound to hand over your details. In the case if BTGuard they are based in Canada - TorrentPrivacy, on the other hand are in the Russian Federation and further removed from the legal systems of North America and the movie houses.

If you are using a service such as PeerBlock (Peer Guardian II) ALL THAT HAPPENS IS THAT THE IP ADDRESS OF THE ANTI-P2P ORGANIZATION WILL NOT APPEAR IN THE LIST SHOWN AT THE TOP. This does not mean that they are not there, watching your every move they are just using an IP address that not known as hostile and placed in the block list.

• Saskatoon company has solution to bootlegged music - This was 17 July 2003 (you think things might be different in 2012? ****)
• Other links to IPv6 and anonymity here

**** Wayne McAlpine, the person who claims to have the solution to tracking down pirates is the same person who has been trying to work out who I am for well over a year! He accused me of being a "nobody", well if this is supposed to be an example of how he is "somebody" I for one are not impressed. There is little wonder that there was little interest in his solution:

"There's many things that people get away with every day;" McAlpine said. "The music industry complains there's a $38 billion loss each year. That's a sizeable amount of income. And I think if they were really honest about addressing it they would probably look at things more open-armed."

Wayne McAlpine is obviously not to be taken as an authority when it comes to things related to technology. In fact he is particularly sensitive to "bad" things said about him on the Internet.

Microsoft Virtual PC vs. VirtualBox

Although Windows 7 has the new and improved Microsoft Virtual-PC so that it can run XP-Mode it is not as "polished" as Sun's VirtualBox (and of course, VMWare is likely to be even more so - as it is a "paid" solution - VMPlayer is free but lacks some of the features of the full product).

Virtual-PC, for Windows 7, is supposedly a vast improvement on Virtual-PC 2007, there are enhancements that have been made to the Integration Features (in that USB devices are now accessible from the virtual machine), however, these are pretty much limited to Windows guest operating systems - the use with a Linux guest is not as slick (full screen mode, cursor capture etc.).

VirtualBox on the other hand, has a full suite of Guest Additions that allow both Windows and Linux to operate in a 'Seamless Mode'.

From the Microsoft faq page for Virtual PC the following observations are made about Virtual PC as compared to VirtualBox:

• Support for XP-Mode to 2014
• Needs AMD-V or VT - (VirtualBox does not)
• Cannot support a 64 bit guest - (VirtualBox does)
• Is aimed at small businesses (larger enterprises are supposed to use MED-V)
• 3-D graphics, audio, and TV tuners, do not work well under virtualization today. - so it not available on Home Premium (This is especially true of the Microsoft virtualization product!)
• XP-Mode is a free download of a fully licensed copy of XP SP3 (in 7) - but a copy of XP is easy to find if you look
• MED-V is built on Virtual-PC (one wonders if it has similar limitations?)

In short, Virtual PC has a ways to go. But kudos to Microsoft for sparking the interest in a better product!

PS - a search for: "ubuntu 9.10 screen resolution under ms virtualpc 2007 800" hit this blog - the screen resolution under VirtualPC (The new one!) sucks as compared to VirtualBox.

You can find a more in-depth discussion of this topic and the use of VirtualBox on my website www.tempusfugit.ca

Links:

• All pages relating to Virtualization on The Technology Muse
• How to configure Virtual Box to run DVD43 in Windows 7 XP-Mode
• XP-Mode can be Broken 

vboxadditions autorun sh

•  VirtualBox and VMs on The Technology Muse

How to add Virtualbox Guest Additions

Simply click on the autorun.sh icon in the filemanger view of the vboxadditions.iso (attached in settings)

See my earlier post: "Setting the display resolution in a Virtual Karmic Koala" for more screen-shots of this.

You will not see the Guest Additions CDROM if you have not attached it and hence you will not see all the files contained on it - these include those for Windows - 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems.
The guest additions .iso is to be found in the virtualbox directory on the host computer.

airpwn - Wireless Script Injection

A search was observed for: "airpwn Jaunty Jackalope 9.04  ubuntu" or a variation of such words. The antics of those who think that it is a "hoot" to inject porn into others wireless access.

"...... is a little app for packet injection into live stream... very good to play prank on ur network wifi users." 

The existance of this application for Aircrack came to my attention after the observation of a search in my web logs.

The reference here is for archival reasons. The Technology Muse is not really interested in pursuing "phoning goats" *****

Quote from SourceForge:

Airpwn is a framework for 802.11 (wireless) packet injection. Airpwn listens to incoming wireless packets, and if the data matches a pattern specified in the config files, custom content is injected "spoofed" from the wireless access point. From the perspective of the wireless client, airpwn becomes the server.

***** "Phoning Goats" is what you would do from a mobile running airpwn.

• Download the Airpwn script
• airpwn on SourceForge dot net
• DEFCON 12 antics
• wireless packet injection - 14 Feb 2011, nw.nuvox.net

Copy Protection and methods used to protect Copyright

How to overcome DRM and backup the things that you own. The methods used by Copyright owners to protect their intellectual property.

• DRM and its circumvention - a general discussion on the methods that I have discovered
• ACTA and other International agreements related to copyright protection
• The DMCA - Digital Millenium Copyright Act
• PIPA and SOPA
• The issue of IP rights - 2012
• Bill C-11 - An Act to amend the Copyright Act (Canada)
• Anti Peer-top-peer organizations
• The use of DVD43 on a 64 bit computer
• Copying DVDs and Blu-ray discs (BD)

Cancelling your Business Number [BN]

If you registered a business to collect and submit GST/HST and you are no longer doing business, then you can cancel your Business Number

CRA Forn RC148

• Request to Close Business Number (BN) Accounts  - form RC145

Acer Posts

Posts on The Technology Muse relating to Acer notebooks and computers.

• Acer Downloads ../techwatch.ca/acer_downloads.html
• Acer Revo AR3610-E9032 Review
• Acer Aspire 3050  and the installation of XP and a dual boot - the fact that it should never have been shipped with Vista and that it works very well under Windows 7.
• Drivers for the AMD C-60 APU with the Radeon™ HD 6290
• AMD Fusion Utility Recovery

Setting the display resolution in a Virtual Karmic Koala

The default resolution for Karmic Koala is only 800 by 600

The trick to setting the resolution to higher than this is to install the Guest Additions and to follow some of the advice that you will find on the web. After considerable to'ing and fro'ing and a few restarts the contents of the VBoxAdditions.iso should look like this below:




After you get to this stage you can either adjust the screen resolution in the same manner as you would in a non-virtualized setup or you can add entries to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file - either way, it turned out to be successful.



The guest additions iso is found in the VirtualBox directory on the host machine as seen above:

UPDATE:

Having performed the same setup on a Windows 7 machine (the original was on a Vista box) - it seems that the xorg.conf file did not need to be edited directly.


After the Guest Additions iso was attached correctly - clicking on the Autorun.sh icon and letting the VirtualBox Guest Additions package to extract and install itself - restarting Karmic, the resolution automatically corrected itself and the option for Seamless Mode is now available from the VBox Machine menu.

Attaching a USB DVD Drive in VirtualBox

This is an example of adding a DVD drive to Windows XP so that DVD43 can recognize it:



The USB devices shown above are not DVD drives but the technique is the same. When the USB drive sucessfully attaches DVD43 will scan it and defeat the CSS encryption if the DVD loaded in the drive is copy protected.

Links:

• All posts related to Virtualization on the Technology Muse
• Comparing the VirualBox VM to XP-Mode 

COD - Modern Warfare 2

Is officially released today.

It will be interesting to see if there are lot of agents from Activision Publishing, Inc. monitoring the torrent peer lists.

This cannot be anything but good news for those that run identity clocking sites and VPNs

I see that there are already torrents out there on the p2p sites and it looks like there are other hazards other than getting sued for illegal downloads of the copyrighted games. You might even have got banned for playing the game before it was released.

Stealth files and class - are new concepts to me - but then I am not a gamer.

What you see if you turn off VT in BIOS

This is what you see with Virtual Box trying to run a 64 bit guest:


This is what you see for Windows 7 Virtual-PC trying to load XP-Mode


Both VMs have been successfully configured with AMD-V (SVM) enabled in BIOS - you will not be able to configure the VMs shown above if your processor or BIOS does not allow you to enable virtualization.

The Sun VirtualBox will run a 64 bit guest o/s ONLY if AMD-V or Intel VT is present and enabled. Microsoft Virtual-PC can ONLY host a 32 bit guest irrespective of the virtualization capabilities of the system.
In addition, the Sun VirtualBox will host a 32 bit guest even though virtualization techologies are not present.
This means that if you have a licensed copy of 32 bit XP you can run XP in a VM using VirtualBox on a Windows 7 64 bit o/s machine and then run DVD decryption programs such as DVD43.

VT-x/AMD-V settings in VirtualBox for Ubuntu Server 64 bit guest

Virtualbox and Virtual-PC Compared

• Virtualization on The Technology Muse
• Virtualbox setup
• Ubuntu Linux

I have configured Virtual Machines using VirtualBox, VMWare and Microsoft's Virtual-PC (2010). As such I can make an informed comparison between the methods.

Below is a shot of 2 instances of Karmic Koala and an XP-Mode VM running in 7 Prof 64



This was an experiment to see if I could get Karmic to run in a resolution greater than 800 by 600. To give MS credit, the VirtualGuy (Benjamin Armstrong - Senior Program Manager Lead Windows Virtualization MSFT) he did have a solution that almost worked.

I failed to follow Benjamin's advice:
Please note - I really encourage you to enable undo disks before messing with xorg.conf - as it can be really painful to recover from mistakes if you make them here. Annoyingly, once you make this change - you cannot use the Display widget under Ubuntu to change resolution (it will mess the system up completely).

I did manage to get the MS Virtual-PC to start to run in 1280 by 1024 but then everything went "pear shaped"

Also a note from the VirtualBox help file is relevant to this post and other previous discussions:

"VirtualBox does not require hardware virtualization features to be present. Through sophisticated techniques, VirtualBox virtualizes many guest operating systems entirely in software. This means that you can run virtual machines even on older processors which do not support hardware virtualization."

This answers a question from before whether AMD-V of Intel VT is necessary for virtualization using VirtualBox. In my case it is run on a machine that does have AMD-V (SVM) enabled.
I will post my results of VirtualBox with SVM turned off in BIOS.

Why choose AMD over Intel

In these days of "over-performance" specifications it is not a question of "who's best", it is more of a moral issue.

Intel need to be taught a lesson - they may or may not be guilty of all the charges of "bully" tactics with the pc manufacturers but the facts speak for themselves. The predominance of Intel powered product on the shelves and the fact that AMD processors are generally in lower-end pcs is self-evident.

The consumer is well aware of the fact that if something costs more it is better. Well, consider this: If Intel threaten HP that they will cause a shortage of parts if they allow their product line to contain more that 5% of AMD processors then they can charge pretty much what they like for those parts! No wonder AMD powered pcs are cheaper, AMD have to discount their parts just so they are included in the product range.

Norton (Symantec)

Norton now generally known as Symantec, are one of the first names in A-V and security products.

wmp300n-windows-7-64-bit

Re-post

• wmp300n for win7 64bit - 6 July 2012, Kyiv, Ukraine. 

XP-Mode Hardware Requirements

Unlike the page on Tomshardware the requirements are NOT particularly stringent!

All you need is a microprocessor that supports virtualization and a motherboard that allows it BIOS to use it!

As for the endless discussion about the relative merits of Dual Booting or Virtualizing........
Microsoft advertised that it was an option and the consumer WANTS IT!

The Intel T4200 and T4300 do not support this!