Cracker for MPAA left out in the cold
By Egan Orion
October 22, 2007 - 1:10 PM

THE COLD WAR between Hollywood studios and file sharers recently spun a tale of intrigue that reads like a John Le Carré spy story, as Wired tells it. Having had his pitch for an online advertising campaign with Torrentspy founder Justin Bunnell fall through, marketeer Robert Anderson then approached the MPAA to build an anti-piracy marketing programme for the other side.

Since he knew all about Bittorrent and file sharing, he also offered to conduct a bit of industrial espionage against Torrentspy. He said, "It was an opportunity to make money, because I knew how these networks operated." The 23 year-old marketing consultant turned cracker had hacked into Torrentspy's email system by guessing an administrative password. He inserted code to intercept and forward all of Torrentspy's emails to his Gmail account.

The MPAA, losing its long-running struggle against online file sharing that it calls "piracy", was more than willing to talk with Anderson. He said the MPAA told him, "We would need somebody like you. We would give you a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything you needed.... if you save Hollywood for us you can become rich and powerful."

So encouraged, Anderson stole dozens of Torrentspy emails containing banking, business and other information, including passwords and the source code for Torrentspy's backend software. The MPAA was very keen to get the software, Anderson said, because it wanted to set up a fake Bittorrent site to infiltrate and disrupt the online file sharing community.

The Inquirer
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