IT Security & Network Security News & Reviews - eWeek

IT Security & Network Security News & Reviews: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Cyber-crime Edition

By Brian Prince on 2008-11-14


Software pirates are winning the battle against vendors on the high seas of the Internet. Such activity costs the software industry billions of dollars. V.i. Laboratories, which specializes in anti-piracy technology for software, took eWEEK on a brief tour of the piracy underworld. Here is a look at a piece of the software pirate economy.

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Here is a screenshot of a piracy index site listing. It features .nfo files for a variety of pirated content, including software, DVDs and pornography. The content is organized by piracy group and release date.

Here is another screenshot from the aforementioned indexing site. The .nfo files listed include information on cracked releases for products from a number of companies, including Microsoft, McAfee and Adobe.

An .nfo from the piracy group "TBE" (The Bitter End) shows the details of the cracked application. Typically,.nfo files promote and communicate how an application was cracked, as well as how to install the cracked application.

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