Security

MySpace's Leaked Photos More Popular Than Sweeney Todd

The 17-gigabyte file containing half-of-million photos pillaged from MySpace accounts made the Pirate Bay’s top-ten list of most popular downloads over the weekend, beating out pirated copies of No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd and the sci-fi flick I Am Legend. Sunday afternoon the file — compiled using a still-unacknowledged hole in MySpace’s architecture […]

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The 17-gigabyte file containing half-of-million photos pillaged from MySpace accounts made the Pirate Bay's top-ten list of most popular downloads over the weekend, beating out pirated copies of No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd and the sci-fi flick I Am Legend.

Sunday afternoon the file -- compiled using a still-unacknowledged hole in MySpace's architecture that exposed photos in private profiles -- was the 9th most popular download on the torrent site, with over 6,700 downloads in progress.

On Monday, though, the file's popularity plummeted as the first round of downloaders completed their transfers and found that the photos -- a mix of images from public and private profiles -- just weren't that interesting.

"Wedding, baby, party, wedding, baby, party, etc. Truly boring stuff," one disappointed downloader posted to the torrent's message board. "Anyone have that porn image recognition software? That would help a lot."

Another pirate offered a more positive review of the purloined pics. "There are countless great pictures in here like cross-dressing metal-heads," he wrote. "If you want porn, then download porn, idiots."

At Ed Felton's blog Freedom to Tinker, Felton wonders if "DMaul" -- the TribalWar.com user who compiled and later published the file -- might have been motivated by a desire to punish MySpace for leaving the hole open for over three months.

"This may be the most serious privacy breach yet at MySpace," Felton writes. "Kevin Poulsen's story at Wired News implies that the leak may have been deliberate payback for MySpace failing to fix the vulnerability that allowed the leaks"

Now suppose you know that a company’s product has a flaw that is endangering its customers, and the company is denying and delaying. There is something you can do that will force them to fix the problem -- you can arrange an attention-grabbing demonstration that will show customers (and the press) that the risk is real. All you have to do is exploit the flaw yourself, get a bunch of private data, and release it. Which is pretty much what DMaul did.

To be clear, Im not endorsing this course of action. I’m just pointing out why someone might find it attractive despite the obvious ethical objections.

DMaul compiled the images before MySpace fixed the bug, but didn't put them on BitTorrent until after. So unless DMail had plans to publish the file anyway, this isn't a case of somebody staging a splashy exploitation of a vulnerability in order hasten its closure.

DMaul did say he was trying to prove a point by publishing the photos, but his point wasn't that MySpace should fix its bugs faster, but rather, "It is ridiculous to think that there is privacy on public websites."

Some of the people downloading the file this weekend, though, were apparently motivated by "disgust at Myspace," as a user named "delton19" put it.

Another downloader named "blaine00" wrote, "I am now only downloading this to spite MySpace. I can see this is going to be half a million pieces of crap. But I'd like to go ahead and get it so I can help seed it out to the people that are going to download it no matter what comments they read."

"Sixbirdnine" added, "Maybe people will think twice about uploading personal info."

(Photo by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³)