Major BitTorrent Adware distribution underway?

I got so much trouble on my mind - refuse, to lose!

Look what I found - none other than Marketing Metrix Group - they live! Yes, that's right - the guys behind the, er, wonderful BitTorrent Adware installers that kicked off World War Three not so long ago have returned. When we last saw them (old version of their frontpage here), their site had been hacked, their empire crumbled to the ground, the BitTorrent bundles pulled from networks at something approaching warp-speed and companies were posting apologies left, right and centre.

I'm not surprised, given that there were incorrect / flawed licence agreements, apparently unlicenced copyrighted mediafiles (whose licencing responsibility lay with the companies whose software was bundled....whoops!), and (of course) the potential underage-pornography that Dave Methvin discovered in his continued investigation of the BitTorrent madness.

Well, guess what - I don't know if this is a coincidence. I don't know if MMG are involved in this latest escapade. But I do know from a fellow security pro that there is a new BitTorrent distribution campaign underway, and it is something of a biggie from all accounts.

And I quote:

They appear to have set up several blocks of IP addresses hosted on different servers across the country. There were more than 100 computers seeding each file, and a lot of them appear to be controlled by...

...But that would be telling, wouldn't it?

This investigation is only just getting started - expect multiple sources to be dig, dig, digging up information left, right and centre on this one. Last time someone attempted this, I descended upon them like some rage-fuelled demon from the pits of Hell itself, such was my anger at what was being perpetrated. This time round, the files are likely to be licenced correctly, the notification will be better and I severely doubt there will be any illegal content. Nothing could possibly be as messed up as last time.

However...

That doesn't mean I agree with it. BitTorrent represents something much better than a place where money can be made - it represents a thought, an idea that can help the little people, the lesser companies and the poorer man in many, many ways. As Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent once said:

"Distributing stuff that is clearly illegal with BitTorrent is a really dumb idea," said Cohen, who advocates using the software to distribute large uncopyrighted files such as open-source programs. "BitTorrent doesn't have any anonymity features. There are things about it that make it very incompatible with anonymity."

Though this new content is likely not illegal, it doesn't mean I want to see it going on. After what happened last time, the mere mention of "Bit" followed by "Torrent" is enough to make my blood boil. Then throw in "Bundle" and you have Black Steel in the hour of Chaos.

And so it begins...