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Scammers Exploit EU's Website to Advertise 'Pirate' SitesErnesto Van der Sar, 07 Dec 11:29 AM The European Commission is no stranger when it comes t

Scammers Exploit EU's Website to Advertise 'Pirate' Sites Ernesto Van der Sar, 07 Dec 11:29 AM The European Commission is no stranger when it comes to addressing the online piracy problem. Europe's governing body facilitates piracy research and helps to arrange voluntary anti-piracy agreements. In addition, it releases its own bi-annual list of notorious pirate sites. Most of these efforts aim to address external problems but this week we learned that the EU also has a piracy issue within its own ranks, one that deserves immediate attention. Scammers Exploit European Union Websites As it turns out, scammers have started to abuse the European Commission's official website to advertise dubious 'pirate' sites. These advertisements come in the form of PDFs which are uploaded through public EU portals. The abuse is broad and affects a variety of platforms. These include the Commission's "Joinup" initiative which bills itself as the "one-stop shop for interoperable, open, and free digital government ICT solutions." Other sections of the official European Union site are also affected, including the European Union Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON), the European Chemicals Society (ECHA), and the European community of adult learning professionals (EPALE). Thousands of 'Piracy' Ads TorrentFreak has found thousands of scammy PDF files on these sites that advertise 'free' access to copies of recent movies such as Black Adam, Nope, Enola Holmes, and Vesper. The documents are filled with keywords including the names of popular pirate sites such as 123movies and Fmovies. One example is shown below, but there are many others in circulation, all inviting people to click on the image which has an embedded link. "Are you looking to download or watch the new Nope online? Nope is available for Free Streaming 123movies. Nope full movie streaming is free here! Just click play below, and enjoy Nope streaming online – all without any registration or credit card required!" The links we followed point to gatto.fun, which looks like a piracy site. However, streaming or downloading anything seems impossible. Instead, it redirects to other scammy URLs that are branded as malicious by several anti-virus companies. It's not uncommon for scammers to lure people with fake pirated content but these advertisements are not commonly seen on government websites. The European Commission didn't immediately respond to our request for comment but is now aware of the problem since some of the PDFs have started to disappear. That said, plenty remain available at the time of writing. It's not immediately clear how the scammers uploaded these PDFs. It seems likely that they used public upload functionalities, instead of actually hacking the European Union sites. The EU's Joinup initiative currently informs visitors that it is no longer possible to create new accounts. This could in part be a temporary measure in response to the recent influx of scammers. SEO Gold The scammers have struck gold by exploiting the EU websites. These official portals are seen as authoritative by search engines such as Google. As a result, the scammy PDFs are now among the top results for several piracy-related queries. For example, when we searched for "watch vesper 2022 online for free" a scammy PDF on the European Chemicals Society website was the top result in Google. How many people fall for these dubious advertisements is unknown. Most people will probably recognize the scams right away. Then again, it requires only a few victims to make it worthwhile for the scammers. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Netflix and Disney Expand Australia's Piracy Blocklist With Dozens of Domains Ernesto Van der Sar, 06 Dec 09:59 PM Pirate site blockades are the preferred anti-piracy tool for many copyright holders around the world. This is also the case in Australia, where blocking injunctions are commonplace today. Today, a group of prominent movie companies including Disney, Netflix, and Village Roadshow, obtained the latest blocking order in Australia's Federal Court. 52 Pirate Sites, 92 Domain Names The blocking injunction, issued by Justice Nicholas, targets a broad mix of pirate sites. Many of these sites use variations of popular piracy brands, including YTS, Cuevana2, Movies123, and Tamilgun. The movie companies convinced the court that these sites, some of which have millions of estimated visits per month, are clearly copyright infringing. "[I]t is apparent from the evidence that the online locations facilitate copyright infringement on a large scale. Some act as proxy servers to other servers and some share Torrent files using the BitTorrent protocol," the order reads. The site operators were given the option to contest the blocking request but most didn't respond. The infringing activities continued and a blocking injunction is therefore warranted according to the court. This isn't the first injunction of this kind. Most popular piracy havens are blocked already, but Disney, Netflix, and other movie companies, regularly expand the list to make it harder for the general public to find alternative pirate sources. Mixdrop Injunction Today's injunction follows roughly two weeks after Justice Nicholas issued another order in favor of the movie companies. That one covered the popular cyberlocker Mixdrop. The Mixdrop injunction is the first to target a file-hosting service. According to complaints from rightsholders, the site encouraged people to upload popular content, paying affiliates as much as $1,000 a week, depending on the number of views they generate. Mixdrop has over 20 million estimated visits per month and the court order requires Australian ISPs to block the main domain name, Mixdrop.co, as well as several related domains and IP addresses. Graham Burke, chairman of Creative Content Australia, characterizes the Mixdrop injunction as an important victory. "Cyberlockers play a key role in the piracy ecosystem and this judgment will disrupt important criminal operators who facilitate pirated content via Mixdrop," Burke said. "Site blocking continues to be instrumental in the reduction of piracy in Australia. Ultimately though, it helps to keep consumers safe from the significant risks that come with accessing content unlawfully." Blocking Effectiveness? There's no question that site blocking helps to deter some casual pirates, but it's certainly no silver bullet. Earlier this year, a Creative Content Australia study found that blocking measures don't affect all pirates. A survey of Australian pirates revealed that roughly half of them encountered a blocked site. Of this group, roughly a third gave up their pirate hunt or found legal alternatives. The majority of the people who encountered a blocked site said that they would simply seek alternative pirate sites to find the content they were looking for. Intriguingly, most pirates don't appear to be very concerned about site-blocking measures. 58% of all adult pirates and 70% of all teen pirates actually agree that blocking pirate sites and apps is a good idea. That's easy to say, of course, once you know how to circumvent blockades. And indeed, the same survey found that VPNs and alternative DNS servers are commonly used in Australia, especially among persistent pirates. — A copy of Justice Nicholas' Mixdrop order can be found here (pdf). Today's blocking order (pdf) targets the following sites, some of which operated from multiple domains: – Xemovie – Moviecrumbs – 2kmovie – Freemoviesfull – Watchseriesstream – Openloadmovies – Nunuyy – HDToday – Azseries – 1movieshd – Tamilgun – Actvid – Watchfilm – 5movies – Cda-hd – Fullmovieshd4k – Kissmovies – Pttplay – Sockshare1 – Tvshows88 – Movies4u – Movieffm – Bestseries – Aa01 – Poppygreens – Yts-on – Icefilms – Solarmovie – Hindilinks4u – Projectfreetv – Ytsyify – Yts.land – Yts.zone – Yify.pl – Fboxtv – Olevod – Mudvod – Bemovies – Fbox.to – Showboxmovies – Soap2dayto – Tvseries – Watch0123movies – 123enjoy – 123films – 123unblock.us – 0gomovies.cm – Movies123 – Yes!movies – Dongphym – Movies123-online – Cuevana2 From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2022 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company