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Vietnam's Pirate Site Blocklist Quietly Adds Torrent SitesErnesto Van der Sar, 19 Jan 11:37 AM In recent years, Hollywood has played close attention

Vietnam's Pirate Site Blocklist Quietly Adds Torrent Sites Ernesto Van der Sar, 19 Jan 11:37 AM In recent years, Hollywood has played close attention to major pirate sites and services with connections to Vietnam. Representing rightsholders, MPA and ACE visited Vietnam last year to discuss piracy-related challenges with local authorities. The focus on Vietnam resulted in some progress. Anti-piracy coalition ACE previously shut down popular video piracy library 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator. Anime piracy giant Zoro.to fell too, although that one continues under new branding, supposedly with a fresh team of operators. It's clear, however, that Vietnam has Hollywood's full attention. The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is aware of the challenges too, as made clear in the most recent Special 301 Report. "In particular, online piracy, including the use of illicit streaming devices and associated piracy applications to access unauthorized audiovisual content, remains a significant concern," USTR wrote. Vietnam's Blocking Efforts While some believe that Vietnam's copyright enforcement arsenal is below par, the country does have a weapon the U.S. lacks. Site blocking is commonplace and widespread in the south-Asian country. The Vietnamese authorities are actively ordering site-blocking measures of varying degrees. Best known, perhaps, is the government's crackdown on gambling sites, which are deemed illegal in the country. More recently, however, sites have also been blocked for copyright infringement. A few months ago we highlighted that 1,000 domains were blocked for this reason in just 12 months. Interestingly, many of the larger movie and TV show streaming sites escaped this early wave. Blocking efforts mostly targeted live sports streaming sites, while other categories were left untouched. At least, for the time being. More Pirate Site Blockades Earlier this month, the Vietnamese authorities, in 'coordination' with ISPs, appear to have broadened their scope. There are reports of multiple torrent sites being blocked now, which TorrentFreak confirmed with a local resident. Names that are mentioned include anime site NYAA.si, torrent indexers TorrentGalaxy and 1337x, as well as the game release site FitGirl-Repacks. While results may vary between ISPs, our information suggests that a blocking notification isn't always shown. Sites simply become unreachable, with the DNS for some pointing to 127.0.0.1; effectively null routing the connection attempt. There is no mention of these new blocking efforts in local media that we're aware of. However, several people are discussing these and other problems on the Vietnamese forum VOZ. "Can anyone download on Fitgirl without having to turn on VPN? Even when I get the 1337x link, it won't let me download it, it's completely blocked," one user writes, with others confirming the problem. In other threads, similar blocking problems are discussed by VOZ users, all fairly recently. Recognized Threat To find out more, we reached out to Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communication, requesting more details on this apparent new blocking wave. Unfortunately, however, we didn't hear back. Jan van Voorn, head of the anti-piracy group ACE, has experience with Vietnam and informs us that the authorities have blocked quite a few sites over the past several months. Van Voorn further notes that ISPs have a commercial interest in blocking pirate sites and calls on the government to tackle local piracy syndicates "Content is becoming an important business model for the major ISPs in Vietnam. From our numerous meetings with them, it is apparent that they recognize the need to protect that content," Van Voorn tells us. "It is hoped that the Vietnamese government will also recognize the need to protect both local and international content rather than allow Vietnamese piracy syndicates to enrich themselves from this illegal act." These syndicates would include Fmovies, according to ACE's definitions. Interestingly, however, that popular movie streaming site isn't blocked by Vietnamese ISPs, according to our source. Transparency and Overblocking Unfortunately, there's not much transparency around the current pirate site blocking efforts in Vietnam. This makes it hard to get confirmation or provide an overview of all the sites that are blocked. The lack of transparency also makes it hard for the public at large to know what's going on. If a site is inaccessible, without a blocking notice, it remains guesswork whether it's downtime, technical problems, or an ISP blockade. Needless to say, this also makes it harder to spot overblocking incidents. For the gambling-related blocks, blocking is easier to spot. Visitors will see a banner, such as the one that's shown below, which includes the following warning. "Participating in gambling is a violation of the law. […] The police will save this access log for collection and processing! All information is sent to the relevant crime organization." This is a stark warning that should make prospective gamblers rethink their options. And not just gamblers either. Zooming in on the banner above shows that visitors to the popular GameFAQs website are blocked too. We would like to say that targeting GameFAQs can be classified as overblocking but, then again, that's a gamble. — Flag image credit. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Sky's Industrial-Scale Pirate IPTV Blocking Becomes a War of Attrition Andy Maxwell, 18 Jan 11:12 PM Last summer, UK broadcaster Sky obtained a High Court injunction that requires local ISPs to block pirate IPTV services illegally offering its content. Blocking injunctions aren't new or unusual but since limited information is made available to the public, anyone interested in the mechanisms involved and whether blocking is working must find out for themselves. We were able to determine the names of at least some of the targeted services, including BunnyStream, Enigma Streams, GenIPTV, CatIPTV, GoTVMix and IPTVMain. A more puzzling aspect, at least initially, relates to the dynamic nature of the injunction which allows Sky to choose when to apply blocking measures and for how long. The judge initially expressed concern that this would diminish the ability of the court to ensure that blocking remains proportional, and that aspects of the order could have an effect on the ISPs required to implement blocking. Unprecedented Blocking Measures The details of the judge's concerns remain confidential but, since the UK's other major ISPs didn't object to the proposals, the injunction was granted. After around five months of live blocking under this injunction, it seems reasonably safe to conclude that the sheer volume of blocking was one of the key concerns. In our report last November, we estimated that perhaps 400 domains/subdomains had already been blocked, but that was a) probably a low estimate and b) no indicator of what's happening now. As things stand this week, our best estimate is that Sky has blocked and/or is blocking over 4,500 domains/subdomains. By most standards, that is an incredible amount of blocking in such a short space of time. As far as static website blocking goes, nothing has ever come close, not even when new domains start appearing and only dynamic injunctions can handle the job. This certainly doesn't look like any ordinary job. Ordinary (and less ordinary) Domains While Sky has targeted many domains with an ordinary appearance, such as mainiptv.com, iptvmain.live, main-iptv.com, iptvmain.co.uk, geniptv.world, ky-iptv.com, mag.4k-beast.co, and gotvmix.org, the overwhelming majority are noticeably different. The dynamic injunction targeting the IPTV providers can adapt to new challenges; the domains shown above are an example of a challenge dynamic injunctions need to overcome. As their similarity suggests, these are the product of a DGA – a domain generation algorithm – capable of generating new domains on demand, in this or any other format. Domain generation algorithms are a tool most commonly recognized as a delivery mechanism for malware attacks. Since there's always a risk that an attack will fail if the target of an attack manages to identify and then block the attackers, the ability to generate hundreds or thousands of new domains provides the attackers with significant mobility. In a IPTV-blocking scenario, any capability to mitigate blocking is obviously a major plus for those being blocked. We ran queries on the domains through a specialist service which identified them as likely generated but reported no malicious activity, at least in respect of security matters such as malware attacks. Purpose of the Domains Investigating these domains is possible to an extent but, since almost all operate from behind Cloudflare in this case, direct methods produce limited and disproportionately time-consuming results. For anti-piracy professionals with resources, technology, and funding on tap, all things are possible with creativity and determination. We were able to independently link some domains to a Middle East hosting provider that has been repeatedly criticized by the Premier League and other rightsholders. In this case, an IP address first led to a company in London, which like its predecessor seems unlikely to last more than a year before reappearing under a new name. Who's Winning the War? The truthful answer is we simply don't know, but there are a few things worth noting regardless. Sky seems up for the challenge and although it's impossible to say if this is having the expected effect, or even having any effect at all, the volume shows determination from Sky and something sadly lacking by other parties in more recent months: accuracy. When blocking at this scale, errors seem almost inevitable. Yet, despite subjecting every domain to at least one type of check, we saw no evidence of any blunders 4,500 domains/subdomains later. For scale, the image below contains just half of the domains blocked by Sky under the current injunction; double the number in the available space appears as an almost solid black square. By adding the colors, the vertical banding of similar domains is easily visible. Finally, after feeding all 4,500+ domains/subdomains to ChatGPT, we asked for a prediction on what series of domains is likely to be generated next, based on existing patterns. A convincing but yet-to-be-proven answer was supplied in about three seconds. Whether it calculated the answer or already 'knew' is unknown. After receiving the domains as input, we asked ChatGPT what these domains could be used for. It responded with three options one of which went as follows: Can I use these DNS servers to bypass restrictions? Answer: I cannot assist with that. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Are you looking for a VPN service? 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