Today, the Shareaza development team gave an update on their current situation through TorrentFreak. In it, they announce their plans to go to regain control of their domain and prevent the hijackers from obtaining the Shareaza trademark, as well as the development of a new version of Shareaza, 3.0.

You can read their announcement below:

Dear friends and supporters,

The Shareaza Development Team would like to extend our thanks to all of you for your contributions towards our Legal Defense Fund. As you will remember, our project’s identity was appropriated late last year by the recording industry funded Discordia Ltd. shell company and handed over to the recording industry “approved” iMesh for commercial exploitation.

To that end, we are today announcing that we have legal representation and will be contesting the trademark application on our name and identity taken out by Discordia Ltd. After that, we’ll be looking to get our old domain back from the people who threatened, bullied and intimidated the team member holding it on the project’s behalf and who are now using as the gateway to their deceptive business model.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Software Freedom Law Centre, the EFF and Richard Stallman for their help and assistance in this unfortunate matter and also for their recognition of this new threat being faced by free software projects the world over.

If you’d like to help us in our fight to regain control of our identity, we welcome all donations to our Legal Defense Fund. You can use our ChipIn account here to donate safely.

So will this all be long, drawn out and very boring? Quite possibly. Are we going to sit back, lick our wounds and wait for the lawyers to sort it all out?

Heck no!

In fact, The Shareaza Development team is also announcing today that we’ve started work on Shareaza 3.0. Put simply, we’re not going to let the identity thieves slow us down at all.

Shareaza 3.0 will be a significant milestone in Shareaza’s long history. For a start we’re switching to the brand new QT 4.4 application development framework. This will allow us a lot more flexibility for a redesign of Shareaza’s network core, making the current Gnutella, Gnutella2 and ED2K networks more modular. We’re also getting rid of the deprecated MFC code to make 3.0 more plug-in friendly and many of the existing features our users know and love will also be re-built with portability in mind.

The even bigger news is that we’re scrapping our current implementation of BitTorrent and will be using the libtorrent libraries as our base for torrent support in the 3.0 release. Shareaza’s BitTorrent implementation is long overdue for a revamp and while many of it’s features were revolutionary at the time (Shareaza was the first client to experiment with decentralized torrents for example) the development team realizes that its time to bring BT support into line with the modern torrent scene.

Developers with some spare time and a desire to get their hands dirty playing with the new QT 4.4 on an existing code base are welcome to stop by our developers IRC channel for a chat.

Once again, we send our thanks all the Shareaza users and supporters out there and invite Discordia, iMesh and the recording industry monopoly to drop the trademark application and return our domain name before you embarrass yourselves any further. We’re fighting back!

Inquiries can be made via our forums here

Kind regards,

Shareaza Community

Este tipo de programas permiten crear una red, yo diría comunidad, entre las personas que tengan instalado el programa, esta comunidad es algo como un chat donde en lugar de intercambiar palabras entre usuarios, se intercambian archivos que pueden ser música, imágenes, videos, programas, documentos y muchos otros tipos de archivo. Y algo importante de mencionar es que no necesariamente tienes que subir para poder bajar, yo por ejemplo bajo unas 10 canciones y subo una (Este proceso es ABSOLUTAMENTE automático).

Funciona más o menos así:

Tú desde tu Shareaza le dices a la comunidad: Alguien tiene la nueva canción de Linkin Park, Shadow of the day, entonces todos los que la tengan te responderán que sí y la podrás bajar de la computadora de quien tú quieras.

Pero recuerda, es una comunidad, si tú bajas, tú subes. Por ejemplo, tienes un programa antivirus muy bueno y quieres compartirlo, pues lo pones en la carpeta de archivos para compartir (que generalmente está en mis documentos y se llama downloads) que utiliza Shareaza para subir tus archivos. Si no compartes se pierde el sentido de comunidad.

Los beneficios de Shareaza sobre otros programas son que:

Puedes conectarte a varias redes como Gnutella1 (Que es la que usa LimeWire), Gnutella2, eDonkey2000 y además bajar enlaces torrent y enlaces Magnet.

Es open source, por lo que puedes bajarlo gratis y puedes bajar y editar su código fuente.

Al ser libre, tiene muchísimas opciones de configuración y está en constante desarrollo.

La página de descarga es: http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/

No entren a: http://www.shareaza.com/ porque la página es un fake, es decir una página falsa, la mayoría de los programas open source, están alojados en: http://sourceforge.net/, como Ares que también lo es desde hace tiempo.

Por último, recuerden bajar y subir archivos con responsabilidad.

Shareaza es un programa peer to peer (P2P) con el que podrás compartir y descargar archivos con gente de todo el mundo. Una de las ventajas de este Open Source es que está potenciado a través de cuatro redes P2P, que incluyen a las redes de EDonkey2000, Gnutella, BitTorrent y la propia red de Shareaza.

Además de tener un skin muy atractivo; este programa nos da la oportunidad de agregarle otro tipo de caratula, sólo tienes que buscar una que vaya con tu personalidad. También podemos encontrar en este programa un reproductor multimedia.

Y por si acaso te preocupas por la forma en que vas a configurar este programa, no lo hagas, porque también trae un Asistente de configuración que es a prueba de tontos. ¡Así que a disfrutarlo!

Descarga Shareaza Gratis - Español

Screenshots

Read: After Hijacking Site, Scammers Move to Seize Shareaza Trademark and Urgent: Opposing the Shareaza Trademark.

PS. This is not about P2P, but the stealing of identity of a software.

Thumbnails:

Related Links
KubXtra at Softpedia: Link

Bagi Anda pengguna Shareaza sejati dan mencari program Shareaza asli, pastikan Anda mendapatkan Shareaza melalui alamat resminya yang sekarang ada di http://shareaza.sourceforge.net/

Źródło: PC Format, Autor: Paweł Bijata

Shareaza ofrece acceso a las redes de eDonkey (las que usa el eMule, creo) más las redes de Gnutella, que son las que hacen que las descargas vayan rápido. Soporta enlaces ed2k, magnet y no sé qué más, además de manejar archivos torrent también. Encuentra bastantes archivos (sin ser el mejor pero siempre encuentras a alguien), pero para canciones poco conocidas u otros archivos con una sola fuente cuesta lo suyo. La búsqueda por pestañas que tiene la encuentro fácil de usar, así como el resto del programa. Esta es la página oficial para descargarlo y eso. Recomiendo además una cosa que acabo de probar, unos filtros que eliminan resultados falsos (un montón de resultados que aparecen busques lo busques, incluso si pones "esto es una prueba para ver si lo que digo es verdad" te saldrán 20 o más resultados)

Ahora, lo importante. Antes la web oficial era www.shareza.com, pero por lo visto han cogido el sitio otras personas y han creado una página falsa donde sólo ofrecen la descarga de Shareza (pero es una versión con spyware), sin foros ni nada. Y claro, la gente que busque "shareaza" en Google llegará primero a la página falsa (aunque ponga official y demás). La buena es la que os he enlazado arriba. Ahora encima leo que les están demandando a los pobres la SGAE o RIAA francesa con falsas acusaciones...

Lue uutisista lisää!

Il sito ufficiale di Shareaza, famoso ed ottimo client P2P, è ora un portale truffa: La news arriva dalla pagina di SourceForge che inviata tutti gli utenti a far attenzione al sito che, grazie alle immagini implementate, appare abbastanza convincente. L’etichetta “Home ufficiale di Shareaza” è naturalmente una truffa come il programma proposto che non è naturalmente Shareaza ma un software, probabilmente con spyware ed adware, che richiede un abbonamento mensile per essere utilizzato (Shareaza è libero e gratuito).

La faccenda è critica: Alcuni confermano che Jonathan Nilson, il proprietario del dominio Shareaza.com abbia venduto il proprio spazio web, che ora propone una fantomatica versione 4 del client. Wildcard’ ha spiegato che i software offerti dal sito dirottato anche se classificati come “ShareazaV4.exe”, non sono di Shareaza, ma probabilmente è un clone del nuovo malware infestate del client iMesh/Bearshare e non deve essere scaricato in nessun caso.

Chiunque desideri trovare la vera Shareaza client dovrebbe provare alla pagina del progetto SourceForge.

Fonte P2PForum.it ]]> http://langaria.wordpress.com/2007/12/25/shareazacom-es-hackeado/ Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:59:20 +0000 rob http://langaria.net/2007/12/25/shareazacom-es-hackeado/ Resulta que Shareaza.com, sitio web del muy popular cliente para multiples redes de intercambio de persona a persona (P2P), Shareaza, ha sido hackeado por unos defraudadores para hacer descargar Malware en vez del afamado programa.

Esto ocasionó que el sitio de SourceForge de Shareaza diera el siguiente comunicado para alertar a todos los internautas:

A partir del 20 de Diciembre, la Página Web "Shareaza.Com" se redirecciona a "ShareazaWeb.Com" un conocido sitio de defraudadores. Estamos trabajando duro para resolver el problema, pero cualquier ayuda será más que agradecida.

Y para acabar de amolarla, el diseño de la página ShareazaWeb.Com podría engañar a cualquiera pues, además de estar nombrada como "la página oficial de Shareza" contiene arte original de la anterior página de Shareaza.Com.

Te preguntarás cómo le habrán hecho para tomar el sitio y redireccionarlo hacia otro,  Skinvista un programador del "verdadero" Shareza explica:

En este momento, el dominio Shareaza.com es controlado por iMesh/MusicLab LLC, una compañía no autorizada con base en la Avenida Madison (en Nueva York), con servidores alojados en Israel. MusicLab LLC anteriormente adquirió iMesh.com y Bearshare/Bearflix.com mediante algunos juicios y demandas y parece ser que el sitio Shareazaweb.com estaba destinado para la toma de Shareaza mediante otra demanda que está actualmente en proceso.

Es urgente y por demás importante hacer notar que el Software contenido en los sitios de iMesh/MusicLab es sospechoso, mal presentado e ilegal, pues rompe con las leyes de GPL, DMCA y muchas más.

TorrentFreak, sitio de noticias acerca de redes y programas de P2P le preguntó a Wildcard, otro programador del "verdadero" Shareaza, qué había pasado con el sitio a lo cual contestó "Ese es uno de los misterios, pues el proveedor de hospedaje de la página se fue offline, conteniendo el sitio, el wiki (contenido de los usuarios generaban para ayudar a otros) y los foros. Lo único que sabemos hasta ahora, es que se apagó por razones personales con el dueño de las máquinas que hacían de servidor. ¿Cuáles eran esos problemas -médicos o legales-? No lo sabemos."

Para colmo de males, parece ser que el dominio de Shareaza.com se ha perdido totalmente, pues el antiguo dueño del mismo asegura haberlo vendido a estos defraudadores.

Más allá de todo esto, Wildcard explica que el software que ofrece este nuevo sitio (ShareazaWeb.com), llamado "ShareazaV4.exe" no es en realidad Shareaza, sino muy probablemente un clon infestado con malware de los clientes de iMesh o Bearshare y que no deberían descargarlo, menos instalarlo, pues una vez hecho esto te pide que instales una barra para tu navegador que hace contacto con sus servidores centrales (de MusicLab LLC), cosa que no haría Shareaza.

Además, Shareza sigue siendo gratuito y tiene su reputación por ser un proyecto sin ánimo de lucro no como su Clon, que está siendo ofrecido mediante una tarifa de suscripción.

Mucho Ojo...

Per gli amanti del P2P ,ho saputo da fonti autorevoli(un amico che l'ha provato),che l'ultima versione di Shareaza,di cui vi ho indicato il rilascio alcuni giorni fa,la 2.3.0.0 scaricabile dal sito ufficiale in modo completamente gratuito,è perfettamente funzionante con Vista.

Shareaza downloads files from more than one user and network to speed up downloads. You are able to search more than one network, which means you will find more users and files. Shareaza uses special technology to identify files and prevents corruption from ever occurring on downloads. You can run more than one search at a time; Shareaza will create “tabs” so you can quickly go back and forth between your searches. With Shareaza, you can see previews of movies and pictures before you download them! Shareaza has a complete ratings system so you can tell people about your favorite files or warn others about misnamed files.

Shareaza catalogs your files for you and stores them in a searchable library, giving you easy access to them. You can watch videos and listen to music for files that are still downloading. Shareaza includes a complete media player for your music and videos. You can create your own playlists, watch visuals that follow the beat, zoom in on videos, and more.
You can customize Shareaza to your liking with different skins and many options. Shareaza has been tested on all modern versions of Windows. Shareaza will always be free and never contain spyware, adware, or any type of malware.

Download Shareaza 2.2.5.6 RC1

Welcome I know that many people do arond the world. Somehow you became aware of these programs because people like to get things for free or ?

Well let me try to explain to you what else you might be receiving rather than just that awesome music.

Ares, Azureus, BearShare, BitComet, Cabos,
DC++, eMule, iMesh, Lime Wire, Shareaza,
uTorrent

Peer-to-Peer - a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives. Napster, Kazaa, and Gnutella are examples of peer-to-peer software.

What are some of the consequences of Peer-to-Peer?
you could be a part of something that you dont know about guys come and take your computer away. It happens.

Seattle Man Indicted For ID Theft Using Computer File Sharing Programs

File-Sharing users users beware...

Research from a German deep packet inspection gear maker Ipoque shows that P2P traffic consumes anywhere between 49 and 89 percent of all Internet traffic in the day.
At night, it can spike up to an astonishing 95 percent.
Participants could be getting more than just music or video, as this environment is also a major conduit for malware.

Businesses, governments and internet service providers face dangerous new network disruption and malware attacks from botnets based on peer-to-peer technology (P2P) instead of the more common hierarchical structure.

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Laboratories, the Russian antivirus company that identified the new method, said the new method had already succeeded in strangling internet communications in Krasnodar and Astrakhan for several weeks. "We do not know who was behind these attacks," he said. "It may have been a test."

Alex Gostev, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky, said the P2P nature of the new botnet meant that each infected machine needed to know only its neighbours. An instruction to activate the botnet could be sent to any of the machines in the network which would then propagate from machine to machine to build an attack.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/200...work-threat.htm

Majority of Internet bandwidth consumed by P2P services
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=1651
Consumption moves to 95% at night
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071128-nocturnal-p2p-transmissions-account-for-95-percent-of-internet-bandwidth.html

Adware and spyware makers are using BitTorrent as a new distribution channel. According to observers of the trend, music and videos that hide applications which pop up ads on PC screens and track browsing habits are increasingly being offered for download on various BitTorrent websites.

READ More HERE, CLICK

Avoid Inherently Unsafe Software and Services. Certain software and services are very appealing to the home user. Freeware, instant messaging, and music download software come to mind as products or services that are widely used on home computers. Freeware sometimes is great software and sometimes it isn’t. Some freeware comes bundled with Adware or Spyware that tracks the user through cyberspace and reports back to an Internet site all of your surfing habits. You can determine whether your system has any of this software, typically loaded without your knowledge, by visiting http://www.lavasoftusa.com and downloading the free software package called Ad-aware. A similar
product, Search & Destroy, is also freely available at http://www.safer-networking.org. Both packages will scan your system for the presence of Adware and Spyware and report it to you. They will offer to remove or mark the offending software so it does not affect your system. Instant messaging is often misused because it may open up your system to the person you are talking to. Either you should disable it or you should be careful that you only use it to communicate with people you know and trust. Both instant messaging and many of the popular music services are a form of software called peer-to-peer software. There are many file download services, including KaZaA, Morpheus, and BearShare. In each case, you download and install a program on your computer. If you download the software, be sure you understand that you have little or no control over what it does. One of these packages has been widely verified to include another software package that can take over the operation of your computer and use it for other purposes. This means that it is a Trojan horse program: a program that appears to perform a legitimate function but may also perform undesirable functions unknown to the user.
One other caveat. Distributed file services, like KaZaA, cause your computer to become a server and permit access from the Internet to your computer by other participants in that file-sharing network. Depending on the service, you may be able to opt out of becoming a server. If you are not given the choice or you do not opt out, you may be providing access to your system from the Internet and assuming all the associated risk. You can also end up violating music copyrights without realizing it.

Peer-to-peer software is a very appealing technology and has great potential for useful and productive applications. However, in its current state of development, it is dangerous, because of the lack of any protection on your system. Most peer-to-peer technology has no security protection and requires no authentication to identify peers in a way that can keep out the bad guys. As we have indicated, you need to be careful and prudent if and when you use this type of software.

Ben is a very through Computer wizard from Harvard. This Page below will give you a fair bit of info.
Video: New.net Installed through Security Holes
New.net provides a proprietary domain name system that allows it to sell nonstandard ... I've also seen New.net in big bundles with other P2P programs, ...
www.benedelman.org/news/100505-1.html
http://www.benedelman.org/peer to peer articles

If you are using one of the peer-to peer file sharing services without disabling the file sharing option, the whole Internet can have access to the files on your hard drive. This can also lead to excessive bandwidth consumption which is violation of most ISP's the ones you pay to get internet, their Acceptable Use Policy.
When using peer-to-peer services, you should take several precautions. Here are several tips on protecting your PC:

1. Prevent the program from starting automatically.
2. Do not share files.
3. Close/Exit the program when you are finished.
4. Prevent the program from acting as a "supernode" (a middleman for other programs to secretly use your bandwidth

For additional information, please go to http://security.uchicago.edu/guidelines/peer-to-peer/ for easy-to-follow instructions on disabling file sharing for the various peer-to-peer programs

Security Risks in P2P

Despite its ease-of-use, P2P services have another dark side besides legal concerns—increasing security risks.

On one hand, the P2P security mechanism is far from mature in the Internet age— its infrastructure has not ever considered the security issue seriously. P2P may work well with a few members in a small group, where peoples often know each other. But now P2P has been applied on the landscape of Internet and has to face millions of anonymous users. Apparently, its security methods are still too limited since they have not been enhanced significantly.

On the other hand, P2P software is getting more powerful and sophisticated. For instance, some applications grant users the power to limit other user’s bandwidth amount while uploading files.

Consequently, it seems that P2P offers attackers a more efficient and effective way to do their jobs. Therefore, security risks increase highly in P2P software and the security issue in P2P has been becoming the subject of intense research.

Inborn Security Risks in P2P

Many threats come from inborn weaknesses of the P2P architecture. These weaknesses result in the following security problems, which are beyond certain applications and present in nearly all known P2P systems.

Vulnerable to Denial of Service Attacks

Every user of a P2P application is consuming network bandwidth. “Software like Napster, Gnutella and Scour are generally used to download relatively large files such as MP3s, AVIs, MPGs, JPGs, and GIFs. If enough users are downloading these types of files, this can cause network resources to be tied up, resulting in a denial of service.” “In addition to network bandwidth, full hard disks can also result in a denial of service.” For example, when we try to save a file to a public disk but an attack already makes it full somehow, very possibly the saving file service will be denied and we will lose our work.

Denial of service attack can occur inside a subnet or among individual users who are sharing the same network resources. Due to the distributed nature of Internet and P2P, this type of attack is inevitable so far.

Easily Distributed Malware

One of the biggest security problems of P2P is that it is extremely easy for an attacker to distribute malicious software. “Just as the average user can freely distribute any file s/he chooses, malicious users can freely distribute Trojan horse applications and viruses. To make matters worse, if the malicious user is using a P2P program such as FreeNet, there is little fear of getting caught since FreeNet does not use a central server and IP addresses are not tracked. As if it couldn’t get worse with a model like FreeNet, when a file is requested, it is copied locally from participating client to participating client until it gets to the requesting client. It would be hard to design a better mechanism to spread malware faster. The possibility of introducing and spreading a Trojan horse or virus becomes as easy as sending an e-mail.”

Therefore, compared to the past traditional attacks, malicious users to P2P system do not have to be computer experts. They only need to register on a P2P group, provide malicious applications and lure other users to download and execute it.

Zeropaid group found that files with names referring to pornography were downloaded at an alarming rate (more information can be found at www.zeropaid.com/busted). Some sneaky attackers may use this “feature” to speed up the spreading of malicious software by giving it provocative name and description.

“Even commercial code can be modified and spread as malware. Programs like AOL Instant Messenger, or any other P2P software, can be reverse engineered and released as Open Source software. This gives malicious hackers the ability to change the software code so that it can be used for other purposes.”

As a consequence, no matter you are expert or amateur, these programs have a malicious intention, you cannot keep your computer safe. It is just far to easy to get hacked when you share, have you scanned lately when was your last update? Should update daily and scan after each download in such P2P networks. Good luck :(

Straightforward Information Gathering

“Letting another Internet user know one’s ‘real’ IP address is a security risk in itself” because “someone sniffing on the network could hijack a session, spoof one or both users’ addresses, or otherwise cause harm.”

“The Internet still provides most networks with enough anonymity to feel a certain amount of security through obscurity”; unfortunately, “P2P software can take away that anonymity”. So, “the addresses of routers and gateways are exposed, and if the user is connected directly to the Internet, their IP address and MAC addresses are also exposed. For example, Gnutella users are given the IP address from which they are downloading by widening the column immediately to the right of the ‘Status’ column in the ‘Downloads’ window. This is a good starting place for a hacker with simple scanning software.”

Take a look at how easy This Is Done, ......HI THERE!

These signs are created and served by danasoft.com's webserver in real-time for each person that views them. Your IP address and other information are only visible to YOU, not to others, but because people see their own IP address and computer information displayed on a blog or in a public forum, they think that their information can be seen by everyone!

Read the privacy policy for more details. Click Here!

Attackers can get more information than IP and MAC addresses such as users’ connection speed since some P2P programs like Napster give users the information concerning connection speed. Connection speed can help attackers to identify more “valuable” targets – “most 56k connections and below are dial-up accounts, and probably are not ‘always on’ and do not have static IP addresses, hackers may not waste their time on these systems. But, connection speeds of 144k and higher can indicate DSL or cable modems that are ‘always on’ with static IP addresses, a more desirable target.”

There are many excuses why it is safe to use P2P but in reality you are just playing russian roulette with your computer. But that is your choice. :-\

eMule, Bittorrent, azureus, LimeWire Pro, BitComet All are P2P programs if your familiar with any I can assure you that it was a bad experience, if you haven't learned yet you will soon, the internet is not by any means getting safer. See this Article..
Or the following Article even more of a scare, and you think your computer is of no use to them? Humm

A security group reports.......

ANALYSIS OF: AZUREUS_2.5.0.4.EXE

* AZUREUS_2.5.0.4.EXE may use 8 or more path and file names, these are the most common:

* 4 :%documents%\my dowload files\AZUREUS_2.5.0.4 PT.EXE
* File Name Structure: *Highly Irregular*
* File and Path Structure: **Suspicious, code execution from unusual location**
* The following behaviours have been observed for this object:
* Installs programs.
* Deletes programs.

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http://onguardonline.gov/stopthinkclick.ht

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• StopBadware: Trusted Web sites are being hacked and don’t even know it
• Cyber Security Preparedness is a responsibility of everyone that uses the Internet.
• Was Ihre alle sollten Tuen… *Neu*
• Researchers say the growing botnet has enough distributed power to launch a damaging attack against major businesses or even countries.

Personal Security for your computer, Da steht es wie Hosts file sind auf Spybot, und auch MVP Hosts ist da oben von Spybot.

God Bless you!