BitTorrent Tracker Insider Infiltrates Anti-Piracy Lobby
Wow. 
Anti-piracy oufits have gained access to private BitTorrent trackers before, but the opposite has never happened, until now. Over the past few weeks, Unnar Geir, spokesperson of “The Viking Bay”, successfully infiltrated the Icelandic equivalent of the MPAA (SMÁÍS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.
Unnar first arranged a meeting with Snæbjörn Steingrímsson, the executive of SMÁÍS, about a month ago. He told Snæbjörn that he could provide details about the owners and administrators of the BitTorrent tracker, and said he was willing to testify against them.
The sole purpose of the covert-operation was of course to gather information from SMÁÍS on the ongoing investigation on TVB (Icelanders only) and Torrent.is, two Icelandic BitTorrent trackers. “Me and an administrator at TVB were pondering one morning about what Smáis actually got on us, and I had this idea to contact Snæbjörn and set up a meeting,” Unnar explained.
To gain the confidence of Snæbjörn and the other investigators, 15 in total, Unnar led them to believe that the TVB staff was threatening him. “I was called in for another meeting and I told him that I had been assaulted because somebody knew I was going to witness against TVB, I made my friend give me some bruises.” Undy told TorrentFreak.
The investigators fell for it, and believed that they finally had an insider on their side, so they started to share confidential information. The cover story had worked, and this Friday Unnar was called in for a meeting where they showed 1000 pages of evidence against TVB. In addition they told Unnar that they were plotting a criminal case against the tracker, not a civil case as the one against Istorrent.
“I was shown screenshots of admin profiles on TVB, which showed information only available to administrators. I asked how they got this information and if somebody else was snitching, but they replied ‘you can do everything on the internet’,” Unnar said. The most likely scenario is that SMÁÍS used an exploit or some other hack, to gain access to the tracker.
At that point they still thought Unnar was going to testify against the people behind TVB, so they showed him all the info they had gathered on the tracker, and which users they would go after, if it would come to that. “They gave me the usernames of two persons who where responsible for 90% of the Icelandic material on TVB,” Unnar said. “After the meeting I gave this information to those users, so they could take evasive action.”
“The most interesting part about this is that I said at the beginning of the meeting: “No offense, I can help you convict some administrators, but the website isn’t going down just for that,” to which Snæbjörn replied “It doesn’t matter if we win or lose, we will still bankrupt you.” This shows that they are simply using their money to force the trackers to go offline.
All in all Unnar thinks that he has gathered enough information to have a significant advantage in court. This Friday he publicly shared his covert-ops experiences with other users at TVB, but up until now, he hasn’t heard anything from SMÁÍS.
[Via Torrentfreak]
“I told him that I had been assaulted because somebody knew I was going to witness against TVB, I made my friend give me some bruises”
Commitment!
lol “I made my friend give me some bruises”
Loll, who’s the criminal now?
finally, one for us!
@SMÁÍS - Fail!
He should have pressed the exploit issue a bit more, IMO. Maybe get the douche’s name they hired and get your friend to ‘give him some bruises’ too
Counter-spying is always fun.
Amazing !
w00t… What’s gonna happen to him? I’m pretty sure they read blogs too :D… Will he get arrested? Beat up?.. What?
So no James Bond shooting spree, thousands of death people in a firing scycaper? No parachute sceene from space? No exploding pen? Definetly some awesome boobies scene in sunset? ;]
Great job, its nice to see, people still have wits and balls. both thumbs up ;]
Mahaha, Viking Bay wins!
well why cant someone make a software that blocks bogus trackers on torrent software or on webbrowser???that would rock and do away with having to lose our internet bandwidth,usa isnt the power the eu wont clamp down on fileshrers as it breaches the person privacy laws so up yours the united stuck up two fingers anti piracy
well cant wait till get my laptop soon 
Wow, that sounds like a movie in the making.
good stuff lol
You are my main man!!!!
yep BrutalBlake..an indie movie..isnt it like too early to spill out the beans?
now this is a tech news post
great stuff Kennii
Just Pre’d!!
The.Viking.Bay.Exploit.SCR.XVid-mVs
Just Pre’d!
Jumper.DVDRip.XviD-NeDiVx
will be posted soon!
This is one of the most interesting and funny stories this year! Go vikings! HARR!
@11…. Look up peerguardian or Bluetack
As “nsane” mentioned:
“He should have pressed the exploit issue a bit more”
Maybe he did, I sure hope he did or at least gathered enough intel to sustain proof of their hacking into the site / server.
I’m not up on Icelandic law, but I am almost certain that their gathering of ‘profiles’ & other info by hacking into the admin pages / section of the site & server should be breaking quite a few laws, perhaps making anything they have inadmisable in the courts.
This maybe why they were happy to have this guy onboard, so as that it could be seen as the info they gathered came from him & not their ‘exploits’…
Of course, another person may have ‘Turned’ from the site & their excuse of ‘You can do anything on the internet’ was their way of protecting their source.
It would be smart of them to keep any other names / sources seperated from him.
Just in case there is a change of heart from one, they won’t loose all their eggs (Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket).
Either way, it takes balls to face up to the very same people who are trying to take you down.
I feel that we are not being given the full story, at least I hope this is the case, why would he ‘Unnar Geir’ give away everything he has found out, publicly…
That wouldn’t be the smartest move on his part, it gives the other side time to change their prosecution evidance, drop / leave out a host of ‘proof’ / intel gathered that could show ‘Geir’ in a bad light or as a liar.
I also hope that he caught all conversations on digital media, anything said & shown on cam etc…
Without it recorded, everything he gathered intel wise could be seen as ‘hearsay’ & that does not hold up in court.
Even if he did capture evidance, there is also a chance of it being inadmisable… but that would depend on how the Icelandic courts see recording ‘others’ without their knowledge.
It’d be great if the ‘others’ recorded all conversations with ‘Geir’… as he could then supeona their recordings ‘intact’ & it would also show ‘mutual consent’ to all recordings thus making his (again if he was smart enough to record / doccument) valid in a court of law.
Summing up:
If all he gained has been made public & he’s not held back some info or proof, by going public he’s possibly lost all he’s done.
I take my hat off to ‘Geir’, the guy has balls & great intentions to take a stance & strike out against those who would try to bring us (our BT community) down.
The.Viking.Bay.Exploit.SCR.XVid-mVs
NUKED [stolen.from.p2p]
he tried to sap their sentry and back stab the engi, but a heavy came and killed him… silly spies…
and the demoman said kaboom
This aint an exploit but purely fraud. Hope he goes to jail. Its idiots like him that make the rest of us look like criminals and idiot. Hope that moron burn in hell.
dat dude’s in alot of trouble, he’s a RAT!!
and RATS usually get the mafia treatment…
Wow.
What Pat McCrotch wrote about Unnar Geir seems very interesting.
I hope for Unnars sake he has what he needs to back his case up, or else seems like a waste of valuable & much appreciated effort.
Still seems tooo early for this to be public…not the right time
Owned !
is this a joke?
couse its sound like one…
all around it was pointless to do any of stuff he did…
on court, prosecutor must show all evidence to defenders advocate… so unless he learn about incriminating material and hire Ethan Hawk to snatch it and erase all theyr loggs it was pointless…
all he can get is more charges like obsure justice and alike…
and using exploit to gain information is ok, if they got court order or they live in land of freedom and got patriot act
@26 lapbook
Read the whole story.
i was in my local iceland the other day and there was also alot of cod that had been batterd also you ruffians
WELL DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Big respect to Unnar Geir !!!
Excellent and an example for the children and for all of us!
I rather pay all my salary to a guy like him then one cent to a record company or alike!
anybody said pirate?
He probably just wanted his 15 minutes of fame. If he was serious about it, he wouldn’t reveal what he did until it was over.
well done me mates!
i believe they icelandic police have a better chance at stopping time than stopping piracy on the internet
I recently moved back home,after 5 years in Iceland.
I still read the Icelandic news online.
And a couple of weeks ago, there was an article about the other private tracker mentioned in this article:Istorrent.
SMÁÍS made a lawsuit againt Istorrent, and was able to keep Istorrent closed during the court case.
SMÁÍS lost the case in court, but have again been able to ban Istorrent,and have now made a new lawsuit, this time in supreme court. This case havent been closed yet. But I´m sure that Istorrent, will nail the suckers there too.
Some old news about the case on TorentFreak: http://torrentfreak.com/icelands-largest-bittorrent-tracker-shut-down-071127/
Aticle on TorrentFreak, about Istorrent´s victory in court:
http://torrentfreak.com/torrentis-case-dismissed-080328/
Go Vikings !!!
Unnar teh hero!!
u can fake bruises with dry ice though, no hitting involved hahah
I agree with BrutalBlake, does sound like a movie in the making any one upto compilling a script with me. been working on an esionage script for some time.. will post soon for ALL to read..
same rlslog time same rlslog channel..
but seriuosly will be posting a script soon for my own movie dont worry will not be posted without a time stamp to protect my project…
sorry about the spelling problem with voice recogntion software..
39
Don’t rely on the poor mans copyright. If you think your story is worth it, copyright it. As far as I know, a poor mans copyright(Mailing it yourself and not opening it, Posting on a Site that has Date and Time, almost anything that is free)has yet to hold water in an actual case. I could very well be wrong, but doesn’t hurt to double check.
@11 that program already exists its called peerguardian, but doesnt work 100%
this is going to be made into a movie ! start a new useless online poll
rotflol. 1 for the house xD
… now this is an odd twist… I love it XD
hey i have been looking high and low for the movie taken with liam neelson, could anyone help?
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