Fake or not? Not sure

[White Stripes]

You often dont say anything about lawsuits but one of us have to let the winmx folks know the risks torrenting brings.

all p2p regardless of protocol has risks just look at napster, limewire, kazaa, megaupload, newzbin, various streaming sites and yes.. frontcode...

Its always the REN room folks pushing torrents here I wonder why that is ?

we know the risks and know what we are doing? just throwing that out there since you went there...

[Bieb]

Like Stripes said, everything comes with a risk. There are safer ways to torrent as I have explained above, and multiple times before. You just have to be willing to learn and give it a try. Just look beyond the common misconception that the pirate bay and other large torrent aggregator sites are what torrenting is. Those are simply the most popular sites that get all the attention. They do not reflect private torrent communities that are very similar to WinMX. Being a close knit community who loves the media they are sharing with each other.

The majority of the people in the REN room come there to get movies and tv shows via WinMX. The files provided are downloaded off various private tv and movie torrent sites as there are no scene release groups circulating their content via WinMX themselves. The majority of the users there have the same fears of torrenting as discussed in this thread, but their view on torrenting is fogged by the sinking load of crap that is the pirate bay and the attention it brings. We are not pushing for anyone to make a torrenting WinMX client, or pushing for anyone else to do something they do not wish to do. I am simply defending another peer to peer method, as you would do the same and defend WinMX elsewhere when it is incorrectly described.

[White Stripes]

Still, it begs the question:

Why does WinMX NEED to become a torrenting style client?? 

it doesnt ... there are other clients for torrents...  ...d/l from torrent and share on mx? works out quite well...
as does the 'chat' part of mx...

The fact that it ISN'T a torrenting client dont make it bad, or outdated...

plenty of bad torrent clients out there too.... lack of dev (frontcode being gone) is what makes winmx 'bad' due to the flaws that allow for very easy attacks and.. yes its a bit outdated... would be on a 5.xx series about now(?).... dunno... mx style clients arent really being developed anymore... and frontcode never did release the much hyped winmx 4...

and kevin is now -- ironically -- working on a torrent client; tixati....

[Bluey_412]

Well, Stripes, you like tossin the rocks, where is YOUR skill? Why don't YOU get busy developing WinMX 5.5?

Bieb...  Are You a Jehovah's Wittness? You sound like one, pushing and pushing trying to get people over to your way of thinking...

You like torrents, thousands of others do not

Drop it

[White Stripes]

wasnt tossing any rocks at you bluey... was agreeing in a sense....

tho with frontcode gone there is no codebase to bugfix or continue...

and if i made a 'winmx 5.5' it would be a winmx-look-alike fork of ares with the 3.5 chat builtin.... would save a lot of time and have a much better file transfer system...

[Bieb]

I really don't understand why you get so defensive when people have opinions that differ from yours Bluey. It's especially rude when you're insinuating that someone's religion is bad simply because they have different opinions and try to share them peacefully with others. I'm sure there are at least some Jehovah's Witnesses's on this forum that would take offense to that.

I guess you skim my posts but not actually read them. I am not pushing anyone to do anything they do not want to do, nor am I preaching about it. I'm simply pointing out the inaccuracies in people's definition of what torrenting is, and what it is capable of doing. As someone who has not fully used torrents other than public sites where there is no connection to other users at all, and no high quality selection of files, or someone who has never used torrents at all are not capable of knowing the full story.

The same argument of thousands of people not liking torrents can be just as easily reversed as well. As millions do like it. I'm not trying to get into an argument, I just don't like it when ignorance overshadows the truth.

Also, why are you pushing people to make a new WinMX client? Seems a lot of 'pushing' is going on around here?  I'm not sure if Stripes is able to develop a functioning P2P client behind his dial up connection.

But I can explain why I choose not to if that means anything at all. I simply do not want to take on the responsibility of being a developer of a piece of software that is going to be used to sharing copyrighted files. Having your name put on a piece of software that does that instantly makes you the one responsible for enabling others to break copyright laws and you do become liable. Just as the makers of Kazaa, Napster, WinMX, etc. have abandoned their software due to the risks involved, I would do the same if I had developed that kind of software and received a warning/threat. Millions of dollars in debt and legal fees is not worth it to me, and I don't think anyone else wants that kind of risk nor do they want to suffer penalties.

I support GhostShip and Will in their efforts to develop a new client for us to use as I do believe we need to have some form of progress. I still do like the community of users that are on this network, and anyone saying otherwise is full of themselves as they are speaking on behalf of me when I can surely speak for myself. As just because I do support another form of media/file sharing does not mean I cut off ties with old friends. Just as if you were to move away to college and you thought everything in your new location was better, you would not cut off your friends you made before high school completely. It simply does not work like that.

[silicon_toad2000]

Part of the 'pushing ' attitude, at least from my point of view, is there's so many of us without the skill to do anything to help, even thought we like to be able to.
If 'i wish i could help' could build a client, we'd have a fricken awesome one, it would be able to connect to your fridge and download a ham sandwich or a felafel and then upload your dishes to the dishwasher.

[GhostShip]

As just because I do support another form of media/file sharing does not mean I cut off ties with old friends.

Thats very nice to hear Josh, I supose what I,m really getting at when I reply to those mentioning torrents is that the WinMX community does not go and advertise all over the torrent spectrum of the p2p scene and so its irkesome to see such advertising being done here.

I have the same arguements year in and year out simply because I think a WinMX support site should be for primarily WinMx support, If folks know that they are doing then fair play to them but I still like to know if I dont go throw bricks at my neighbour by mutually implied agreement and respect he wont through bricks at me.
I hope that makes my position clear as I,m sure you guys have a good time doing what you enjoy but I dont care to read about it here simply because this is one of the last few boltholes we can call our own on the web, if you want to discuss torrenting etc take it to a torrent site please 

[achilles]

This thread has become a huge eye opener for me.  I am really disappointed in some of the disrespectful comments made to other members here without any cause for doing so.  I really don't know what to think anymore.

[reef]

Emotions are high... nerves are short.The attacks have gotten to everybody as of late.I wouldnt read too much into any of the comments that might seem harsh.The topic is about winmx searches turning up strange results, so lets get back on track please  

[White Stripes]

The topic is about winmx searches turning up strange results, so lets get back on track please

its not 'strange' it returns all files shared from drive c: due to a spoofed string search packet and winmx using absolute (rather than virtual) file paths in its library... the files and users in the results are real....

most folks dont have a second (or third) harddrive... so files are shared from drive c:

theres a trick tho.... but its -not- easy.... old command from the days of dos called 'subst' where you can give a folder on one drive a drive letter in and of itself yet never have to move the files or create a new partition...

open a command prompt and lets say for simplicities sake your shared files are all in the subfolder c:\shared -- you would type 'subst e: c:\shared' ... no quotes ofc and substitute 'e:' for another drive letter such as p: or j: or whatever you want thats not currently in use by a physical drive of some sort.... (check first i dunno what happenes if you try to use a drive letter thats in use...) .... then change winmx's shares to point to that new virtual drive....

the bad part? i think this has to be redone on each boot... or at least it did in DOS... never done it on a windows NT (2000 xp vista 7 etc) system...

you can ofc type subst /? at the command prompt to see its short 'help' information...

http://www.ntwind.com/software/utilities/visual-subst.html  --- theres a gui tool for it.. allows the virtual drive to persist across reboots... (read on wiki they still dont)

you use this info/software at your own risk... i take no responsibility for lost data.... if anyone wants to make a tutorial complete with screenshots for this that would be interesting....

...its 2am... this was badly written by reason of oversleepy... apologies...

[achilles]

I'm not sure i'm following you Stripes. Wouldn't everyone that does not have another drive other than C or the drive their OS resides on have to do this in order for this to work? I PM'd some users tonight that had no ideal what was wrong with WinMx. They thought something was wrong with their PC or their installation of WinMx. Their are so many users that still does not know what the problem is, and many have already left the network.  I'm not sure how we are going to get the word out short of being able to send the message out in a banner type form through the patch.  Is it possible to put a message in the patch to inform all the users what the problem is? Instead of it saying thanks eagle, it could say something like WinMx network under attack. For more info click here... with the link to the info on WinMx World. None of this would do any good of course if the hackers are able to hack the patch, and change the message to something else.

[White Stripes]

no no.. if you already have your shares on a second partition or second drive (a drive other than 'c:') you're set... your files arent getting listed with this attack...

attackers would have to hack the site to change the patch message... er... if they dont find a hole in mx that is....

the attackers arent 'hacking' winmx to do this they are using its very old protocol against itself...

when someone searches for something on the network, that search... along with the ip it came from gets passed around the primaries on the network.. the attackers need just 'watch' the traffic to see that... to do the attack they just inject a packet with a spoofed ip (the ip of the person doing the search in this case) winmx sees as 'valid' as tho the search from that ip was looking for 'c:' as well as what they were looking for in the first place... time this right and youve got a mess on your hands...

the reason a simple search for 'c:' works is due to another aspect of the way winmx is built... it uses full paths all the way down to the drive letter in its library file... browse someone sometime and click the button that says 'show full paths' ... you'll see it... winmx is just doing what it was programmed to do... return all (or as many as it can) results that match the searched string....

winmx was an encrypted 'trust based' protocol.... never designed to work with 3rd party tools of any kind... only itself... so it sees input from other tools... even the malicious ones... as 'valid' data... ...we are talking about a protocol written in 2002 using bits and pieces of opennap as an idea to springboard from... ...frontcode didnt exactly have this kind of use or abuse in mind...


the use of the subst command was a quick 'bandaid' idea i thought of for those who dont have any other drives but c: to share from....

and gs... dont get pissed at this non-sugar-coated 'how the attack works' post... at this point... with about 1500 primaries on a good day... if that... does it really hurt? first post in this thread was may 8... its june 10...

[Old Gunny]

Lager,
Add my thanks for checking out the problem.
It has been a real pain, every time I've searched, I get just about everything besides what I've been looking for.
Again THANK YOU for checking it out.

Old Gunny

[Jim Douglas Jr]

I've finally registered and had to comment.

What are all the petty arguements about?  Does everyone really have nothing better to do than play he-said she-said games?

[White Stripes]

strong opinions and arguments have been flying around this site since it was opened....

we're all one big cranky disfunctional family! lmao

[GhostShip]

But a family no less I hope 

[Bluey_412]

I think Stripes is onto something here...

Makes me wonder about a script that installs, sets and prompts users to put their files in there or similar

[White Stripes]

wanna make a note tho bluey... that - that idea is basically putting a bandaid on a wound that needs stitches... it would work technically but only till the attackers changed tactics.... granted trying to cover all 26 letters of the alphabet might be a bit of a challenge for them lol....

[silicon_toad2000]

IceDragon 000  not sure if this will help anyone but when doing a search use the bottom portion of where you enter the user and or file it seems to reduce the crappy files you get for example i did a search for vidoes useing the BBC as the search function got 2500 results entering the same BBC in the bottom line got 150 you mite need to orefine how that works

IceDragon 000  if it helps sweet if not oh well

from the help room earlier