TV news station backs down on P2P virus claims |

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TV news station backs down on P2P virus claims

12. November 2006, 9:22 Uhradmin

A US TELEVISION station has had to back down on claims that P2P software will fill your computer with viruses.7News reported how during its ‘exclusive’ test it downloaded Limeware software only to find it contained password cracking software.

. Our report miffed INQ reader Dominic Webb who contacted the 7News hack, Tony Kovaleski, and called him out on his claim.

Sure enough, after a bit more digging it turned out the TV hack had got it all wrong and confirmed that Limewire did not include any password cracking software.

limewire virus p2p

“The error in my findings was the result of a unique license file downloaded by the installation of LimeWire on our computer. This license file is not a threat to a computer, Kovaleski said.

It turned out that his malware detector had triggered on a unique GNU license downloaded by LimeWire to 7News’ computer. This licence had a “digital fingerprint” (SHA-1 hash) which was associated with only one application in a database of thousands of software products which turned out to he an older version of a password cracker.

Limewire installed this unique license file on 7New’s system. Kovaleski established that it was this license which triggered the alert, not the installation of the actual application pwl9x.

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Free Limewire / P2P

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.A pure peer-to-peer network does not have the notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients" and "servers" to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement differs from the client-server model where communication is usually to and from a central server. A typical example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is an FTP server where the client and server programs are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the download.