The Perils of P2P
* Because of extreme and anonymous connectivity, P2P users are exposed to a variety of security and privacy hazards, including flaws that provide easy access to hackers, machine crashes and loss of privacy.
* In 2002, the Kazaa program was covertly bundled with spyware from Brilliant Digital Media, which is used to monitor behaviour and browsing habits for target-marketing purposes.
* Spyware can be embedded with a "Trojan Horse", an executable code that may leak information, corrupt files or allow system commandeering by a hacker. In January 2002, a P2P spyware program that was bundled with four separate file-sharing networks was classified as a "Trojan Horse".
* Almost half of the 4,778 executable files downloaded in a one month period through the popular Kazaa file-sharing network were infected with malicious code like viruses and Trojan Horses.
* At least 9 reported viruses that spread via file-sharing networks have been identified (there are undoubtedly more). Users become contaminated when downloading infected shared files.
* Young users of peer-to-peer networks are at significant risk of inadvertent exposure to pornography. In a search using innocuous keywords likely to be used by children (i.e. "Britney Spears", "the Olsen twins" and "Pokemon"), more than half of the images downloaded were classified as adult or cartoon pornography.
* Nearly 6 million video, image and other files identified as "xxx", "porn" or "sex" were available to be downloaded on one of the popular P2P networks in a 2 day period.
* Current parental control programs designed to block children's access to pornography on the Web are generally ineffective when applied to file-sharing networks, as most such programs filter out files based on what would normally be considered completely benign keywords; as noted above.
R.I.P Demonoid (Updated!)
Originally Posted by Cheezymadman
