Five days of forcefed real life is more than any man should ever had to deal with in like 3 lifetimes or so. I had to go through double that amount. Computer crashes do happen, but to me they happen more often and they last obscenely longer than they should, must be that magnetic personality of mine.

On the other hand it might be something like bad karma. I managed to piss quite a lot of people off lately. Maybe a rethink of the whole plan would be in order. Be good, kind and completely avoid inflammatory words.. Sounds like a plan to me. Will 5 minutes of this stuff be enough?

Waiting… waiting… Hmm. I imagine that 5 seconds will do just as well.

So seriously, if you just pulled some of that voodoo crap on me, f*ck you. I’m not going anywhere and if there is one thing that is going to change will be the fact that I’ll get meaner still. Karma is a bitch, but truth is a way more tougher badass. I’m sticking with the latter.

On the other hand if you missed me, rejoice. I’m back and back to stay.

Below the radar of most people visiting this place, our little contest has gone ahead.

To remind you a bit of the whole story, the contest consists of finding clues hidden in blog posts around here, which in turn reveal a keyphrase. This keyphrase was used to encrypt a certain file, which can be found here. If you are the first to paste the content of the encrypted file, you instantly win.

These devious blog posts can be recognized by the µ symbol found at the end of each. There are already several clues to be found.

So What’s the Prize?

As for the prize, the sponsors have really outdone themselves:

The winner will get a custom designed 125 by 125 pixels ad, created by a pro:

The winner will get his ad designed by Vlad Georgescu.
Vlad is a User Interface Designer with over 3 years experience in web & graphic design.
You can check his Linkedin profile here.

On top of this the winner will also get a one month ad spot from http://nugrohoadipratama.com/ which is a PR2 blog and 400 EC (Entrecard) credits. This prize is offered by Nugroho Adi Pratama which also blogs at http://id-economy.blogspot.com/.

Together with the one month ad spot on my blog, the permanent sitewide link in the contest winners roster of honor and the increased prize of 600 EC credits from yours truly, you can now start digging through my old posts.

FAQ

1) Can’t passwords be hacked nowadays?

Sure they can. Actually, cracking it is a legitimate way to win. Brute force, dictionary attacks, nothing is off the table so knock yourself out.

2) Can I sponsor this contest?

Of course you can. Just drop me an email to geegel (at) gmail.com with the prize you want to offer and we will hammer out the details.

3) How much will the contest last?

Well… until somebody wins.

This Contest Is Too Hard!

Not really, but in case that you want an extra clue, I’m willing to lend an extra hand. If you post a comment on this blog containing the phrase “All hail the flying spaghetti monster” I’ll send you an additional clue right in your inbox. This will not mean that you’ll be subscribed to any newsletter or crap like that, it only means that you’ll get one (1) e-mail containing the clue.

µ (if you comment with the phrase I gave you that is)

I realized that I’ve been a little bit too negative lately and trust me I have some very loose standards. This is why this post is dedicated to the bright side of Bit Torrent. These are the stories which do not involve any pr0n, spyware or even… is it possible… copyright infringement. We’ll analyze 3 cases of Bit Torrent marketing which went right:

First case: The Good

Wikipedia seems an unlikely candidate for a success story about BitTorrent, but their project Wikipedia Selection for Schools which is a collection, “cream of the crop” style, designed to be used in schools (especially in 3rd world countries) as a reference materials is distributing their DVD through this platform.

Given that this material is used in hundreds of schools worldwide and the DVD itself is not exactly small, they dramatically reduced their distribution costs. The website promoting this is also accepting donations, but given the torrenters huge appetite to you know… give away money… I wouldn’t hold my breath about the success of this part. (h/t Ernesto)

Second case: The Bad (h/t to nukeit for reminding me)

Trent Reznor always had a bone to pick with the major recording companies. At one point while he was still under a contract with Interscope Records he said live on a scene: “steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin’.”… the vagaries of “sharing is not theft” don’t go very well with badasses it seems.

Anyway, he got out of that contract and he and his band, Nine Inch Nails, finally found themselves independent.

To celebrate this new found freedom they thought “Hey, let’s make an album and give it away for free”. And so they did.

The album called “The Slip” was downloaded roughly 1.6 million times from the main site, but that’s just half of the story. Since this album was released, the crowd of fans made the website barely usable. However, the album was released under a Common Creative license, so guilt free, the files were soon to be found on just about Bit Torrent tracker in existence.

Nobody knows for sure how many downloads this thing achieved, but conservative estimates put the number of downloads at roughly the same par with the hits registered by the main site. The instant effect was that NIN became a success story and even more miraculous… some intelligent comments popped up on Mininova.

What’s even more intriguing is that the band actually made money out of this, through the sale of collectible, limited edition CD/DVD.

It’s important to realize though , that this success story relied hugely on the already significant fanbase that NIN has. Creating music and simply putting it on BitTorrent won’t make you a lot of money

Third Case: The Ugly

Free Jimmy is not the sort of cartoon you want to show your children. Stoners, mobsters, lots of f words  and a junkie elephant seem to indicate this. This not so bright Norwegian gem wasn’t particularly popular with the critics either. The Rotten Tomato gives it a not so impressive 10%. For comparison even “Don’t Mess with the Zohan”, which does not exactly fit the artsy crowd, managed 34%.

This movie seemed to boldly go into the trash bin of history. Torrenters disagreed though. A certain fellow or group (nobody is sure), by his/her/its name aXXo released the movie on BitTorrent. 500.000 downloads later, the suits finally saw the light and actually began to put this movie in cinemas.  A joyful Norwegian and a pissed off Brit were reportedly seen afterwards. A happy ending for an awful movie… hey everyone’s a critic

µ

I’m not the sort that cherishes stories on “economy”. The last few days though made the subject interesting.

You’re probably not aware of this, but I live in Romania. If you don’t know where that is… well… Google it.

The story that has become all the rage these days around here, is the fact that the local currency was under attack from speculators. Troubled times it seems bring such tactics. George Soros made a fortune out of it, so some other guys were trying to repeat his success. Speculating is normal, trying to manipulate the market to make such events happen though is not.

Well, the geekish looking fella in the picture, Mugur Isarescu by his name, is the guy in charge of stopping them. And stop them he did. More exactly he used the national foreign currency reserves and a few tricks like making the local currency harder to find to stop the inflationary attack.

This in itself is as cool as it gets. Because the guys behind the attack were not named Joe the Plumber, but were wearing more resounding names like Barclays and Goldman Sachs.

After the initial attack started, the RON (Romanian Leu) entered an abrupt devaluation slide, no so different to what happened in the Hungarian Forex market and a few months ago to the Icelandic Krona (ISK) which ultimately led to the current Icelandic crisis. However this attack was very short lived, as the National Bank of Romania  (BNR) intervened and the currency regained in value.

Ultimately this means that the banks involved in the attack are losing money fast, because they have bet the wrong way. To make things worst, the Forex market is usually done through leverage, usually at a rate of 100 to 1. This works great when you are predicting right, with one dollar you control 100 after all, but when you get it wrong it can bite your arse hard, with one dollar you can lose quite a lot.

So basically if you are one of those “confident” investors still holding the said banks’ stocks, now would be a very good moment to dump them. Some sad news about further write offs is about to come your way.

The moral of the story:

You don’t f*ck the Balkans. The Balkans f*ck you.

Note: This post contains information that if used will not make you morally flexible, but morally bankrupt. You have been warned.

If you have ever used BitTorrent, a huge lump of pure rage should be in your throat by now. Hold your pants and see what the argument is, before you jump and flame the shit out of this place.

The first depressing piece of news is that BitTorrent is so popular these days, that almost everybody uses it. What’s so depressing about it? Well, imagine the average IQ for this crowd… Depressed yet? The worst part is that mathematically speaking 50% of this crowd is even stupider that your average torrenter. Statistics can be a bitch.

While most people would shrug off, drown a pint and move on, blackhatters saw a golden opportunity and thus moved in and made loads of money.

How? After all, FREE is the keyword that makes the BitTorrent world move.

Well… here is how:

The first trick is to use the lure of p0rn and restrict the access with a password. Here’s how a blackhatter described his method:

(more…)

While most people still use BitTorrent to… you know… pirate stuff, there is a growing movement which attempts to use this great distribution platform as a marketing tool.

The problem though is that BitTorrent users are not exactly the type that would jump ship and buy like crazy. Quite the opposite. At even the slightest hint of a commercial offer, they become very vocal and consistently oppose every such move.

So how do you market on BitTorrent? What’s the right way to do it?

Perhaps it would be easier to first highlight the things you must avoid:

Bullshit doesn’t work

Torrent fans have a very keen sense of quality. Pushing crappy products will simply get you nowhere. There is a tremendous amount of traffic available out there. The Pirate Bay for example had a few days ago a total of 18 million users SIMULTANEOUSLY connected to its tracker (see more on this story). The untold story is that the majority of torrents out there, never get even 2 downloads.

The rewards are high, but so is the competition and the only thing you can do to stay on the top is to release quality stuff and maybe game the torent search engines a bit.

Demos spell failure

The history of Bit Torrent gives this playground some very tough rules. Pirates want the product to be full and without any limitations.

A good example would be the case of the online games developer, Free World Group. Recently they begun distributing their demo games through Mininova’s Content Distribution system. The reaction from the Mininova users is well… not very encouraging.

Avoiding these pitfalls will definitely give you an edge. But is there actually a marketable area within BitTorrent? Of course there is.

To give you a positive example, please take a look at this torrent which I uploaded on Mininova almost a year ago. It attracted more than 10.000 downloads AND what is more important, it also attracted business worth more than 1000 dollars. More bizarre still, this happened without any active promotion and relying on the power of Mininova’s Content Distribution system alone.

So which are the effective marketing tools available to the BitTorrent entrepreneur? Well, this question will be answered in a future post.

µ

Our little blog has finally made one month since it hit the blogosphere.

To celebrate, we will hold a contest.

What do you have to do in order to win it?

Well, all that you have to do is pay attention.

More exactly after this post will go online, a certain text file will pop up somewhere on the web. If you find out what’s written in it and you paste the content here in a comment, you instantly win. I will give you the location of the file, but unfortunately this file will be found in an encrypted archive. Finding the password is what this contest is all about.

From time to time certain blog posts here will include hidden clues. You will be able to easily recognize these as at the end of each of these posts you will see the symbol µ.

The password itself is actually a keyphrase with all the spaces removed and in lowercase. For example if the keyphrase is “Mary had a little lamb”, the password would be maryhadalittlelamb.

What Can I Win

Well, aside from an eternal place on the blog’s roster of honor (yes that’s a sitewide, permanent, dofollow link if you’re into SEO), you will also get a 125×125 ad placed in the advertisement column for your own site for no less than 2 months and if by any chance you find Entrecard more useful than I do, you will also get 250 EC credits. Please note that the prize might get slightly more consistent in the long run.

The most important thing to be won though will be the fun and the excitement of a genuine puzzle hunt.

The Prize Just Got Bigger

And we have our first sponsored bonus. The winner will get a custom designed 125 by 125 pixels ad, created by a pro:

The winner will get his ad designed by Vlad Georgescu.
Vlad is a User Interface Designer with over 3 years experience in web & graphic design.
You can check his Linkedin profile here.

FAQ

1) Can’t passwords be hacked nowadays?

Sure they can. Actually, cracking it is a legitimate way to win. Brute force, dictionary attacks, nothing is off the table so knock yourself out.

2) Can I sponsor this contest?

Of course you can. Just drop me an email to geegel (at) gmail.com with the prize you want to offer and we will hammer out the details.

3) How much will the contest last?

Well… until somebody wins.

UPDATE

You can now get the encrypted file (you will need a BitTorrent client for this)

the link

P.S. You might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or bookmark this site. This contest will last for a while.

µ

Slowly but steadily, our little blog is heading towards its one month anniversary. I don’t know about you, but this makes me all fuzzy and giddy.

To put you in the same mood I have some news that will brighten up your day. First of all, the Top Commentators list has now been extended to include 10 entries rather than the measly 5 it previously held and to make the things even better CommentLuv is now on Gray Hat Zone. This means that you get more extensive coverage for your own blog and some increased traffic as well, with the condition that you step out of the shadows and let people know what you think.

And to spice it all up, we’ll soon have another contest on our hands. I haven’t decided on the details yet, but I’ll make it worthwhile.

On the promotion part, my Twitter experience has so far been an excellent one. Not in terms of the traffic quantity it brought, but rather in its quality. I’m beginning to like this platform more and more and as I just passed my 200th follower, I can heartily recommend this service. If you want to see what I’m up to in the lovely world of the 140 chars, drop me a visit @geegel

Not everything went smooth though. Entrecard sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Basically this service is nothing more than a huge auto-surf program for bloggers. If there is one advice I can share with you for this platform, it would be “Stay the heck away from it”. It’s not the fact that the service is unreliable and slows down your blog, it’s not even the lame system of purchasing ads that killed it for me, it’s the fact that Entrecard brings nothing more than junk traffic.

The stats so far really explain it all: the bounce rate is awfully close to 100% and the average length of an Entrecard visit is 6 seconds. By comparison, stumblers spend  an average of one minute and twenty seconds on my blog and twitterers spend more than 3 minutes. I’ll probably let the widget for a few more days and if the stats don’t improve significantly, I’ll give the program a boot in the rear.

There are certain catchwords in this world that seem to transcend their original meaning and begin to pop up in the most unexpected places. Social engineering falls into this category. You’ll find it in the jargon of copywriters, phishing scammers, political strategists, corporate espionage experts, con artists, hackers and even forum trolls.

It is extremely hard to decide in which order the various aspects and subtle variations should be covered, so instead of trying to organize this mess I will take you through the same journey that I underwent and share with you my personal experience as it happened.

But what is social engineering more exactly? In a broader context it all comes down to manipulation either through deception, half truths or exaggeration and the purpose is to modify the behavior of the target as to make it act in a fashion desired by the social engineer. Most of the time this act comes in flagrant contrast with the target’s legitimate interest

While the principles of social engineering have been used throughout the human history, the advent of mass communication and internet brought this technique to its full potential.

My first contact with social engineering came through my sister. I was still in high school and she introduced me to several real life journalism stories which attempted to sway the public opinion by presenting misleading facts. As a student in Journalism her main interest relied mostly on detecting such manipulations and providing a set of best practice techniques to avoid covering such fake stories.

My imagination though flew in the other direction.

This entire web of carefully crafted lies, used in conjunction with real statistics and real facts in order to gain legitimacy seemed to me extremely fascinating.

Real Life Example

One of the first stories of this type that I came in contact with is the infamous list of food additives which were supposedly carcinogenic. Nobody quite knows where this list popped out, but it had credibility as it cited recognized academic work.

On the top of this list laid a food additive, with a cryptic E number. However when checked this additive proved to be citric acid, a natural component of fruits such as oranges. Further still the research paper which was cited contained no references to these food additives.

Journalists worldwide jumped at this story and it can be said with quite a large degree of certitude that this list was one of the major factors which led to the success of the organic food movement, as well as the adoption in governments worldwide of pro-organic food policies.

Since this event has taken place, this list has been used and it is still being used by the proponents of organic food as one of their main arguing points. I don’t know even to this day who built this list and why but due to its success is undoubtedly one of the most effective pieces of social engineering in modern times.

This is the first chapter on what will be an extensive series covering the topic of social engineering. If you want to follow these posts, it is highly recommended that you subscribe to the RSS feed (if you are using the Firefox Live Bookmarks service, click “View Feed XML” and you’ll be able to subscribe from there).

I always take pride in finding at least somewhat ethical uses for techniques usually reserved to blackhatters only. From time to time though, you stumble upon on techniques and tools so deeply buried in the black hat mantra that it becomes almost impossible to find any ethical uses for them.

Today I will show you two such tools:

(more…)