Pierluigi Paganini December 17, 2011

With the term software piracy is referred the illegal distribution or reproduction of software for business or personal use. Whether software piracy is deliberate or not, it is still illegal and punishable by law.

We distinguish several type of software privacy:

• End user: sing one licensed copy to install a program on multiple computers,copying distrubuting applications for installation, usage of limited versions for an unqualified purpose.
• Internet : offer of illegal software for download over the Internet. To give you some sample consider a software distribution trought a website that offer the possibility to download the requested files in exchange for uploading another program and so violing your licence agreement in return for other downloads, and becoming a software pirate yourself.Another good example are all those mechanisms to share pirated software using peer-to-peer networks that enable unauthorized transfer of copyrighted programs.
• Software counterfeiting, copyrighted materials illegally duplicated and sold  to unsuspecting customers who believe they’re acquiring  genuine software.

The phenomenon is of great concern on the security front. For if the end user is encouraged to use piracy software to save license costs and to be able to test any other kind of application it is exposed to the risk of being victim of such malware with dangerous consequences. Software obtained through illegal channels has a good chance of being faulty, impossible to register and so not upgradable  and infected with malwares.

And if I were the victim of an attack of madness and I inconceivable another bad event. If behind the phenomenon of piracy for some applications there were real cyber warfare operations? Distributing pirated copies a government could inject malware or can project a botnet creation plan with the intent to attack specific targets. Pirated software may be a vector privileged, out of control, and well established in many contexts. Consider that with the distrubution of a cracked operating system we now can control a PC but also a mobile device. Through a jailbreak so I could spy on a user who is willing to sacrifice their privacy for installing any application or fashion new features not available in official versions of the software.

As usual … meditate.

Pierluigi Paganini

References

http://portal.bsa.org/piracyimpact2010/studies/piracyimpactstudy2010.pdf