There is no peace for the Piracy Shieldthe platform managed by the Authority for communications guarantees (Agcom) to counteract the piracy and illegal streaming. In recent days, some users had complained of malfunctions, as harmless and legal sites had been blocked for no reason. The reason why this would have happened seems to be linked to the functioning of the software. This, in fact, has the ability to obscure in just 30 minutes and automatically sites whose IP address appears to be suspicious. To this day the Piracy Shield has overshadowed further 3,200 sites.
Today, after a certainly not easy start, the defeat came. As reported by some specialized publications in the sector, including Tom's Hardware, a hackers he would have been able to penetrate the system and share very sensitive information.
Piracy Shield hacked: what happened
The Piracy Shield was pirated by an expert hacker, who uploaded a lot of sensitive information to GitHubthe service of hosting on which numerous developers upload and share the codes of the software they program. In particular, among the most important information to have been shared is the source codewhich is the basis of its functioning.
The “leaker“, that is, the hacker responsible for the data leak, on GitHub goes by the name “FuckGitHub” and, at the same time as his speech, he released a message addressed to Agcom and SP Legal Tech, which worked on the platform, in which he harshly criticized the tool. In particular, he wrote that the Piracy Shield “it's not just a failed attempt to fight online piracy, it's a dangerous step towards censorship disguised as a solution to piracy”.
Piracy Shield hacked: the consequences
What does this imply for Agcom? The possibilities that open up at this point are different: there are those who are already talking about closing the softwaredue to continuous malfunctions, or a temporary interruption, to allow technicians to repair the incident and get the system back on track.
What is clear, however, is that with such a major data leak, this incident could be remedied very high costsso much so as to make this operation economically counterproductive.
Finally, there remains a big question still unanswered: how did the hacker get hold of the source code? Was the system so fragile that it could be easily penetrated? Or has he (or she) worked on the project and knows its strengths or weaknesses? The relevant authorities will investigate the event, but unfortunately, by now, the die is cast.