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DOJ Indicts Cyprus National Who Apparently Hacked Ripoff Report And Deleted Negative Reviews

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We've covered incidents involving Ripoff Report for several years here at Techdirt. In most of the cases that we've covered, Ripoff Report has been the target of bogus DMCA takedowns and libel lawsuits from entities who would do pretty much anything to see negative reviews disappear.Ripoff Report has plenty of critics. The company refuses to take any review down, even if the reviewer is the one asking for it to be removed. People have accused Ripoff Report of engaging in extortionate behavior by encouraging third parties to flood complaining companies (and individuals) with negative reviews. And the site's hardline stance of review removal (it simply never happens) hasn't earned it much sympathy in other countries where Section 230 immunity and other free speech-friendly laws aren't in effect.But the latest news involving Ripoff Report is some of the weirdest. And it comes from an unusual source: the Department of Justice. A Cyprus national with links to a California reputation management company has been extradited to the US to face criminal charges related to the malicious hacking of Ripoff Report.

The indictment alleges that on Oct. 30, 2016, [Joshua] Epifaniou obtained unauthorized access to the database of Ripoff Report (ROR), a company located in Phoenix, Arizona, through a brute force attack. A brute force attack is a trial-and-error method used to obtain information, such as a user password or personal identification number. Epifaniou allegedly used the attack to successfully override ROR’s login and password protection to access its database through an existing account for a ROR employee. On Nov. 18, 2016, Epifaniou emailed ROR’s CEO using an email address, threatening to publicly disseminate stolen ROR data unless the company paid him $90,000 within 48 hours. According to the indictment, Epifaniou emailed again the following day with a hyperlink to a video recording demonstrating Epifaniou’s unauthorized access to the ROR CEO’s account.  
This would be on top of Epifaniou's other alleged extortion schemes. He also illicitly harvested personal information from a number of other sites, including those belonging to an online game publisher, an employment service, and a sports news site run by Turner Broadcasting. Epifaniou and his conspirators emailed users of these sites, threatening them with exposing sensitive data unless a ransom was paid.Trying to extort Ripoff Report's site owner wasn't the only thing Epifaniou did. He also leveraged his illicit access to the review site to benefit California-based SEO Company's customers, ensuring a healthy payout for himself in the process. From the indictment [PDF]:
On or about November 8, 2016, SEO Company negotiated a "reputation management service agreement," charging the client an initial $4000 for removal of a complaint from ROR.On or about November 9, 2016, EPIFANIOU and his co-conspirator via an instant messaging service discussed their plan to remove data from the ROR website for a fee but pretend to SEO Company's clients that it was accomplished through court orders rather than computer hacking.[...]On or about February 13, 2017, SEO Company negotiated a "reputation management service agreement" with another client, charging an initial $4,000 for removal of a complaint from ROR.On or about February 14, 2017, EPIFANIOU and his co-conspirator via an instant messaging service discussed the status and profits of their ROR hack, and their intent to hack-additional customer complaint and review websites (including through website vulnerabilities and stolen employee login credentials).On or about March 3, 2017, SEO Company negotiated a "reputation management service agreement" with another client, charging an initial $4,150 for removal of two complaints from ROR.On or about March 31, 2017, SEO Company negotiated a "reputation management service agreement" with another client, charging $11,000 for removal of two complaints from ROR.On or about April 27, 2017, EPIFANIOU and his co-conspirator via an instant messaging service discussed another method for unauthorized access to ROR's database, "in case the original exploit gets patched so we can drag this out for another at least 6-7 months."Between October 2016 and May 2017, EPIFANIOU and his co-conspirator removed at least 100 complaints from the ROR database, charging SEO Company's clients approximately $3,000 to $5,000 for removal of each Complaint.
And that's how you remove a negative review from Ripoff Report. All you need is a willing conspirator, admin-level access to the site itself, and the willingness to put your freedom on the line to help companies patch up their reputations. It's not a great plan, but it worked right up until it didn't. And that six-month run was enough to delete 100 negative reviews and generate at least $300,000 in payments from SEO Company customers who are now linked to illicit hacking and ransom demands. Fun stuff.

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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Jul-2020
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Tech And COVID-19: MLB Rolls Out Remote Cheering Function In Its MLB App

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As we continue navigating this new world full of COVID-19, mostly alone due to the laughably inept response from our national leadership, there's a certain humor to the ongoing push for a "return to normalcy." What makes it so funny is how completely clear it is that "normalcy" is going to be anything but normal. Go back to work, but wear a mask and stay the fuck away from your coworkers. Get your kids back to school, but maybe not, also masks, and remote learning, and they have to eat their lunch in their classrooms. Restaurants are open, but only outside, with less people, and there will be temperature checks.And then there are the sports. Collegiate sports are shutting down with the quickness, but the professional sports leagues are opening. The NBA is back, but only in Orlando, which is basically coronavirus ground zero. The NHL is coming back, except a ton of players are testing positive.And then there's baseball. Yes, Major League Baseball is back, but masks make an appearance and, most importantly, there are no crowds. If you aren't a baseball fan, I'll forgive you for not understanding this, but crowds are a huge deal for baseball. Part of the ambiance of the game, be it in person or on television, is that low level din of crowd noise, vendors yelling out, and the like. Not to mention the roar or boos of crowds during peak excitement. With no crowds, the soundtrack of the summer is just the lead singer with no instruments backing him or her up.MLB's solution to this was to pipe in crowd music. With audio files at least in part from Sony's MLB The Show video game series, teams were encouraged to add their own flavors to the audio files and then pipe them into stadiums. This helped, of course, but how was the crowd noise supposed to artificially change based on what occurs on the field?Turns out that MLB actually has a solution for that. And it's awesome.

Fans will have the opportunity to boo the Houston Astros during the 2020 Major League Baseball season after all.As Darren Rovell of Action Network shared, the league will incorporate how many fans are using its app and cheering or booing a specific team into the piped in crowd noise it will use in empty stadiums amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Very cool. Essentially, MLB's app will let users note which team they're supporting and then allow them to "cheer" or "boo" via the app. Their choices will then be reflected in the crowd audio that is piped into the stadium and heard on television broadcasts. Staff at the stadium will reflect viewer choices in near real time.
"Ballpark staff uses the 'real-time' fan sentiment to control/vary noise variation/levels at the ballpark," is how the league described how teams will use the feature.It won't exactly be the raucous environments of Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but it is at least a way for fans to express their loyalties while they are watching from home instead of the bleachers.
I love this sort of thing. Still, one wonders if MLB is prepared for the potential of rival fuckery. After all, it might just be possible to setup an automated system that created a bunch of accounts for a rival team and then simply choose to boo all the time, ruining the broadcast. Hopefully the league has a method to guard against that sort of thing.But if they don't, this is me soliciting a guerrilla hacking group so we can go screw around with White Sox crowd levels.

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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Jul-2020
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

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