Is KAZAA & P2P SAFE?

[prana0777]

Your comments are a little dangerous.. well from the security point of view that is.. Never Never Never assume that your AV and Firewall alone will protect you.. these with care, vigilence, commen sence and a lot of bloody good luck will keep you clear.

dont use Kazaa. i dont use kazaa but it is so cool to have download anything as FREE!!!!!! it s up to you. if virus or hacker catch you. Good night ! I agree with Und3rtak3r.

peace out

[bballad]

Is P2P safe? In a word NO.


Remember you are probably doing something illegal with the P2P software that is inherently dangerous.

Lets look at the reasons.

1.You have to knock a hole in your firewall for the server to get out...then it screams to the world "Here I AM" and at least this port is open. This makes your up to date Firewall useless.

2. The Programs where not coded with security in mind, those that where not made by greedy companies that embedded it with spy ware and wanted the code out quick where made by underground programmers that don't mind breaking the law. Do either of those groups sound like they would have a problem installing backdoors in the program?

3. The files you are downloading are not from trusted sources. Every EXE you download is a game of Russian roulette, even an up-to-date AV wont stop a 0 day Trojan.

4. If you only download Mpg and MP3 you are a little safer. but groups like the RIAA are out there looking for people who have large file shares of pirated music, ask your self if $100k+ per song per download from you is worth not buying some CD's?

Stay away from P2P stick to IRC and FTP...lurk for a long time to figure out who you can trust to download from IRC.. Remember every one on IRC and P2P has no problem breaking the law, if they get annoyed with you or think you are leaching they will ty to break your system.

[Jo-W]

KaZaA is not dangerous if you use it wisely...

[ShippMA]

sorry if it's a little off topic, but bballad said that groups like the RIAA are looking for people with large music shares. I'm assuming that they can only look over the p2p networks at your stuff so could you just not show anyone anything and just download? I know that that goes against the p2p principal, but it would be better than being fined.

[Shakira]

Originally posted here by uraloony


Err I hope you mean Imesh Lite. IMesh has over 60 components of spyware contained in it and they used between 15-20 megs of ram on my computer while in installed. I had to boot to safe mode just to remove a bunch of the components, AFTER UN-INSTALLING IMESH. Trust me, Imesh sucks. If you gotta use Imesh, use Imesh lite.

Also, FYI, the Imesh client runs on the same p2p network that kazaa does, so the only difference between them is the client. They also use the same way of downloading files. In fact, you can start a download on Kazaa, pause it, copy the .dat file into the directory that Imesh saves downloads in, and resume the download in Imesh. Pretty nifty eh?

Anyway, good luck.

Thank you for enlightening me. Actually I have this problem that you mentioned regarding lmesh when I tried to use Kazaalite. This happened when I upgraded to the latest version of Kazaa. I noticed that my system is horribably slow whenever I use Kazaa. I am using P4 with 512 RDRAM in my PC. Everytime I clicked the IE browser or any other program, it tooks about more than 30 seconds to open.

Is there anyway, I could manually delete these spywares in Kazaa if there is one?


Thanks a lot for those who have answered my questions.

[bballad]

Originally posted here by Shakira



Thank you for enlightening me. Actually I have this problem that you mentioned regarding lmesh when I tried to use Kazaalite. This happened when I upgraded to the latest version of Kazaa. I noticed that my system is horribably slow whenever I use Kazaa. I am using P4 with 512 RDRAM in my PC. Everytime I clicked the IE browser or any other program, it tooks about more than 30 seconds to open.

Is there anyway, I could manually delete these spywares in Kazaa if there is one?


Thanks a lot for those who have answered my questions.

Kazaa loads a lot of spyware...try spybot search and distroy, it dose the job and is free.

http://security.kolla.de/

[doc crontab]

"I am paranoid. I am afraid of using Kazaa. Is it possible to get hacked if
I download MP3 or MPEG files from someone's PC by using Kazaa?"

Definatley,

Someone can install a backdoor in your system if you aren't careful
to scan the mp3 files you downloaded. If you download copyrighted
music/movies you can draw attention from the music cops and the powers
that be. Awhile back their was a fuss going on about a bill in the U.S. that
would allow legal hacking of people's home pc's, DDOS peer to peer networks
to stop P2P piracy I don't know if it passed or not other Countries may or
may not have similar laws that you could get yourself in hot water legally
speaking.

I'd suggest the Book 'Internet Piracy Exposed' by Guy Davis
I bought it for $3 last year at a used book store (ISBN 0-7821-2920-X)
it's dated but it's informative on the legal issues involved and what's
waiting for you if your caught, reviews mp3 services like the now defunk
napster gets the views from the pirates why they do what they do.

[UpperCell]

SIMPLE ANWER (again) KAZAA IS NOT SAFE AND IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

There is, however, a universal solution!!

get a computer that you want to use as your kazaa, maybe even everything computer...

Unplug any network connections(including modem)

set up windows (I don't think you have a choice for kazaa, could be wrong though
configure the box exactly as you would like it minus kazaa and any media.
include firewall software and antivirus

0. image your hard drive onto CD's using something like drive image from powerquest.com

1. update your antivirus and windows online (after getting on the inet again)

2. Download and install kazaa.

3. Enjoy!

4. When you get media that you really like, scan it manually with your UPDATED antivirus and put it on CD or a second hard drive.

5. Wait for your system to get FOOKED by stuff related to kazaa. (may take a few days )

6. Break out those disks you made in step 0 (yeah... I made it step 0 cause I'm lazy, and forgot to the 1 by it) and restore your backup OS.

7. Bring back your good media from the CD's or second hard drive.

8. Continue at step 1.



it's that easy... well actually I didn't say it'd be easy... but it works, I have an image of my 'perfect' win2k configuration on 2 CD's, and restore it monthly at times when stuff starts to suck a bit. It's usually only necessary a few times a year though.

[bballad]

Originally posted here by UpperCell
SIMPLE ANWER (again) KAZAA IS NOT SAFE AND IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

There is, however, a universal solution!!

get a computer that you want to use as your kazaa, maybe even everything computer...

Unplug any network connections(including modem)

set up windows (I don't think you have a choice for kazaa, could be wrong though
configure the box exactly as you would like it minus kazaa and any media.
include firewall software and antivirus

0. image your hard drive onto CD's using something like drive image from powerquest.com

1. update your antivirus and windows online (after getting on the inet again)

2. Download and install kazaa.

3. Enjoy!

4. When you get media that you really like, scan it manually with your UPDATED antivirus and put it on CD or a second hard drive.

5. Wait for your system to get FOOKED by stuff related to kazaa. (may take a few days )

6. Break out those disks you made in step 0 (yeah... I made it step 0 cause I'm lazy, and forgot to the 1 by it) and restore your backup OS.

7. Bring back your good media from the CD's or second hard drive.

8. Continue at step 1.



it's that easy... well actually I didn't say it'd be easy... but it works, I have an image of my 'perfect' win2k configuration on 2 CD's, and restore it monthly at times when stuff starts to suck a bit. It's usually only necessary a few times a year though.

One note to add to that, make your media drive removable (either a usb based drive, or a removable bay IDE drive). that way if someone shows up for your system you can hide it and show that there are no pirated files on your system.

[ChrisWuk]

If u delete the spyware that comes with kazaa (brilliant digital), kazaa ceases to function until u reinstall it again, if ur gonna use it be safe.
There are lots of ppl saying that they have had trouble with kazaa, but no1 saying that its been ok for them.

I had it on my old computer which i had for 5 years, which had NO AV & NO firewall, and i was ok, ive had this new comp now for a year and i have got both imesh and kazaa installed (not lite versions either), and again ive been OK and i know loads of ppl who use it who havent had a problem either.

Just be wary and use your common sense (i.e. check file sizes etc) - if u are unsure - DELETE IT (or get your friend to test it on their computer 1st j/k) !!

by the way, im fully protected now with an up 2 date AV and firewall (i wont say where i got them from ), i was a noobie who didnt understand anything b4 i got this software.

It makes sense to get these 3 programs asweland run them once a week (i have all 3 and they all pick up differnet things):-

Adaware
Spy bot search & destroy
spy sweeper

Safe hunting !!