Es5=fraud?

[Java Boy]

ES5=Fraud?
February 23, 2004
Thomas Mennecke
SOURCE (http://slyck.com/news.php?story=406)

Earth Station 5, the long questionable "anonymous" P2P network, has frequently been the target of heavy criticism by virtually every segment of the legitimate file-sharing community. Its brazenly anti-copyright stance and horrific public relations policy has made it a bad apple of the P2P community; leading to its virtual excommunication.

Much dissent towards Earth Station 5 (ES5) has been attributed to the dubious nature of the program. Several months ago, Random Nut, spearhead of Kazaa Lite, discovered a malicious backdoor code within the ES5 program. The code could be remotely activated to delete any shared file. Legitimate programmers we spoke to stated that they would never "accidentally" leave such a portion of code in their work. The ES5 administration generally responded with a "whoops, how'd that get in there?"

ES5 managed to further excommunicate itself with its association with US fugitive Stephen M. Cohen. Stephen Cohen is wanted in the US for stealing the domain, "Sex.com", forgery, and failing to pay over 65 million dollars in fines. With these facts in mind, many question those who trust ES5's supposed anonymity features to a criminal mastermind.

In addition, the Washington Post further questions ES5’s supposed anonymity features. Slyck.com has already reported that Mesocom.com, creators of P2PWatchDog, can easy detect and block ES5 traffic. Supporting this, the Washington Post also reports that its anonymity features are lacking at best.

"It's a sophisticated protocol, but it's not set up for all the claims they make," said Mark Ishikawa, the head of BayTSP, an Internet security company that investigates piracy for record companies and other high-tech industries. "We looked at them, and the people who were downloading files were not anonymous."

"We can easily target infringers on their network," said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president of the RIAA. He said Earth Station V "was throwing stones at us because that's how they get more press and grow their pirate network."

While many question the RIAA's motives, they have rarely made empty promises or threats.

The real icing on the Washington Post's report was a journalistic investigation to the Jenin Refugee camp, in Palestine, where ES5 is supposed to exist. However, no one in the town of 34,00 had ever heard of the operation.

"Questions about its founder and president, who calls himself Ras Kabir -- Arabic for "Big Head" -- drew laughter."

In addition, none of the authorities in the region, neither in Gaza or Palestine, had ever heard of this seemingly non-existent company.

[kAb]

While I don't want to defend es5, they didn't respond "whoops" they responded with:

SharePro : That was inserted to delete kiddie porn off the network
FileHoover: That was inserted to automatically update es5

[Java Boy]

I think they wouldve been better of going "Whoops"...
It was a better statement than the one they did make...LMAO!!!

[delphin460]

after testing es5 i found them same issues, it also leaves a nasty hole in your file wall, plus the interface is butt ugly and confusing, set up needs a degree to figure it out, and the program initaly works the crap out of your pc , which is normal for hashing the shares , but then its overhead still takes up a heap of mem after finishing the hash lists

i would put es5 at the bottom of the p2p world in most results, it may be fast at downloading ( sometimes) but its overall rating leave me a bit cold

im currently looking at overnet and i have seen cons and pros in threads here, i will post after i have a good look at it

but my suggestion is stay right away from es5 , if you want to cross platform to other p2p networks , get a p2p client for each one

eg kazaa lite, imesh 1.3 (its got no spyware), so on and so on

[h1]

I've never trusted ES5. If it smells and looks like shit, guess what it is.

And IMHO, the best cross-network P2P app is MLdonkey.

[Manny Roscoe]

Yeah...my BS meter went off before I dowloaded that shit....

[Illuminati]

IMHO ES5 won't be going anywhere good for a while - They've handled too many things wrong.

The program's technological goal ("Anonymous Filesharing") is admirable but the way it was handled (i.e. closed-source, engineered for a commercial purpose) has given it a lot of blows.

Personally, I'd have said open-source filesharing software with a closed-source encryption system would have done the job better, but what do I know? :lol:

[hiloman67]

Okay javaboy; you've proven that you can spam the boards with anti-ES5 propaganda, but are you capable of any original thoughts on the issue?

[tracydani]

Sorry hilo. If you hadn't noticed, the only talk about es5 here is anti es5 talk.

If you are willing to be open about the program you are asked to discuss it elsewhere.

Remember, only "es5 sucks", "es5 is evil", "I wouldn't ever use that program", " :frusty: :frusty: " type stuff is allowed. Spam rules about writing in a thread when you have nothing usefull to say go out the window when es5 is involved.

TD

[4th gen]

Originally posted by hiloman67@29 February 2004 - 03:40
Okay javaboy; you've proven that you can spam the boards with anti-ES5 propaganda, but are you capable of any original thoughts on the issue?
Who needs to be original when the facts are so damning? :lol:

[4th gen]

Originally posted by tracydani@29 February 2004 - 09:02
Sorry hilo. If you hadn't noticed, the only talk about es5 here is anti es5 talk.

If you are willing to be open about the program you are asked to discuss it elsewhere.

Remember, only "es5 sucks", "es5 is evil", "I wouldn't ever use that program", " :frusty: :frusty: " type stuff is allowed. Spam rules about writing in a thread when you have nothing usefull to say go out the window when es5 is involved.

TD
Anyone else think there&#39;s a hidden message in here somewhere? <_<

[Java Boy]

Originally posted by hiloman67@29 February 2004 - 04:40
Okay javaboy; you&#39;ve proven that you can spam the boards with anti-ES5 propaganda, but are you capable of any original thoughts on the issue?
Listen here...
I only bring the news here for everyone to see it...
Not my job to tell everyone how shit that program is..It does that all by itself with its bullshit propaganda leaders..(SharedPro..a.k.a ..Bullshitter) :lol: :lol: :lol:

And there isnt anything original I can say(as u mention) as its all been said before...ESV is crap&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

[kAb]

no, its good that java boy gave us some insight on es5. to bad it was all negative news for es5 :rolleyes:

[Hacktown]

ES5 is now openly giving away free webhosting for anybody to host their websites. I admit that SP gave me this before to host my game site. How come everybody hates es5?

If you are a file sharer, then how can you hate free ftp? How can you hate free webhosting (no ads in the hosting). I mean SP even allows people to host bit torrent sites and whatever they want. So how can you hate them? Just to be cool, you hate them? Go ahead, state your reasons. I can understand why random nut or the creators of kazaa hate es5, but I cant understand why kazaa users hate es5 unless its because of loyalty to kazaa.

ES5 does everything that every other p2p client does. I mean they have a file share program that connects to Kazaa, Gnutella and everybody else but nobody has been able to penetrate into ES5&#39;s network. So you get more file searches and downloads via es5 than you can find anywhere else. Kazaa lite is only limited to kazaa. Besides that, how come kazaa lite doesnt make friends with es5 and host kazaa lite in palestine? I mean nobody can turn kazaa lite off if you guys did that.

That article es5=fraud was originally titled "Techno Rebels in Palestine". Slyck took the article and changed the title. Thats old news. But the article does prove that not even the bigwigs know who is running es5. I dont see how the article makes es5 a fraud. The article is exactly what they say they are, anonymous. I mean even the Washington Post (who wrote the original article before Slyck changed the title) sent people to Palestine and nobody came up with any info. Nobody in the world has been able to be in the p2p community for so long and be so evasive. Its like you guys all want the people of es5 to be in jail.

I mean should all p2prs be arrested? Should they all eat shit and die because they dont use kazaa lite? Thats the way you guys are acting.

I dont care if es5 has 2 users or a million. I get faster downloads on es5 than I get on kazaa and the ratio of non-virii infected programs is great on es5. But thats not important cuz its p2p and that could be said about anything. I use es5 cause Its grown on me, but I enjoy the extra things like the es5 p2p radio station, the ftp servers, the webhosting. I wont convince you guys to use es5 so that aint my point. Im just letting you guys know what you are missing out on. Its not about using es5 p2p program but the rest of the things they have are a lot more than what I can get here.

So unless you guys want to host my game site and give me ftp servers to make releases I will stick with es5. Its easy to tell es5 that they are shit, but none of you guys are giving away free hosting and ftp servers with the latest releases.

So dont use es5. Who cares? You spend so much time screaming how you hate them and filling this forum with crap about them and I just ask myself how can you hate somebody who gives you everything for free? At least they dont install spyware cookies on your computer like zeropaid or slyck.

[Entity101]

ES5 gives away free webspace. So what? There are hundreds of websites that do that. But that does not mean that ES5 can be trusted, nor that any of the other services that they provide are good. In fact, the only reason that ES5 does these kind of &#39;free&#39; things is to get publicity and more visitors.

ES5, the filesharing software, is still crap and always will be crap. There is absolutely nowhere nearly enough (quality) content on the network. And the network being secure is total bullshit too.

If you want the ultimate filesharing network, you should take a look at the eDonkey network (eMule, eDonkey, overnet). I have more movies from there than you can ever dream of getting from ES5.

FastTrack is crap, but at least it has some content. Fakes and virii can easily be avoided (IF you have more than 2 braincells).

[ilw]

Originally posted by Hacktown@14 March 2004 - 18:02
but I cant understand why kazaa users hate es5 unless its because of loyalty to kazaa.

what you&#39;ve got to remember is that ES5 originally received a very warm welcome here, all the hate and abuse (which they have fully earned) came later. We&#39;re not loyal to kazaa and other p2p programs have always been discussed openly and in a friendly manner. Other than kazaa gold, ES5 is the ONLY p2p app that generates any serious form of abuse when mentioned. Personally, i and many others on the board don&#39;t use kazaa anymore and this is no longer a kazaa-centric forum, however, I hope you can fully understand why ES5 leeching off the fasttrack network deserves the hatred of those who actually do use kazaa. Just for the record P2P programs aren&#39;t in competition, if you only use 1 p2p app then you either have very narrow desires in what you watn to download or you&#39;re missing out.

The reason the article is saying they&#39;re a fraud is because they&#39;re not based in palestine, thats just bs they tell uou because it sounds cool. Not technically fraud i suppose as it lacks a financial element, but i&#39;d accept that as attention grabbing journalistic licence.



they have a file share program that connects to Kazaa, Gnutella and everybody else but nobody has been able to penetrate into ES5&#39;s network.
They used the gift plugin to connect to kazaa (which is the onlly closed network listed there and because they used the plug in they did none of the hard work) and why would anybody want to connect to the ES5 network? If someone skilled really did want to connect to it, i&#39;m sure they could do it, but not even mldonkey has bothered (afaik) and they&#39;re willing to connect to practically anything.



I wont convince you guys to use es5 so that aint my point. Im just letting you guys know what you are missing out on.
I just hope that you&#39;ve tried and use other p2p apps out there, so that at least you know about the quality, speed and content you may be/are missing out on. (Especially emule, overnet and bittorrent)

[Hacktown]

ES5 gives away free webspace. So what? There are hundreds of websites that do that. But that does not mean that ES5 can be trusted, nor that any of the other services that they provide are good. In fact, the only reason that ES5 does these kind of &#39;free&#39; things is to get publicity and more visitors.


I can only host my game site on ES5 cause every other free site in the world closes them down. So that speaks for something. I mean its all remote control and I never gave es5 my name or any other details. Im not in the habit of pissing on the hand that provides so I can only thank them.

I&#39;m just sick of hearing how nobody can trust es5. I mean they&#39;ve been around for over a year and nothing bad has happened. Next year and the year after that, will people still be saying the same old lines? Probably, and yet they will still be here and it will be just another day.

Not liking a program does not require reasons. But making up reasons that dont exists is far from ligit.

ES5 does not leech from Fast Track. You can share with Fast Track or Gnutella or any of the other p2p networks that es5 connects to. I agree with Sharepros statement that GIFT shouldnt be defaulted to share. Why? Because just as you decide what directorys to share on Klite or any other p2p program then you should also have the right to decide with what networks you share.

I mean if your using klite&#39;s client but dont want to share on klite, who&#39;s gonna force you to? But ES5 does share with Fast Track and Gnutella, you just have to implement it.

Since when does Klite automatically default all of the directorys on your hard drive upon installation to share? I mean jeeez, if klite made you share automatically, be realisitc, nobody would use klite. People like the options and they make their own decisions. If people want to share, then they share. You cant blame the makers of the p2p programs because people are stingy. So thats really not a reason not to like them or even blame them that they are "leeching".

[zapjb]

And what about the death threats repeated over & over by sp. And the backdoor that was installed & lied about. :angry:

[TheGamingSummers76]

I remember when I downloaded that back when I had Windows 98SE. It installed so much bloatware and crap, that I had to reformat after I couldn&#39;t take the sluggishness anymore.

[leftism]

ES5 cant be trusted. A backdoor was placed in it to delete any file on your hard drive, not just files in your shared folder or files in the ES5 program folder.

What many ES5 fans don&#39;t understand is that this wasn&#39;t a typical security problem you get in many applications.

In a typical security flaw, a mistake in the code allows someone to introduce their own code into the application and get it executed.

In the ES5 situation this code was already there and could be executed by anyone.

Programmers who know about buffer overflows will know exactly what I&#39;m talking about.

If your not a programmer then you can either take my word for it or just write me off as another "ES5 hater".

But before you do that ask yourself one question. How come no-one here treats overnet, edonkey, bittorrent, gnutella or any of the other filesharing apps in the same way they do ES5? It&#39;s because ES5 is a "special case".

Thats just the application. I could talk about people like Sharepro but the facts regarding the application itself are reason enough for me not to trust it.

[infamousalbo101]

Click to download esv (http://www.geocities.com/esvuln/esvbin.zip)
Click to download source code (http://www.geocities.com/esvuln/esvsrc.zip)



A little FAQ

1Q: esv doesn&#39;t work after a couple of times.
1A: Make sure that there are no other es5.exe processes running in the background. ES5.exe usually doesn&#39;t exit completely, so use taskmgr.exe (or press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) to kill all es5.exe processes. Then start es5.exe and try esv again.

It can also happen if es5.exe hasn&#39;t initialized all its server code. Wait a couple of seconds before running esv so es5.exe has time to initialize its network code.

Another possibility is that the UDP packets sent from esv to es5.exe are lost. Try a couple of more times and at least one should reach its destination intact.

2Q: I can&#39;t delete files on the other computer
2A: You can&#39;t delete files until the other computer&#39;s es5.exe&#39;s Search Service has updated number of files it&#39;s sharing. Go to Activity to check Search Service on the other computer (make sure you have enabled option "Enable ALL activity" in Settings or you won&#39;t see it). Then wait for usually 30-60 secs after startup for the "Search Service" line to change from "Clients:0 Files:0" to something like "Clients:1 Files:3". Now delete your files. If you&#39;re not a Sun/Star, you should instead wait until the "Sun: NAME SuperNova: NAME" line changes from "Sharing Files:0 Megs:0" to something like "Sharing Files:2 Megs:0".

Make sure that the path to the shared folder is correct. You can find the correct path if you check the other computer&#39;s ES5 settings. Copy and paste it because it must be the exact same string. Example, if the path is "C:&#092;Program Files&#092;EarthStation5&#092;New Media Files", it&#39;s possible that ES5 instead uses "C:&#092;Progra~1&#092;EarthStation5&#092;New Media Files", or "C:&#092;PROGRAM FILES&#092;EARTHSTATION5&#092;New Media Files" or any other combination.

Also note that you cannot delete files with relative paths containing a double backaslash followed by two dots ("&#092;&#092;..") under Win98 (and probably also Win95 and WinME). There&#39;s a bug in es5.exe where it will use double backslashes. Example, if the shared dir is "C:&#092;Program Files&#092;EarthStation5&#092;New Media Files", then es5.exe will save that as "C:&#092;Program Files&#092;EarthStation5&#092;New Media Files&#092;" (note the last backslash). If you want to delete the file "C:&#092;WINDOWS&#092;NOTEPAD.EXE", you could specify this relative path as the "filename" "..&#092;..&#092;..&#092;WINDOWS&#092;NOTEPAD.EXE". es5.exe will put these two strings together like so: "C:&#092;Program Files&#092;EarthStation5&#092;New Media Files&#092;&#092;..&#092;..&#092;..&#092;WINDOWS&#092;NOTEPAD.EXE" (note the double backslash). Windows XP (and probably WinNT, Win2000, Win2003) can delete these files, though. Note that all Windows OSes can delete all user&#39;s shared files without a


^random nut wrote this :lol:

[NotoriousBIC]

Yo Hacktown,

How many users does ES5 have? Excluding of course the clients they connect to via GiFT...