Anti-Piracy Law Firm Torn Apart By Leaked Emails

ACS:Law is a scammer that specialises in sending out threatening letters to supposed p2p file sharers. After a DDoS attack by those lovable rogues, Anonymous, their site went down and later returned with its entire site directory visible including their email database.

As a content creator myself, I have little understanding for file sharers, but this really is payback time for such a horrible bunch of con-men.

I hope none of you have been targeted by them and that your personal information has not been compromised by this.

My heart bleeds for them. There is such a thing as Karma

(And I say this as someone who has been adversely affected by file-sharing and piracy).

4chan attacked them last week:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/22/acs_4chan/

4chan attacked them last week:

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/22/acs_4chan/

They've took down the MPAA too.

We were targeted by them but I haven't found anything with our name in in the emails (I've had a look, quite interesting!)

I suspect this is probably the end of ACS:Law though - apart from the file sharing, there is a lot of extremely sensitive client related stuff regarding employment tribunals and other non file-sharing work. The key point is that one of their advisor actually reveals they have very little legal basis in his analysis of their legal model.

Well, it's going to be interesting watching how the MPAA, BSA, etc. damage-control this particular PR disaster, as the email/data gets pored over and analysed over time. Might get a bit of the "expenses scandal" drip-drip dynamic underway.

It's bound to splash-n-stain them a tad (somehow, I don't think Vanish or even bleach will get rid of it)

PS - if you've got shares in P2P tracing tech co's, you might want to offload soon-ish, as it looks like their data is about as useful (in a legal context) as a chocolate fireguard

Judging by some of the emails, I don't think ACS Law (or Davenport Lyons) will be around for much longer.

More stuff has been uploaded to The Pirate Bay including RSA keys, server back-ups and fax messages...http://thepiratebay.org/search/acs/0/99/0

The prank phone calls to Andrew Crossley have even shown up on Soundcloud

http://soundcloud.com/kan3

Reminds me of the Media Defender episode a couple of years ago.

Regardless of what is in the emails (and some of it appears to be very interesting from what little I've read) isn't ACS:Law now in line for massive compensation claims against them? It looks like it was their mistake that allowed the private details of thousands of people to be put on the net, regardless of the DDoS attack, so they have breach data protection and potentially allowed criminals to steal identities and empty bank accounts.

The personal details of thousands of Sky broadband customers have been leaked on to the internet, alongside a list of pornographic movies they are alleged to have shared online.

The list, seen by BBC News, details the full names and addresses of over 5,300 people thought by law firm ACS:Law to be illegally sharing adult films.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11418962

This could be even funnier than the leaking of the BNP membership list!

This could be even funnier than the leaking of the BNP membership list!

It was obvious something would happen after he posted the message about trains & coffee machines on the front page. He (basically) challenged 4chan to "do their worse"; so they did..

I've got my own theory as to how the "breach" occured.

But you're right; it will be funnier than the BNP membership leak as it exposes the dodgy dealings of a dodgy practice.

It looks like it was their mistake that allowed the private details of thousands of people to be put on the net

It could have been the webhost as they were moving the domain to another server/IP to mitigate the second DDos attack (archive all email/databases etc, transfer to new box, change IP) could have resulted in the brief (though not brief enough) exposure of the email archive. Then again, why were they keeping such sensitive information, in unencrypted form, is a mystery.

I've been reading some of the emails, it makes for interesting reading! Crossley's life is being picked apart by the web! His eHarmony account, or the emails from a colleague talking about how Crossley sacked someone because she wouldn't "put out". The most ironic one was his complaint to Westminster Council because he was fined for throwing out a cardboard box. He claims he didn't do it and was "being treated like a criminal"!

As for the downloads, there are some very "interesting" movie titles on there. Personally I can't see the attraction of "granny love"