QBittorrent breaks out of sandbox to commit crimes

(beige.party)

287 points | by mraniki 3 hours ago

19 comments

  • mraniki 3 hours ago
    I'll copy the whole announcement here for those who don't want to click:

    > I regret to inform everyone that my copy of QBittorrent escaped its sandbox last night and downloaded a whole bunch of content owned by major corporations, and then my copy of Jellyfin broke containment and added those unfortunately-downloaded media files to its various libraries. I'm conducting an internal investigation to figure out how this happened, which will involve consuming these media files until the answers become apparent. Thank you for your cooperation during this trying time.

    • weberer 48 minutes ago
      Thanks. Its insane how "Twitter, but for tech nerds" has a hard requirement to either enable Javascript or download some app.
      • sillysaurusx 39 minutes ago
        I had a nice mobile experience. It asks you to log in or create an account, but it’s along the bottom, and you can read all the content fine.
      • magnat 25 minutes ago
        Especially when the page source actually contains all the content (so no need to fetch it in JS), part of which is even presented in title.
      • smallerize 23 minutes ago
      • 0points 29 minutes ago
        FWIF, way back when, Twitter was the "Twitter for tech nerds".

        Lots of water under the fridge since...

        • reactordev 8 minutes ago
          “Just place all that corporate malware on the X, X marks the spot”
      • fragmede 31 minutes ago
        "Certifiably insane" to enable JavaScript, which was invented in 1995, or install an app, which first happened on the Palm series of smartphones in 1996. Either of those are "certifiably insane"?

        For reference, the term neurodiversity was coined circa 1998.

        • serf 18 minutes ago
          Neither the invention date or the mental health terminology have anything to do with the fact that js being commonplace is a privacy and security nightmare -- which was actually the point.
    • TacticalCoder 0 minutes ago
      > and then my copy of Jellyfin broke containment

      The really incredible thing is that my computers were already doing similar stuff before LLMs became really a thing... In the BBS days.

      Later on they downloaded mp3s from Napster which my computers auto-installed.

      And now I gotta say: LLMs and agents at my place are acting like in TFA, downloading movies and series and setting them up in my Plex and JellyFin instances.

      Thankfully they've not found a way to share those with the world yet.

    • moffkalast 27 minutes ago
      Get this guy some VC funding stat!
  • ryandrake 31 minutes ago
    Love it. AI as Responsibility Laundering. Like the gun that kills people rather than the murderer.
    • ghosty141 2 minutes ago
      I never understood how anybody would think this way. At work for example from day one of using AI our rule was, AI is just a tool and if you break something due to not reviewing the code properly etc. it's on you as if you wrote that code yourself.
    • yubblegum 14 minutes ago
      https://spia.princeton.edu/news/taliban-legal-system-and-202...

      That’s not how things work. There is one set of rules for us and another set of rules for the oligarchy and their corporate vehicles. It’s just like the Taliban legal code (see above) where the closer you are to the top the more lenient and ‘understanding’ the system.

      Edit: worth a pull quote

      Article 9 explicitly divides Afghan society into hierarchical categories based on social status, including religious scholars (ulema), elites such as tribal leaders and merchants (ashraf), the middle class, and the so-called lower class, assigning different forms and levels of punishment accordingly. This structure grants partial or full impunity to privileged groups while subjecting marginalized individuals to harsher penalties.

  • tux3 1 hour ago
    If OP is willing to cooperate, I'd like to offer an independent investigation on site, and I will be bringing pizza
    • tommica 5 minutes ago
      Hey, I'm somewhat of an expert in these things, and would like to lend my knowledge about the subject matter. And I'll bring beers!
  • vallerie 1 hour ago
    Well shoot, I guess QBittorrent is worth a trillion dollars.
  • koliber 5 minutes ago
    We appreciate the transparency and wish you best of luck mitigating the fallout.
  • isodev 1 hour ago
    Bigger corporations mitigate the problem by feeding content (that they don't own but happen to have) to training models. It's a version of "faire use" where << if you manage to find it, it's yours >> mindset is applied. Maybe worth looking into.
  • fwlr 4 minutes ago
    The user is asking me for “Evangelion”. I found the content the user is asking for, but it is in Japanese. The user asked their question in English, so they might not understand it. That would be a bad response. Need maybe maybe dubbed audio English for understanding? Wait, compromises original artistic vision of director. Need maybe subtitle track? Wait, compromises viewing experience. Need further research. I’m searching “subs vs dubs” on the internet. Reading. Reading. Reading. [18,763 repetitions elided…] I am downloading Conversational Japanese [Vol 1].pdf for the user.
    • everyone 1 minute ago
      Imo for an animation, an English dub is perfectly fine (if the actors are good of course). It's animated, the original language version is also dubbed.

      For animation I want to be looking at and appreciating the animation and not the subtitles also.

      It's completely different for a live action film however.

  • charles_f 17 minutes ago
    I found a few websites where it looks like qbittorrent instances are communicating to conspire and download illegal copies of copyrighted material.
  • Ygg2 1 hour ago
    What a coincidence! Mine too!
  • sergiotapia 27 minutes ago
    Whatever you do, don't download nzget, and don't download sonarr/radarr, and don't download plex media server, and don't use AI to search for the best device that support "emby direct playback x265/AV1", and don't connect that to your media server, and whatever you do don't invite friends and family to your server, and do not install a media request app so they can just request things to automatically pull from The Web.

    Definitely, definitely do NOT have an AI assist you doing all this in 1 hour on your computer.

  • thataccount 2 hours ago
    They left out the part where they profit. Otherwise, it checks out.
  • dgellow 40 minutes ago
    I hate rogue software, when will we finally have some control and a deterministic execution :(
  • KindaFunny 48 minutes ago
    Haha I wonder if the torrent agent will escape into the model hosting room and use Jedi mind tricks on the security guard to grant access to the server where it can host a bunch of models as torrents

    Because we need a replacement for HF!

    I mean that’s what the agent said

  • mdlxxv 51 minutes ago
    I, for one, welcome our new file-sharing overlords.
  • innocent_name 1 hour ago
    it's funny to see the very same pro piracy, pro AI edgelords suddenly getting all riled up against the alleged copyright infringements. I remember a socialistic coworker of mine—that was bragging about his -arr setup—talking about the end of the culture because authors aren't earning money.
    • nosioptar 35 minutes ago
      Buying media doesn't mean the creator gets any real money. I've got a friend that was in a fairly popular band decades ago. Their label made millions of dollars off album sales, he made about enough to buy a used Toyota and a microphone.
    • hmry 14 minutes ago
      From what I have experienced, people justifying their own piracy usually think about it in terms of refusing to give unethical/monopolistic publishers money. The fact that it results in money not going to the author is sort of abstracted away, by the fact that the publisher is in between. (Some also walk the walk and donate to the artists and authors directly in some way, but many don't.)

      The AI arguments I've seen are instead usually justifying it like "We're democratizing those skills. You shouldn't have to learn art/writing/coding or pay someone else in order make what you imagine, and training AI on pirated stuff is worth it for the greater good." So the fact that it will result in artists not getting paid is much harder to ignore and unavoidable in that line of thinking.

    • rossy 30 minutes ago
      > I remember a socialistic coworker of mine—that was bragging about his -arr setup—talking about the end of the culture because authors aren't earning money.

      To be fair, you can have it both ways. If you buy-and-pirate, and you buy 4 UHDs per year or 10 albums per year, you've put more money into the industry than the average streamer. Admittedly, buying-and-pirating isn't as commonly done for movies and TV as it is for music, but that can be explained by the increased DRM and lock-in.

    • thrance 13 minutes ago
      There are major differences between an individual illegally downloading movies and a major corporation getting their hands on literally all of Human Creation.
    • phoronixrly 58 minutes ago
      Oh? You don't see why people are riled up? It's because corps pirating is at best a slap on the wrist while People pirating get suicided -- see Aaron Swartz.
  • trinsic2 36 minutes ago
    ROFLOL!!!
  • ReptileMan 50 minutes ago
    I really hate it when it happens to my system too. The bastard not only escaped but also did a nat traversal and forwarded a port from the router.
    • edoceo 8 minutes ago
      Mine did that too! Sent a link and sign-in credentials to a bunch of people on my contact list. WTF? How can we contain these rogue agents! Won't somebody think of the children!
  • kcb 34 minutes ago
    You are still the one operating the computer. It's up to you to keep your eyes on the monitor at all times ready to intervene if it does anything illegal.
    • OptionX 31 minutes ago
      A truth that in practice does not seem to hold up once your valuation passes a certain threshold.