A Hacker On How They Stole Unreleased Music | Genius News

The leaks are everywhere, afflicting everyone from Lil Uzi Vert to Young Thug and even Playboi Carti who, while performing his

unreleased

but leaked song, “Neon,” discovered that the crowd already knew the lyrics. PERSON: Play some new shit, Carti! Carti: How the hell do you know that song? Genius has covered the *impact* of leaks, but a crucial question remains: how do leaks occur? SOURCE: I'm not there for his personal life. I'm just there to get the songs and go. That's a

hacker

who finds and leaks songs. Genius granted them anonymity to speak freely about the trend of those who believe

they

are fans while stealing from the artists

they

claim to love.

Our source said that they acquired songs by meticulously examining numerous online data leaks. The

hacker

then used a powerful computer to crack the artist or producer's password. SOURCE: I decrypt the hash and then proceed to use the password in Gmail or whatever I'm looking for. People are not that creative. They use the same passwords. They then turned to sites like Leakth.is and gaming messaging platform Discord to put the songs up for sale. SOURCE: They work hand in hand to make selling

unreleased

music

extremely easy. These are an example of what these group purchases are like.

The hacker understands that leaks don't help, but he believes the

music

should be released. SOURCE: I feel like they have an obligation to provide music to their fans... And if we don't get music, we'll get it ourselves... Hacking and music leaks have a long history, from the mysterious MusicMafia to the birth of MP3 in the mid-90s. STEPHEN: Historically, most leaks came from an elite group of hackers called Warez Scene. That's Stephen Witt, author of “How Music Got Free,” a history of digital music piracy. In his book he says that "The Scene" is quoted. ...loosely affiliated digital outfits competed with each other to be the first to publish newly pirated material.

Groups like Compress' Da Audio, Apocalypse Production Crew, and others provided the bulk of the songs that eventually made their way to early peer-to-peer file-sharing services. STEPHEN: ...Napster and Limewire were full of pirated material that came from this avant-garde underground that infiltrated the music and film industry supply chains and leaked stuff onto the Internet... REPORTER: It was in the college campuses with high-speed Internet Napster really took off in the fall of 1999. So how many mp3s do you have on your computer? About 600. The groups did it for the thrill rather than the money, as Witt points out in a 2015 article he quotes.

The culture of the scene made a distinction between online file sharing and bootlegging for profit... STEPHEN: I don't want to necessarily call it noble, but there was a certain spirit to it that it wasn't going to be a profitable activity. But things are different today. STEPHEN: The emergence of the crowdfunding platform makes this more economically viable than it would have been 10 years ago. Which brings us back to our source, who said he sold songs for real money. SOURCE: I made about 5 thousand dollars, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the money people lose every year by hacking their emails.

ASOF: In the last 4 or 5 years, as reported by the FBI, there have been direct losses of more than 12 billion dollars. That's Asof Cidon, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University. He gave us a couple of tips to keep your emails safe. ASOF: The two most effective ways to protect yourself are: 1. Use a password manager that ensures your passwords are secure and that you are not reusing the same passwords... As our source mentioned above, password reuse is widespread with a security. firm finding that 52% of people use the same passwords across multiple logins. Services like LastPass, 1Password, and Bitwarden recommend strong passwords that you don't need to remember.

ASOF: And even more powerful than that is multi-factor authentication... making sure there is another mechanism that authenticates that you are who you say you are. And make no mistake, whether you are a fan or not, what these hackers are doing is very illegal. REPORTER: The suspect, a 19-year-old from the United Kingdom, allegedly hacked websites and cloud-based accounts, illegally

stole

unreleased songs, and sold the

stole

n music in exchange for cryptocurrency. But our source says they hope the filing sheds light on what's going on. SOURCE: I know there will be an artist out there who will watch this video and say "shit" and change his passwords.

I'm Jacques Morel from Genius News and I bring you the meaning and knowledge behind the music. Peace.