Dave Horvath
12 Mar 2007 7:13
There's a new beast in the war pit against internet piracy, and it's name is cGrid. Developed by a group called Red Lambda, cGrid is set to be a very real threat to P2P file sharers everywhere. Although still in its infant stage and with its sights focused on Universities, its a technology that should have many P2P people a bit wary.
cGrid is a proprietary technology that has a unique way of monitoring packet level transmissions and decided whether or not packets being sent back and forth from specific MAC addresses on a network are participating in things like bit torrent, FTP, Usenet and other venues commonly known for illegal activities. That's not all though, it can also instantly boot said offender from the network with little to no workaround for getting back on. This new technology obviously has groups such as the RIAA and MPAA rejoicing as the newest wonder tool to hit the market.
cGrid's developers describe the technology as, "the industry's most advanced P2P and file-sharing mitigation technology. It uses undisclosed techniques to monitor and record traffic at the packet-level and also uses proprietary behavioral analysis to determine whether individual users are participating in illegal file sharing. It monitors local networks and keeps historical logs on users according to their MAC addresses. In this way, cGrid can also monitor private file sharing such as that done with invitation-only FTP servers and other normally closed networks."
The monitoring tool is currently targetted at the industries largest known offenders, American Universities, where illegal downloads are known to be rampant and prohibition of such activities are often too lax on the part of the University Administrators. The University of Florida, the place where cGrid was initially developed, has been monitoring student dorms since 2003 with some success. Reports from the administrators there state that warnings issued to students suspected in illegal downloads have been enough to disuade repeat offenders. They stated that of the students caught in the act, only 10% of those students were caught again.
Red Lambda and the RIAA would both rejoice if they were able to pursuade Congress to mandate cGrid to be used in all Universities, however with the stiff cost of both installation and yearly maintanence ($1,000,000 and $250,000 respectively) may keep their dreams from coming to fruition.
The executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, John Vaughn stated that the cost of implimenting such a system is prohibitively expensive and there are also concerns on infringing on student's privacy who may be otherwise using their creativity to develop the next cutting-edge technology.
Source:
ARS Technica