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Sanity check: OScam?
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Sanity check: OScam?

MelitaMelita Member, Host Rep
edited January 2014 in General

I was wondering why my nodes got a random load spikes. After investigating, turns out it was caused by some process called oscam. Top + vzpid across all nodes reveal that it was coming from quite a number of VPS (42) from around 20 customer. They were all coming from one Southeast Asia country, and using the VPS solely for this oscam purposes.

Then I asked uncle Google. Taken from http://openpli.org/wiki/OScam:

"OScam is a softcam, software to be used to decrypt digital television channels on a settopbox (receiver), as an alternative for a conditional access module (CAM)."

After I asked some fairy spy in that country, I heard something like this:

spy: currently there are a lot of signal receivers out there that can tap into our tv broadcast network and 'steal' their channels for free to watch
me: em, those satellite receiver needs to connect to internet?
spy: yep, needs internet
me: this is considered illegal, right? Those receivers seems connecting to VPS I provide, in which they installed oscam there @_@
spy: yep it is lol
spy: it's used to break the encryption, server mode
me: oh well...
me: I hope i wouldn't get sued by the TV provider xD
spy: you are not in my country
spy: no worries
me: why they aren't using their home connection to break?
me: i think they can save even more money :D
spy: vps should have more stable uptime
spy: and here to your vps only 15ms ping
spy: paying legally needs approximately 30 bucks for 1 receiver
spy: you, dear, 7 bucks. for many receiver
spy: fyi, i subscribe legally lol
spy: not one of them, although im tempting to

This fairy spy is actually my IM friend from that country.

The load problem can be easily solved by limiting their cpu speed (they broke my TOS regarding load limit anyway). Also, maybe it's true that the TV provider will never sue me.

But I somehow thinks that they stole the money which should go to the TV provider instead. Maybe it's less stealing if they use it in private for themselves, but they even got more money by selling those free top boxes.

I actually doesn't really care about what they do (they didn't harm other people, no one knows, yada yada). I'm phlegmatic anyway, so I prefer to close my eyes and not meddling with this.

The problem is, part of those stolen money goes to me (by paying VPS solely for oscam purposes). I wish I never knew about this, so I can continue my happy life ever after.

I also wish they were using VPS for something else like web server / developing some apps, but they didn't. And then I realized that I'm actually helping them for stealing, and I even got a stolen money for that.

I already talked to half of them about this, and because it's luckily covered in my TOS on "no illegal purpose" part, they just peacefully ask a refund and terminate, in which I did. I was ready to lose around 1/6 of my whole customer base because of this (still a small hosting company).

The rest half of them didn't even reply my ticket, so I just blocked the invoice and waiting their VPS services end this month naturally. I plan to donate that money somewhere anyway.

I somehow got a little drool over that illegal market possibilities, but the guilty feeling was bugging me all day. And luckily I realized this prematurely before it even get bigger customer base.

There is actually even bigger safe and illegal market (I'm talking about $15k/month here), involving ssh tunneling business in my own home country to get a free internet connection. But I think I would just stop my rant here.

Anyway, I made this thread because I want to ask your opinion about this. Am I too naive, and will you VPS providers do the same? Should I feel guilty over all of this? Please enlighten me.

Also, is there actually any legal use for oscam? I want to know so I can be sure when terminating the rest half of the customer at the end of this month under the same 'illegal purpose' assumption.

Sorry for my bad English, it's not my main language. Also, if you're one of my past customer who did this and know who I am, I'm sorry too. I just want to share my thoughts, nothing else. Peace :v

Comments

  • Don't feel guilty. Pecunia non olet. You did the right thing about terminating their contract and refunding them for the rest of the time. They broker your ToS, so they knew what they were doing. Also you weren't supporting them in the illegal activities. A landlord will also not be spoken guilty of complicity if the tenant sells drugs in the apartment.

  • MelitaMelita Member, Host Rep
    edited January 2014

    I was thinking to cron this every minute on host node:

    !/bin/sh

    PROCESS_NAMES="oscam"
    for name in $PROCESS_NAMES; do
    PIDS=pidof $name
    for p in $PIDS; do
    kill $p
    done
    done

    But in the end, I think talking with them directly via ticket is a better way :D

  • Yes, talking to them is much better. Simply killing a process according to it's name is a rather bad (if not the worst) approach you could do.

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