HADOPI stops monitoring for copyright infringement due to breach

Trident Media Guard – the company tasked by the French High Authority for the Dissemination of Works and Protection of Rights on the Internet to monitor P2P networks and warn offenders about their breaking of the infamous HADOPI (three-strike) law – has apparently been breached.

The government agency suspended TMG’s right to perform that task after it was confirmed that the intrusion happened, and that IP addresses of people receiving the warnings might have been leaked.

According to TorrentFreak, the fact was discovered by French security researcher Olivier Laurelli, and he claims that “a virtual machine leaked a lot of information like scripts, p2p clients to generate fake peers, local physical addresses in the datacenter and even a password that could lead to a major global TMG security breach.”

Eric Walter, the secretary-general of HADOPI, has issued a statement saying that the agency has temporarily suspended its interconnection with TMG. And since TMG is so far the only company licensed to monitor P2P networks on behalf of the government, it means that at the moment, user activity is not being monitored.