{"id":973763,"date":"2019-11-27T10:25:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T17:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=919246"},"modified":"2019-11-27T10:25:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T17:25:34","slug":"a-criminal-hacking-case-shows-how-easy-it-is-to-steal-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/a-criminal-hacking-case-shows-how-easy-it-is-to-steal-music\/","title":{"rendered":"A Criminal Hacking Case Shows How Easy It Is to Steal Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/10322680b.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>Music leaks won\u2019t stop springing up. After a year of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/fake-beyonce-album-leak-774289\/\">fake Beyonc\u00e9 releases<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/entertainment-arts-48597096\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">botched Radiohead blackmail,<\/a> a 27-year-old man was arrested for allegedly stealing more than 50 gigabytes of music from industry executives\u2019 computers, all from logging into their online accounts.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/press-release\/file\/1220371\/download\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">the indictment<\/a> filed by U.S. authorities on Monday in Manhattan federal court, Christian Erazo gained access to the internet cloud storage service accounts of two unnamed music management companies to download around 50 gigabytes of music \u2014 including unreleased tracks \u2014 from 20 recording artists between 2016 and 2017; the indictment says he also accessed an Los Angeles music producer\u2019s social networking account and impersonated the producer to solicit unreleased music from artists via private messages. Erazo faces charges of aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the last of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>Erazo and co-conspirators obtained login credentials to the cloud storage account of one of the music management companies and accessed it at least 2,300 times, the indictment says; a forensic analysis of Erazo\u2019s computer also revealed that he\u2019d stolen more than 850 music files from the various parties. His further \u201cscheme to defraud artists\u201d involved messaging artists from the music producer\u2019s \u201cmicroblogging\u201d account and asking them to send exclusive unreleased tracks to a fraudulent email address he\u2019d set up. \u201cI cant stop laffin [sic],\u201d he and an unnamed co-conspirator said to each other in online messages, describing the scheme as \u201cthe funniest shit I done.\u201d Per the indictment, Erazo pretended to help one of the music companies investigate its leaks by pinning the actions on a company employee, which he told his co-conspirator was \u201cthe perf cover up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When questioned by law enforcement, Erazo admitted to taking \u201capproximately 50 gigabytes of music, which translated to approximately \u201c100 high-quality songs\u201d from the cloud storage accounts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pmc-contextual-player\">\n<h3> Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cNot only did this scheme cause the companies, producers, and artists financial harm, Erazo deprived the artists of the ability to release their own exclusive content at their discretion,\u201d U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement. The prosecution of the case is being handled by the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office of the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/criminal-hacking-case-steal-music-919246\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Music leaks won\u2019t stop springing up. After a year of fake Beyonc\u00e9 releases and botched Radiohead blackmail, a 27-year-old man was arrested for allegedly stealing more than 50 gigabytes of music from industry executives\u2019 computers, all from logging into their online accounts. According to the indictment filed by U.S. authorities on Monday in Manhattan federal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 03:32:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}