A Cure for KaZaA, or How to Avoid Digital Content Piracy at Your Company

Market Wire, March, 2003

Remember Napster? These days the #1 file sharing software that has replaced Napster in the hearts of users who download MP3s, movie files, etc. is called KaZaA and if any of a company's users have installed KaZaA on their desktops to share files using the network, it opens the organization up to several potential liabilities.

Copyright Infringement

In April 2002 the recording industry entered into a $1 million settlement with an Arizona company whose employees accessed and distributed thousands of songs using company equipment. Last October, four entertainment industry groups sent a letter to 2,300 university presidents and CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies urging a tough stand on copyright infringement. In late November, authorities at the United States Naval Academy seized more than 90 computers in an investigation into illegal downloading.

The entertainment industry has cited estimates that up to 2.6 billion copyrighted files are illegally swapped each month. There will likely be legal battles raging over this issue for years to come and the last thing you need is for your organization to show up on some lawyer's radar screen because a few of your employees used your network to downloaded thousands of gigabytes of copyrighted files. You can read a current CNN story about this at www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/industry/02/14/illegal.downloading.ap/index.html.

Security are computer viruses deliberately disguised as media files (MS Security Bulletin MS02-072) to entice KaZaA users to download and run them. Plus the KaZaA program itself is loaded with fairly aggressive spyware.

System Resources

It's probably a safe bet to say that no company intended their network to be used as a high-speed download and storage facility for their employee's illegal movie and music files.

Regardless of how one may personally feel about the subject of sharing MP3's or movies on the Internet, it's unlikely that any enterprise wants users or employees using company equipment and considerable system resources for this purpose -- and during business hours no less.

Until now, KaZaA was not easy to detect and get rid of.

How can an IT department easily check for and get rid of KaZaA? It was not designed to be installed or uninstalled over a network. The uninstall for KaZaA 2.1 is not "silent" (it has some pop-ups that must be addressed). It would seem eliminating KaZaA and illegal content is a laborious, machine-by-machine manual process. Another of an ever-expanding list of site management duties a system administrator is compelled to do manually.

Sitekeeper Systems Management Software changes all that. It can be used to easily scan and detect KaZaA and other similar software programs across an organization in a matter of minutes (as well as MP3 files). Sitekeeper doesn't require dedicated servers or expensive databases. It installs and runs on the same machine used to administer a network.

Here's the step-by-step procedure on how to use Sitekeeper's PushInstall Module to remotely uninstall KaZaA 2.1 from a network. This procedure and the provided files are for v2.1 of KaZaA only.

The goal is to remove the product from the network, with no intervention required from end-users (especially considering they installed this in the first place) or the need for the system administrator to hike to each machine and remove KaZaA manually, one machine at a time. While it is the case with most software that only a parameter need be added to make the installation silent, KaZaA 2.1 will require a bit of extra work.

Three problems need to be solved in order to uninstall KaZaA v2.1 over the network; KaZaA uses InstallShield as the "wrapper" for the KaZaA installation and uninstall, so an "Answer File" is needed to "answer" questions that come up during the un-install. Executive Software has already created an Answer file so all one needs to do is copy it. The Kazaa.exe process, which remains running even when the program is closed, will need to be killed, so the termination of the KaZaA.exe process needs to be incorporated into the un-install procedure. Lastly the un-install of KaZaA begins (but does not complete) the un-install of a target advertising program installed with KaZaA. A short "Windows Shell" script is required to finish this product's un-install.

HOW TO UNINSTALL KAZAA 2.1 FROM YOUR NETWORK:

Before starting, a version of Sitekeeper needs to be installed on the target system. Sitekeeper trialware that will scan up to 20 machines can be downloaded by going to executive.com/sitekeeper/sitekeeper.asp?ad=skemail21.

To create answer files for future versions of KaZaA, research the knowledgebase at www.InstallShield.com. One can also check out the PushInstall tutorial built into Sitekeeper.

STEP 1-GET KaZaA: Download KaZaA's download management executable (kmd.exe) from www.KaZaA.com and save it to your hard drive (you'll actually be re-directed to www.download.com).

    - Run this program, which will download kmd210_en.exe to your temp folder
      (i.e. C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Temp).
    - Do not continue the installation once this file has been downloaded
      (an installation will automatically start once the download completes).
    - Grab the kmd210_enu.exe file from the temp folder and copy it to a file share,
      then cancel the local install.
 
Note: Once you cancel the installation process the downloaded file 
      will be deleted from your Temp folder.