Maxxuss Site Shutdown, Apple to Blame?

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In yet another follow-up to my previous posts on Maxxuss cracking OS X 10.4.4, it looks like Maxxuss’ site is down (thanks Zeth for the heads up). A snippet of a post from the front page of OSx86 Project reads:

It appears that Apple may have gotten to Maxxuss, the hacker made famous for his flagrant cracks and patches of Mac OS X for Intel. A visit to his website reveals that his site has been shutdown by his host, the cause of which we do not know at this time.

Although the reasons aren’t very clear at the moment as to what may have happened, there is rampant speculation of everything from exhausting bandwidth to Apple serving a take down notice as it had to the OSx86Project Forums a few days ago. Discussion is continuing on the shutdown in their forums.

According to a post at OSx86China Forum, all requests to:

http://maxxuss.hotbox.ru

are being redirected to:

http://pochta.ru/notfound.php

At the 360 Insider Forums, a message provides a list of links to Google’s cache of Maxxuss’ site.

If Apple has in fact shut down Maxxuss site, then they can learn something from this incident. The x86 community has a history of playing “whac-a-mole” which is defined as:

The term Whac-a-Mole, or Whack-a-mole, has been used in the computer and networking industry to describe the phenomenon fending off recurring spammers, vandals or miscreants. The connotation is that of a repetitious and futile task: each time the attacker is “whacked” or kicked off of a service, he only pops up again from another direction.

It is inevitable that someone will rehost Maxxuss’ pages using either the Google cache versions or a local mirrored copy. Can Apple Legal keep serving take down notices to people scattered all over the globe? It is not likely. Although what is likely is that people with a political axe to grind over free speech issues (but no interest in Apple’s operating system) will take up the call to start disseminating this information. Eventually Maxxuss’ or his successor’s information will make it to a host like HavenCo that has no restrictions on copyright or intellectual property data being hosted on it’s servers or onto the encrypted Tor anonymous network as a hidden service. If history is any indicator then Apple can’t win this battle. Most of the enthusiast work on getting new versions of OS X will continue whether it moves further underground or offshore depends on how hard Apple pushes. If this was truly Apple’s handiwork then it can be firmly said that they may have won this round but the fight is far from over.

Update (2.22.2006): The Maxxuss Patch Solution v1.0 can still be found via Google Germany. Search terms: maxxuss patch solution 09.55

Update (2.22.2006): Maxxuss has a new blog that is up and running. It does not contain any copyrighted material according to him so I think it’s safe to link it. A posting on his site is saying that everyone should bookmark http://maxxuss.tk/ just in case he moves his site again. He has also put up mirrors of his original site:

http://-.host.sk/ and http://-2006.narod.ru/ where “-” is equal to the 7-letter name of our friendly OSx86 hacker.

If there are any other new developments, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or dropping a comment below. I’ll post updates as this story develops.

As always, I don’t condone piracy so please don’t do anything illegal.

February 21, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets 

Comments

4 Responses to “Maxxuss Site Shutdown, Apple to Blame?”

  1. N on February 22nd, 2006 2:22 am

    Translating that message yields:-

    Respected users! At the present moment on the servers of project POCHTA.RU are conducted preventive works. The planned time of the end of works 14:00 22.02.2006 we bring our apologies for the delivered inconveniences.

    I guess the tinfoil hats can all come off again. :-)

  2. Hisham on February 22nd, 2006 5:18 am

    Well, it looks like he has a new site up. Are you saying that he’ll still be using his old site?

  3. Command Line Warriors on February 25th, 2006 6:05 am

    Whack a Lawyer…

    Lawyers and proof-reading
    A letter from Apple to theplanet.com, the webhost of Win2osx.net, has been posted online at Chilling Effects: Apple complains of decrypted code, links for OS for x86.
    It is interesting that Apple’s own lawyers have …

  4. kaacper on June 11th, 2006 12:25 am

    Seems Maxxuss’s new website maxxuss.org, to which maxxuss.tk keeps redirecting, has been hacked by German football fans. Anyway, I don’t expect it would last for long as it is hosted on… Yahoo!