What is this?
Over the past couple days I've come across what appears to be a network of stolen articles and videos pertaining to software development.
The site, morioh.com, presents itself as a "social network for developers", upon going to the site, you are only greeted with a login and register form.
I made an account and looked around, there's a ton of rehosted articles from across the internet. The articles themselves are public (and you've probably seen a few posted on reddit/twitter). The weird thing is every single article I've seen so far on this "social network"...has no comments.
I posit that a lot of the accounts are potentially bots (as you can possibly see in the users I've found being created all around the same time for the most part.)
The main pages of viralroll, thegeeknews, and morioh.net have the exact same page talking about some "Next Generation Shorten Platform". Links in the footer for FAQ, About, contact, how it works, etc etc all go nowhere.
Examples of stolen content.
(archived to prevent clicks)
" Protect your Node.js app from Cross-Site Request Forgery"
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Reddit link: https://archive.is/36Q0t and https://archive.is/3FD8u (note how it links to dev.thegeeknews.com)
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dev.thegeeknewslink: http://archive.is/Ov7ep (when clicking this on reddit, it redirects to morioh, note how archive shows it got redirected)
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morioh link: https://morioh.com/p/d455188e8698/protect-your-node-js-app-from-cross-site-request-forgery (live link because I can't seem to get it to archive...)
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dev.to link: https://dev.to/dkundel/protect-your-nodejs-app-from-cross-site-request-forgery--46b9 (this is rehosted, but by the original author)
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Original link: https://www.twilio.com/blog/2018/01/protect-your-node-js-app-from-cross-site-request-forgery.html
"Finding And Fixing Node.js Memory Leaks: A Practical Guide"
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reddit link: https://archive.is/3FD8u (links to go.morioh.net)
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morioh link: (redirected from morioh.net) https://morioh.com/p/a0d43b5472be/finding-and-fixing-node-js-memory-leaks-a-practical-guide (also cant seem to archive it. Not how it says originally posted on codequs.com)
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codequs link: https://codequs.com/p/ry58OgNBV/finding-and-fixing-node-js-memory-leaks-a-practical-guide (if you scroll to the bottom, it says originally posted on dev.to, without directly linking)
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original link: https://dev.to/kmaschta/finding-and-fixing-nodejs-memory-leaks-a-practical-guide-3f5a
(more examples coming).
But wait! There's more!
In doing some digging last night (2019-02-16), it turns out this rabbit hole goes deeeeep.
There's a couple YouTube channels I've found so far that is rehosting videos from across the internet (some even appear to be paid courses?)
Channel: coderschool
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-LmQrvQmg
Original is a video from Microsoft.
Channel: Database Tutorials
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMH2y_3XBa0
Original is also a video from microsoft.
In the description of both, it links to a ton more sites, including Tumblr, Twitter, a Discord Server, etc. I'm working on gathering more info for those...