Plex Multimedia
Kodi is a free and open-source media player software that was first created for the first-generation Xbox game console. And it’s named XBMC (Xbox Media Center) back then. But now it has changed its name and developed into a stand-alone media player that can run on a wide selection of devices to stream movies, music, and photos flexibly.
Plex is also a media center application. But unlike Kodi, Plex is a server-client based software that can stream media content from the server to any client device. Yet, Plex does have something in common with Kodi since part of Plex was actually derived from Kodi source code. So you will notice the two software share some similarities, such as the functionality to access one’s local collections of movies, TV shows, music, and photos, and manage and playback the media content.
Plex is a globally available one-stop-shop streaming media service offering thousands of free movies and TV shows and hundreds of free-to-stream live TV channels from the biggest names in entertainment, including Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, Lionsgate, Legendary, Sinclair Broadcast Group, AMC, A+E, Crackle, and BBC. Plex Media might be best known as the streaming service suited for creating custom TV channels, but it turns out those servers can be abused for more nefarious purposes.
Though the two media applications have some features that overlap, they are in essence two distinct software. The ultimate difference between Kodi and Plex lies in their usages. Kodi is mainly for one person to watch content on one device, while Plex is more for people to watch and share media with his/her whole family or friends across platforms. We will unravel more details in the next section’s Plex vs. Kodi comparison.
- Jan 02, 2020 Plex is a powerful service that lets you stream your media library to multiple devices and share that content with friends and family. If you're that lucky friend, all you need is an invitation to.
- Mar 20, 2019 Double-click the Plex Media Server icon on the dashboard to open the application control window. Use the Enable button in the resulting window to enable Plex Media Server. The window will update and show you the URL you can use to connect to the local Plex Web App, which is used to manage your Plex Media Server.
- Plex Media Player has the capability to perfectly decode most “HD audio” formats, and enabling passthrough creates drawbacks that you likely want to avoid. The “Plex Media Player decode of audio vs. Passthrough” section near the bottom of the article has useful information to read before enabling passthrough.
Distributed denial-of-service attackers have seized on a new vector for amplifying the junk traffic they lob at targets to take them offline: end users or networks using the Plex Media Server.
DDoS amplification is a technique that leverages the resources of an intermediary to increase the firepower of attacks. Rather than sending data directly to the server being targeted, machines participating in an attack first send the data to a third party in the form of a request for a certain service. The third party then responds with a much larger payload to the site the attackers want to take down.
So-called amplification attacks work by sending the third parties requests that are manipulated so they appear to have come from the target. When the third parties respond, the replies go to the target rather than the attacker device that sent the request. One of the most powerful amplifiers used in the past was the memcached database caching system, which can magnify payloads by a factor of 51,000. Other amplifiers include misconfigured DNS servers and the Network Time Protocol, to name only three.On Thursday, DDoS mitigation service Netscout said that DDoS-for-hire services recently turned to misconfigured Plex Media Servers to amplify their attacks. The Plex Media Server is software that lets people access the music, pictures, and videos they store on one device with other compatible devices. The software runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
In some cases—such as when the server uses the Simple Service Discovery Protocol to locate universal plug-and-play gateways on end users’ broadband modems—the Plex service registration responder gets exposed to the general Internet. Responses range from 52 bytes to 281 bytes, providing an average amplification factor of about 5.
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Netscout said that it has identified about 27,000 servers on the Internet that can be abused this way. To differentiate from plain-vanilla, generic Simple Service Discovery Protocol amplification DDoSes, the company is referring to the new technique as Plex Media SSDP or PMSSDP.
“The collateral impact of PMSSDP reflection/amplification attacks is potentially significant for broadband Internet access operators whose customers have inadvertently exposed PMSSDP reflectors/amplifiers to the Internet,” Netscout researchers Roland Dobbins and Steinthor Bjarnason wrote. “This may include partial or full interruption of end-customer broadband internet access, as well as additional service disruption due to access/distribution/aggregation/core/peering/transit link capacity consumption.”
Plex Free Movies
In a statement, a Plex spokeswoman wrote:
The researchers who reported on this issue did not provide any prior disclosure, but Plex is now aware of the problem and is actively working on addressing it. This issue appears to be limited to a small number of media server owners who have misconfigured their firewalls by allowing UDP traffic on device-discovery ports from the public internet to reach their servers, and our current understanding is that it does not allow an attacker to compromise any Plex user's device security or privacy. Plex is testing a simple patch that adds an extra layer of protection for those servers that may have been accidentally exposed and will release it shortly.
Plex Media Server Windows 10
The researchers said that wholesale filtering of UDP data over port 32414 by network operators (not end users) has the potential to block some legitimate traffic. Instead, the researchers said operators (again, not end users) should identify PMSSDP nodes on their network that can be abused as DDoS reflectors or amplifiers. The researchers also recommended that ISPs disable SSDP by default in the equipment they provide to subscribers.
The forums section at Plex.tv provides these twothreads that end users can peruse to best address the issue.
Plex Multimedia Systems
Post updated to add the third-to-last and last paragraphs.