Slashdot Mirror
Day In The Life Of Net Scam Artists
NeoCode writes: "This articles chronicles a day in the life of two hackers. Seems like a reporter anonymously paid these hackers to log in their typical day. In the article, they talk about how they fool people with their spams and phreaking scams. Its in quite a bit of detail in terms of what these guys do to make money (and tons of it). Obviously these guys are breaking the law and nibbling on innocent/naive users. Looks like AOL and other ISPs still have to beef up their filters to stop spamming." Not a lot of details, but it's kinda interesting.
He states -> "Now we gotta go call the 800 number on back" If he got the CC through e-mail what is the back (of the CC) is he referring too? Or did he get them through the mail?
So raise your spam penalties to $1000, or $10,000, or however much it takes to make it worth the effort to collect.
Wow, how the Slashdot community has changed -- not to mention the geek community at large.
A few years ago, while Slashdot was still on the fringe, the very First Post would have complained about the distinction between hackers and crackers.
Now, people are saying, "Who cares about the distinction? We're called what society calls us, and saying that society has the wrong idea is pointless."
True geeks don't care about trying to force our own pet definitions on society at large, but we'll politey correct anyone who comes into our domain and misuses our terms.
I know hundreds (literally) of people who have this life -- exactly. They spend all day on AOL and drop out of school. They make money now, brag about it, but learn no valuable skills that'll get them a job when all their scams get caught. Now and then, there's someone who gets caught, but being that these people are between the ages of 10 - 20 (on average), nothing will happen to them.
These people are *not* what are considered script-kiddies. They are not hackers. The author has no idea about this terminology. Any one of you can download a program and do exactly what they do. It takes absolutely no computer knowledge or intelligence.
Most people are in the business of scamming for a few years, then realize it won't get them anywhere in life. Then, a new generation emerges, and the last generation become so-called "old school" (which, we know they really aren't).
All and all, it's a black void drawing in lost teenagers through short-lived fame/money and steals away their future so they rot away and leech welfare.
You're not kidding, my little brother had carded (stolen from AOLer) merchandise sent to the cardholder's name at his home address (my parents' house.
He spent a few weeks in Juvie Hall and 18 months on probation as a 16-17 year old. He would have spent 6 months in the prison, but apparently the Juvenile Courts/ Corrections Dept for Cuyahoga County, Ohio have too many schoolyard drug pushers and child rapists to keep kids who "only defrauded a company for four thousand dollars" more than a couple weeks.
He violated his probation several times by not checking in with his court-appointed supervisor (parole officer) and being picked up for curfew violations, but they never called him on it. They sealed his record at 18 because he hadn't commited any other serious offenses. He quit HS and nowworks at Pizza Hut as a 20-year-old, with no appreciable skills or education.
Funny thing is, our parents were giving him plenty of stuff; new PCs, vidgame consoles, allowance. All they asked in return is that he go to school and study. He just wanted more without having to work for it. Bum.
The only way I know of to get past ANI is to trick the operator to diverting your call to the number that you wish to call, thereby having the number of the operator (always xxx-0000) showing up on ANI. But, of course, you can't route data calls this way, so you are pretty much limited to either using someone else's line, or doing what Kevin Mitnick did and aquire a different number through the cellular telephone network, although, with the state of cellular networks today, that is considerably harder to do than it was 5 or 6 years ago
What we used to about 5-6 years ago when we were younger and of less wisdom, was first off to follow one of the 10 commandandments for phreakers 'One must never phreak over thine own wires'...
To do anything really dumb and illegal we had usually went into a downtown back alley and hijacked some business' telephone network interface box to make calls, or more importantly to use a laptop with.
Fuck Ajit Pai
--
This story is a huge crock of shit.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
The behavior described in the article -- duping people, buying lists of stolen passwords, setting up phony web sites -- is barely even the domain of crackers, but still the article has to use the word 'hacker' in its title.
Hackers are people who thrive on being faced with problems and finding clever, innovative solutions to them. Crackers are people who break into computer systems. Confusing the two is like calling every martial-arts student a 'ninja.'
I'm annoyed that MSNBC doesn't understand the difference, and even more peeved that CmdrTaco didn't catch it, either.
A lot of older ISP lines, and even some newer ones from more out of the way places do not have ANI or caller ID.
You can still get the account ID, and maybe the telco can get PEN info, or maybe not.
Or how well indexed the logs are. A big ISP gets over 300 login/logout events per second. You don't want to use a flat text file and grep for that. (Actually that number is about a year old, it may be 600/sec now)
You can do that. As a credit card merchant making a data call at least. You can do a verify for a charge (that doesn't actually make the charge), or a reserve for the charge (which still doesn't make the charge, but eats up credit for something like a day or three, until there is another charge from the same merchant number). You could even make a charge, and then issue a credit (but that costs money). There may even be other things, but that was the set that the two places I had to write software to talk to would do.
Of corse that requires a merchant account, and scamming those is probably a lot harder then snarfing up a few AOL accounts :-)
Four years or so ago Sybase couldn't even delete a day's data as fast as it was rolling in. Machines have gotten faster since, any maybe Sybase has too, but so has the call volume (I don't know of Oracle was tried). It ended up being done with Sleepycat's DB B-tree product and a lot of custom code.
I can see a smaller ISP being able to get away with Sybase though. There are economies of scale, and diseconomies of scale too.
The "criminal mind" is different from others: they truely believe that they won't get caught. I think neither criminal was really worried about getting caught. They took certain precautions, but it is these precautions that allow them to feel uncatchable.
I work at a grocery store service desk, and as such, I handle many western union transactions a day. To answer your question, no, you cannot recieve money without a valid form of identification, and in some circumstances, you cannot send without identification.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
If that joker is a leet haxor, then so am I.
This was a 15 year old wanking a gullible adult. A real criminal (one smart enough to be making "6 figures") does not brag about his exploits, and certainly do not write diaries to be published on MSNBC.
Hell, for $250, I'll yank that reporter's chain, and give him a better diary, too. Drop me an email, guy, and I'll give you a Great Gatsby-like retelling of how I
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Did anyone else notice that the one guy was glad to get the $250 from the reporter so he could go out drinking?
Yes, I definately think they're embelishing - at least in terms of how much money they're making with these scams. Others have commented that the logs were faked - I think the idea of suddenly getting $250 to go out drinking wouldn't occur to a reporter that hasn't lived down & out for a while - sounds a lot more like some of my friends back in college.
-"Zow"
I have my credit card billing address to my address at school. Over the summer, when I am not at school, it is not worth changing the shipping address for 3 months, and changing it back. This is mainly because they fail to do so, no matter how many times I fill out the address change form.
anyway, if I use my CC at home, the bill goes to school, and gets forwarded to home. I think a lot of students do this.
-- Thrakkerzog
Sounds like spam to me.
I swear when I read 'FBI's task force operation DipScam' I thought they said 'DipShits' ... oops.
People accepting them must be pretty damn stupid though.
--
Delphis
Delphis
People would learn to do research. Many of these scams fall apart under the smallest pretense of scrutiny. If people were willing to question, especially if it sounds 'To good to be true', these guys would have no niche to exploit.
You say you want a revolution....
Becuase no one is ever home during the day when deliveries are made. I always send packages to the office.
Frankly, I don't see how mail order houses who won't ship to an address different from the billing address can stay in business.
I don't buy it. For one, if they're making tons of money, then why would they need to be paid by the reporter? Moreover, why would they put themselves at risk of getting caught if they're so successful?
Uh... subpoena Anonymizer for logs (by law they have to keep them) then timestamp the occurances...
Specifically, what law requires you to keep logs?
D
Look at the Jargon File entry for cracker and you'll see that if you REALLY want to be pedantic you should call them worms instead of crackers...since worm was the original neologism.
Hackers are people who thrive on being faced with problems and finding clever, innovative solutions to them. Crackers are people who break into computer systems.
Says who? Try looking up "hacker" in, say, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that small subcultures get to force their own pet definitions on society at large. It works the other way around...words mean whatever the population at large decide they mean. Heck, even the Jargon File admits that hacker was originally used to mean "a malicious meddler" and only recently has that use become deprecated.
Confusing the two is like calling every martial-arts student a 'ninja.'
No, it's more like a subset of karate students (it's only a subset because not all karate students agree with them on this issue) suddenly deciding that, because of the increased media exposure that the movie Karate Kid brought to their subculture they now want to be called "judo-ka" -- and who cares if karate and judo are already in widespread use? -- and then getting their obi in a twist when everyone keeps calling it karate.
Unless you are trying to suggest that there is some innate meaning in the two words completely separate from what society imparts to them.
I went to the site thinking it was an article, but it turns out it's just and advertisement for Adcops.com.
You remember Adcops? The guys that say:
Adcops: "Give me $100 and I'll tell you how to avoid being scammed"
Sucker: "Uh, ok, here you go"
Adcops: "You weren't paying attention"
Oh, that is one sweet scam.
Praise the Force Field! Praise the Laser Project! Slackware Loon #19830573
Serious suggestion: In your copious spare time (that was very toungue in cheek -- I'm a sysadmin, I don't know what spare time is ) something you could do to fight the higher ups, is:
make a list of all the costs involved with spam -- man hours tracking it down, downtime of mail servers swamped with it, getting yourself out of the RBL, business lost/cost to customers of being RBL'd -- make it as detailed as possible, be realistic, but remember that things like the amount they paid some sysadmin to come in at midnight to fix the mail server 'cos some spammer brought it down counts!
Split this into per-spammer chunks (i.e. maybe each spamming incident costs $250 or something, this is, btw, probably too low an estimate)
find out how much your lawyer costs
compare number-of-spammers times per-spammer-costs to lawyer-costs
if a is greater than b, tell the higher ups.
otherwise, file it and return to it occasionally -- increases in costs or spammers might make it useful eventually
They don't mention it in their faq (funny that) but as of last year, at least (the last time I needed western union) they did allow you to pick up money without an ID. The sender had to specifically allow this, and a question was asked with an answer (theoretically) only you should know for authentication.
To confirm this, go down to your local western union and read the 'to send money' form.
Found out her name was Rosie Palms. The date was cut short because the Five Blister Sisters were being abrasive.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Your right he isn't truely untracable.
However it is quite likely for a given cracker to be unaware of ALL the ways he may be cought.
Crackers are less aware of ALL the ways a person may be cought and more aware of the tactics law enforcment uses.
As such if a sysadmin takes on the task and tracks the cracker without law enforcment there is a pritty good chance the sysadmin will catch his/her target.
It is also likely a good precentage of his cracks are brags.. Works of fiction
When I was a kid a friend of mine was a cracker. Most of his cracks were fictional. Likely based on real events and just extended them into the unreal.
The Fort Knox story probably did happen however it wasn't Fort Knox but a dumpster in the back of a company throwing away Sun Sparcs or Pentium 2s for Xeons or UltraSparcs. Or something on that mesure.
First and formost this kid is a con.. so even the storys are cons. Sure he did something similer.. Makes the story believable.. sorta...
Just as when a con sells you rechargable batterys you get used non-rechargables.
I don't actually exist.
Why? Because it's easier tomake their customers pay for the spam by simply passing the losses along to us in the form of higher credit card interest rates.
I've been through this. The credit card companies just don't care about abuse. They really don't. It would cost them money to make the system more secure, and why should they*spend* money when all they have to do is increase our rates and fees?
Is that, the gist of this is, get credit card numbers.
How is using a friends house as a' drop site' for carded equipmetn safe? How do they not track it down? Someone explain this to me...
Where are your lawyers, and how exactly does the company justify not letting it go through? This is one for the lawyers.
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" -- George W. Bush
All your politician are belong to us.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
my girl friend works for a cell phone company, as tech support. last night she was tellin me how the tech at work showed her how to click on a period here a letter there, and you were put into the tracking sstem that showed you( on a map!) where a call was coming from, where the nearby towers were, etc
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
just because the long/lat is displayed on a map, does not mean that it does not exist--and just cause you don't know how it works, don't call it bull just because I referenced my GF, as it happens I know several other pople who work for other companies(lubbock being a good place to put call center's) and have heard mention of similar systems at their place's of business. And for the record, I did mention that it was hiddin, didn't I--only the tech's knew about it, apparently, and one just happened to show it to her
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
I agree but what really bugs the Hell out me is when spammers quote some bogus bill that hasn't passed into law yet and try to tell me that "This is not spam according to ... such and such bill"
I think I will decide what is and what isn't spam not some damn moron spammer!!!!
http://Lenny.com
I know can you believe how stupid these people are?
I e-mail a spammer that was trying to sell me something to take me offer thier list they e-mail back and a said
" I thought spam was e-mail that offered get rich quick skeems"
http://Lenny.com
We could solve most of the spam problem If more people would fight back instead of just ignoring spam
follow the link in my sig. to find out more about what you can do
http://Lenny.com
At the ISP I used to work for, our RADIUS servers logged to SQL servers. Worked awesome for statistics generation, and with a few well-tuned stored procs, was very fast at finding precisely this kind of info.
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
Firstly, I'd like to quibble some semantics with you. These kids are not 'hackers', they are 'crackers'. A hacker wears a white hat. The crackers wear a black hat. As far as that goes, these kids are not even crackers, they are spammers and thieves.
You can argue all you want, but "hacker" is understood by the general public, but "cracker" is not. In the same light, "Virus" may be something different from a "Trojan Horse", but you tell that to an average computer users and they'll say "huh?" MSN is written towards the general public and while the author may very well know the difference between cracker and hacker, he/she would rightly chose to say "hacker" rather than wasting the readers time with a paragraph explaining what a cracker is. It is a sign a good author to target the language to the reader. You just need to accept the fact that the general population isn't interested in learning a billion vocabulary words to make you happy. While it may seem important to you, it's useless trivia to most of the world.
I would argue that the language of hacker and cracker does not even have the meaning you say. You can be a cracker and still be "one the side of good". Crack is actually a very positive word. "That is a crack team." Cracking generally means to "crack open", as an a bank vault, a copy protection scheme etc. It implies an action, not an intent. So a locksmith might be called to crack a safe for which the keys were lost, or I might be consulted to crack a copy protection software scheme and test it for weaknesses before it is released. I consider myself both a hacker and a cracker, but I do not use either talent for evil.
jc @ crack.com (yes, my real email address)
-- Virtual Windows Project
Since when did the term hacker become a catch all for criminals who use a computer? I am absolutely appalled by this. While it is true that words should and will naturally evolve in a language, this is really not the case here.
It seems to me that the author or editor decided to use the word hacker in the title for some sensationalism. This story does not even describe what an average citizen would call a hacker. Most people think of a hacker as someone who infiltrates a computer system. Most people also think that hackers steal information and damage property (e.g. delete or destroy data).
In all reality, a hacker is someone who is extremely skilled with computers. A hacker also has knowledge about how to break into a system. For instance, any system administrator worth a damn is a hacker. That is to say that they are skilled with computers and know how to break into the system. This puts them in a position to keep computer criminals (note the word choice, criminals not hackers) from breaking into the system.
In this article, the computer criminals are just that, criminals. They are simply modern-day scam artists. But hey, "Watch a computer scam-artist work the system" probably doesn't have that same ring to it.
Originally I was going to send an e-mail to Bob Sullivan (the author) but if you do a search for the word hacker on the page you will not find it in his article, only in the headline and in links to other MSNBC headlines. Apparently this is just some editor with his head way up his ass.
That's the third time I had to enter my credit card info to post to slashdot.
What's up with that?
One starts at exactly 11am the other starts at exactly 11pm? One of the guys gets some CC numbers off the net and calls the 1-800 number on the back to see how much money is on the card? Western Union gives out $250 in cash? One of the guys has stolen merchandise sent to his "friend's" house?
This bullshit is worse than those hollywood movies showing a 16yr old breaking into the NSA and breaking their strongest encryption in 3mins with a full GUI animation sequence. At least the hollywood bullshit doesn't claim to be true. (It only claims to be entertaining, which is enough lying in itself).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
The first kid was so worried about getting tracked, but he still wrote his document in word. He'll be tracked by Word's GUID and busted the same way the Melissa virus write was tracked. Oh well, it is good fiction.
...the journalist who believed this story, or the Slashdot editors who gave it credence?
Advice: on VPS providers
since i'm a grad student, i live at school. unless ups/fedex/etc will start shipping between 10pm and 6am, i will only be able to recieve packages on sundays or about once a month on weekdays. i've never had trouble having stuff shipped to the office at school thought.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
why are these guys buying so many _lappies_?
i have one, not really looking to add 5 more.
guess i'm not a hacker.
Last year my former company had an internet security incident. The attacker used an account with a normal ISP to try the hole, and then reconnected with a NetZero account to perform the attack.
The short of it: I would partially or completely firewall the 4.0.0.0/8 class A -- the company responsible for this network allows people to sign up with bogus account information, and doesn't provide 'common courtesy' help or information when requested. Do you want anonymous IP addresses making SSL connections to your web store? Do you want anonymous IP addresses making connections to your network at all?
The long story is, while talking with Genuity Networks I discovered:
The 4.0.0.0/8 class A contains all of NetZero's dialup IP pool, as well as some non-NetZero Genuity Networks customers.
(The name NetZero wasn't obvious in the DNS name...but when a reply to my initial email to them came back with a call log number and (NetZero) in the subject line, I figured it out.)
Genuity Networks *refuses* to tell you which IPs are the NetZero dialups in your area, so you can block them. I didn't want to block the entire 4./8 class A, so I did something I probably shouldn't have: I put together a shell script that ran nslookup on every address in the 4.4./16 class B. I came up with about 12 class C networks that have 'omaha' in the reverse-lookup DNS names. I firewalled those.
(I was so pissed off at the lack of help I received, I was considering replying to the message, cc'ing the original abuse address, but editing the sender's portion of the message so it looked like he told me which networks to block, and that I thanked him for the information. I never sent the mail though.)
--Spence
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Can we institute the death penalty for anyone who writes 'lol' and 'rofl' in random spots lol?
I swear, if AOLamers actually talked like that, they'd be institutionalized... or shot...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
All you need, in order to be a hacker are the following things. 1. an UNTRACABLE CAR with a lisence plate that you get officially changed every year. 2. an Untracable gun with which to mug people with, you can get these after only a few days at any gun shop, after you aquire your lisence. 3. An idiot reporter to certify you as one of America's elite
perl -e'print"yes"&"no"for(1..3)'
Of course 11am to 11pm is his working hours. 11pm is his bedtime, and he'll be grounded if he stays up later.
Why not just buy a list of a few thousand card numbers from real hackers.. fucking tossers. It is amuzing that there is actually ways to get cash off CC's these days. Carding was never popular because you had to get physical goods delivered and then sell it to make cash.. ie you had to know a fence and frankly if you're gunna go into that business why not just steal cars or break into houses?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Among other failings, it caps the civil damages at $150K.
A lame anti-spam bill is much worse than NO anti-spam bill.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Crack whores accept VISA? ;)
So lemme get this straight - punk spammers doing direct-to-MX out of port 25, who are easily traced, are blocked, but dirtbags who relay-rape anonymizing Sendmail 8.6 relays in China (traffic to port 25) continue to abuse with imputiny?
Fuck, that is clueless.
You can just repeat the last few steps... don't even need to change the pictures or the HTML, unless you want to scam the same people over and over. Just make sure to change the name of the site and the name of the management.
I would set up an adult site of my own, but it's too much bother. Oh yeah, and my girlfriend would kill me.
What a big pile of steamy crap!
I wouldn't call scamming AOL users hacking at all?
And who the hell talks like that? The most amazing part of the story is that "Criminal # 1" has a girlfriend!
----
Wind and temp at my house
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
>>11:03 a.m. Open up one of my new Yahoo accounts through an untraceable NetZero account.
>Uh... And how do you suppose your gonna dial into it?
Maybe using one of the scammed cell phones? Its not hard, not even remotely hard. One laptop (which he talks about getting), and a dongle, and he is all set with a cellphone that is -- somewhat -- untraceable.
>Uh... subpoena Anonymizer for logs (by law they have to keep them) then timestamp the occurances...
As far as I know, they dont keep logs there *AT ALL*, on purpose.
>.. Boy is this moron sure dumb
Actually, I know a few darker-hat individuals, and this is rather close to their actions. Maybe a few key details were left out for those with less of a clue, but hey, it's not his fault you cant connect the dots.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Unlike the reputability of "your girlfriend", I actually work for a national wireless company myself. I can tell you that is bull. To track a cell's location *is* possible, and is done on a not-so-often basis. However, it is by long/lat, and to do so on a end user in a non-test environment requires a subpeona.
:)
At least in OUR company, thats how it is done.
Sounds like you smoked a little too much while watching the net.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
"11:01 a.m. Well, I just checked www.westernion.com and he wasn't lying, he sent the funds. I got the tracking number and he paid by cash so I can pick up the money without an ID. Secret question/answer was "what's your mother's maiden name?" Answer was "tu madre." "
Can you really pick up money from Western Union without an ID? I checked their website and their FAQ says:
"You may pick up your money transfer at any Agent location. You will need to complete a "To Receive Money" form with the following information: name, address, telephone number, amount expected, as well as the sender's name, telephone number, city and state being sent from. Valid identification is also required. Some restrictions may apply."
Seems fishy...
I also found this interesting:
"Screw the Feds, they are lazy they won't trace me back that far. Plus I got *67 on, they'll need subpoenas to, and a ton of tracing to even get close to me."
I'm pretty sure *67 doesn't work on some ISDN/PRI Lines (which many ISP's used). I know for a fact it didn't work at a local ISP here (I tested it personally).
I figured that someone would point this out sooner or later. I thought that priests seemed like the professional speachmaker most likely to produce images of good honest people. Especially when compared with the other obvious choice..... Senators.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
These guys aren't even crackers. They aren't breaking into computer systems or anything like that, they just steal credit cards. The only way in which they even resemble a hacker is that they use a computer to do their 'job'. But so do most receptionists. Confusing web con artists with hackers is like confusing real world con artists with priests because both make speaches as part of their work.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Are you talking about H.R. 718, "Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001", sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM)?
According to CNN, it's passed Committee vote and will be sent to the House floor for consideration. A version needs to be introduced and passed in the Senate, the two reconciled, then sent to POTUS.
Here's the text, if anybody's interested. Actually, that's probably a temporary link which will break VERY soon, so you can instead use this link, which should hopefully re-exec the query, and then click 'Full Display'.
It's actually fairly interesting. There's explicit protection for service providers to take 'good faith' efforts to block UCE, which would appear to protect users of things like the real-time black-hole list for mail servers, and what not. And you can't go after them for innocent retransmission, either.
It's probably based on existing telemarketing law, with its references to pre-existing business relationships, opt-out (they need to provide a means for opting out of lists in their UCE, but they don't need you to opt in BEFORE they send the first UCE) and all.
Interestingly, it only refers to individuals. I'm not sure how it applies to UCE from corporations -- for instance, whether the entire company is liable as a whole or just the employee(s) who decided to spam, or whether this could in any way be applied to spam-friendly ISPs.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Yeah, I'm sure some guy who makes $2k a month just from some click-ad scam is going to salavate over $250 to write an article for MSNBC.
Do these guys ever check anything for reliability?
Oh wait, it's >MS< NBC. How foolish of me.
I'm sorry, but this has my "bull-meter" pegged at maximum, and here's why:
Regardless of whether you can get cash by Western Union with an ID (which has been touched upon by others), we're supposed to believe this guy didn't just take the money and run? The same guy who has stolen countless credit card numbers, bought thousands of dollars of merchandise, and is "untraceable"?
Please.
....which would make them phreaks, no?
Yep. it's required for the new E911 system, where
the phone companies are required to be able to
tell where you are so they can send EBS (emergency broadcast system) messages to your phone if you're in a certain area. (tornado, toxic gas leak, meltdowns, nuclear war...)
although, in my opinion it's more for tracking by the government since it would be easy to send those messages on a per-tower basis, considering the range of the towers arent -that- far.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
Fine, this guy *claims* that he's untraceable and whatever, but if he's half way intelligent, why bother taking the risk of writing up supposedly true exploits for a measily $250? (According to the story, that's what he's getting paid).
Of course, if the stories aren't even true in the first place, I guess it makes sense. Or, equally likely, the whole big thing is just a hoax.
So is there quite a bit of detail or not a lot of detail?
Make up your minds, people!
How much validation is done on these claims of great exploits?
"9:15am Cracked a Brinks truck using my PalmOS hackmaster app called 'cash'."
"9:45am Almost tripped the goons at Fort Knox, but hid in the bushes an extra five minutes. An hour later, a five-nines bullion bar in my backpack, and off for new challenges."
Might this be just a tad bit embellished for the reporter's sake?
[
I agree small claims is designed for exactly this problem. Additionally it usually only costs a small amount to file a claim (here its ~$30) and if the other party doesn't show up they default and you win the judgement and even if you lose your action you only are out the cost of filing and if you get a judgement in your favor and they don't pay they are in contemp of court and judges tend to take that seriously (can you say Bench warrant).
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A thousand poxes upon your head, Mr. O'Reilly....you gave me "Programming Perl, Second Edition" when I really needed "Credit Card Fraud in a Nutshell", The Roman God Book (you know? the guy on the AmEx? This is funny, people, laugh!), to say nothing of "Stopping Spam".
O wasted youth!
Never again will I reclaim the time spent learning of the MIPS and PowerPC assembly or postulating applications of microwave data communications or cryptography. Oh the 1337 skr1ptz I could have forged using SDMI vector registers and operations, enciphered in none but the best Blowfish or AES...they would pj33r on Dalnet, but nay...it is not to be.
Days wasted actually doing things when I could have lounged in bed all day, with my laptop of the day, causing housewives and preteens on AOL to fall lame victim to my insidious cunning. Pausing only, of course, to take a highly circular and redundant path to the nearest Texaco to recieve money from MSNBC writers (Oh how the Black Helicopters would follow me, but for naught).
Ok, that's about enough of that
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
I had "Greek God Book" there before I remembered I had such a card and took a look! Definately not Greek style, but Centurian didn't even come to mind, for some reason.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Who is really, really hoping the reporter (or to a lesser extent, his two subjects) is reading this discussion? How could he not know this article is on slashdot? I'd be very interested to hear his response to all this.
On the other hand, the two tea-leaves have probably targeted us all for a good working-over (This is me...this is me being very afraid....*cough* this is funny, people, laugh (tm)). In other news, I had to enter my credit card number to get my bogonflux mail...don't remember that before. I'm expecting an invoice for a PS2, a case of Jolt, and 15 AOL accounts to show up at my door care of "Heywood Jablomi" any day now. Oh well.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
...almost have to feel sorry for the guy. First, he lost $500. Second, he got completely and totally worked over by these two. Third, imagine the #channel this guy had to hang out in to find these two geniuses. Script kiddies are very unpleasent people to have to deal with. They're rude, obnoxyous, unintelligent, speak incoherently, swear alot, and so forth. Fourth, he's getting utterly destroied on Slashdot...he'll never work in this town again!
Caveat: This post is working under the assumption that the two criminals existed. Smart money on the whole thing being as big a scam as that which was being 'reported'. Thank you for your time
I sense a disturbance in the bogon flux
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
d33z d00dz R k-1337 h4x0rs!!!
And to think...I thought hackers wrote tight code, and messed with hardware and such. Boy was I ever wrong...it's all in the credit card fraud, banner ad fraud, spamming, and porn! So many wasted nights...
Speaking of nights, what hackers work from 11 am to 11 pm?! And when was somebody going to tell me that netzero and AOL were the ISPs of choice? This article has really opened my eyes, and I'm going to get a few phony email accounts and turn my life around!!
.....*grumble*
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Exactly, but who wants to read a story about something as mundane as spamming? People get spammed several times a day, but rarely do people get 'hacked'. Saying it's hacking and not spamming lends a credibility, and no small measure of mystique to the story. Spamming is irritating...hacking is exciting. Besides, do you think this reporter cares about the gross misuse of the term? He's just trying to make a buck, and he'll get more bucks for his story on 'hacking' than 'spamming'.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Get your head screwed on straight u moron....any mail client will have destination port 25 connections. Blocking out-bound connections on port 25 will not only stop SMTP servers, but clients also. Who mod'ed this fuckhead up?
ÕÕ
The first carder spends just a little over two hours with his girlfriend. For a "movie and back to her place" -- he's embellishing at best. Neither of them seem to have a live. They just sit in the bedrooms with laptops and buy more computers and games with their scammed money. So- they don't mind living a paranoid life because they haven't much of one to begin with!
I feelthis may be at best exaggerated, and at worst a hoax. Just sounds too cliche.
Why would there be a hoax? Well, hmm. Follow the money. I went to the Adcops site where the original story comes from. Poked there a bit before finding out that to be a member (and read or see the 'Fraud Museum' or other valuable evidence, you need to fork over US$90.
Hmm. Perhaps Adcops did a little hack job of their own to get publicity and increased revenue sales. Ya Think?
or doing what Kevin Mitnick did
considering how things worked out for him, i don't know if i would reccomend following in mitnick's footsteps...
They're scam artists, so they must be trustworthy. =) [error... entering paradox mode... brain shutting down.]
Did you know that they have removed the word "gullible" from the dictionary?
All I can say is that if people are stupid enough to fall for scams like this then it serves them right.
Today I keep getting fed ActiveXs in the Doubleclick banner too. What is it with you guys ? You claim to be a mouthpiece for the anti-corporate libertarian code-free-or-die brigade, yet you spew banners and spamware like a $2 pr0n site.
Spamming isn't exactly hacking.
Got Rhinos?
CC's come with insurance that has a $50 deductible. Coverage is null if you let someone else use your card or fail to notify the issuer's company in reasonable time that the card has been abused.
Paypal is just a CC vendor. They are like a card holder, but instead of card number, they get a vendor ID, and authority to put debits and credits on cardholders' accounts. They have credit reports on file like cardholders. If they break vendor rules, they get penalized. Maintaining the secrecy of your card number is part of their vendor contract. If their CC# storage is compromised, they get penalized by the CC company.
You will probably only have to pay $50 if your card number is stolen, but they may try to get you to pay more. Get a lawyer (one of those fix-your-credit guys) if there's a lot of money involved.
With that context, and to answer your question, it is possible there is a flaw in PayPal's software. However, considering the potential liability of that flaw, you should assume "someone" is getting paid to evaluate the system. It is doubtful there is any flaw as easy to exploit as a luser. This all depends on the "security consultant" that signed off on this thing.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Funny, I didn't think the "girlfriend" bit was out of place... after all, a guy who pulls in this kind of money probably throws it around just as quickly and easily as he gets it. He probably has no problem getting something recognizably female and breathing to hang on his arm... No, the part that got me was that he left for "dinner with his girlfrend and then back to her place" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!) at 5:30PM, and was back home scamming away at 7:50PM. I figure that even for a teenage hacker who'd probably never kissed a girl before starting his life of crime, this is a little quick!
t
I would seriously be interested in seeing a "correct" usage of hacker that predates today's common usage.
t
Assuming the reports are accurate, the only reason these guys/gals are successful in these schemes is because there are people out there naueve enough to fall for their social attacks.
:(
Yes, they did work the system, but I don't see anything here to be worried over - people will simply have to learn that you don't give your credit card details out on a whim...
The only thing that does concern me is that people like this provide the powers at be the perfect excuse to attack anonimity...
Ah well - rant over.
But in typical Bell Canada fashion, they've blocked all traffic eminating FROM port 25, not traffic with a DESTINATION of port 25. So those of us who run SMTP servers for a useful purpose (receiving mail at erik@ is quite useful) are screwed ... and the true spammers will just reconfigure their spambots to send out traffic on port 31337 or something.
If you use Bell Sympatico HSE (I'm in Montreal, but they go over to Toronto, Ottawa, maybe out to BC I don't remember), check out SympaticoUsers. You'll find the messageboards and announcements quite useful.
--
Even if they realized it, they might not care. Have you never seen a bum collapsed in the street, perhaps asking for help, being ignored by everyone who passes? People can be callous.
guess I'm just skeptical of the old "education" approach. My solution would be to expand our efforts in space so misfits like me could run off and hide in an unexplored frontier.
awesome, man. I just became a suicidal pathologically shy introverted junkie.
Please forgive my bitterness. we're on the same side.
Who would have thought that these crackers are so jolly! I can imagine when the police catch up with them:
"The police are at my front door. LOL. They look really mad! LOL! You'll never take me alive coppers! LOL. Oh, now they're shooting at me, what morons LOL. Hey, what's this red stuff coming from my chest? LOL!!"
"He was too stupid to be a Fed. Hell I don't care if he is, he can't track me."
What?! If he can't "track" him how was he able to contact him with the request in the first place?!!!
Such reports by notable journalist coming from a well known source, MSNBC.com, does nothing but scares the hell out of your average computer users. MSNBC.com would have done a better *service* to its readers if it educated them about how to *NOT* become victims.
---------------
Sig
abbr.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Does anyone believe that an active con artist would tell the whole world how he cons people?
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
I forgot to mention that I used to chat with about 10 people who went to jail trying both of these scams.
And I meant sooner rather than later.
check out my website if you want to see what I have to say about school shootings.
www.oztun.com
Thank you, so am I =).
My point is that they should care. Its time the nice people start laughing at the stupid people.
no actually the alternative is a small cell where bubba sticks it in your ass every night. I guess some people have to learn an even harder way than I did.
Ok actually let me just say I wasn't talking about guns I was talking about attitude. Ever notice that people think your cool if your stupid? Anyway I was probably a much worse misfit than you. I went to jail >10 times for possesion of marij., paraphanalia and pimping/pandering. I smoked crack, stole cars, broke into houses, have been shot, and have shot back. Just to clarify things a bit for you.
As someone who was into the underground scene on EFNet from 91' to 95' let me tell you, don't think you can do this.
The first guy collects his money at western unions. This will not work because the feds work with AOL and you will scam a fed who will be at the western union waiting to meet you.
The second guy has his carded mail sent to a friends house. Whoever signs for this is going to jail. Once the friend gets arrested he will rat him out.
I bet these two guys pulled this off once or twice and wrote about it like its a day job. If someone stupid falls for it you might make quick cash once or twice. If you keep trying it you will get busted sooner than later.
Lawyers fees are more than the cc charge. CC company has more lawyers and we could wait up to 2 years to get the cash. I've simply been told by the highest person in the company to "Let it go" it costs to much to pursue it. Sad Fact of Life, money buys you the ability to fight. Welcome to the real world.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Now according to this acrticle these people use SPAM as one of their main forms of getting to victims. Hmmm how can we fight this problem?? If we were ALLOWED to enforece our AUP, and our contract that a customer signs then this activity would be less profitable and easier to trace.
For isntance, joe/badboy/hacker uses a stloen card signs up for a throw away account and start spamming. If joe is useing a stolen card a 19.95 gets looked over, but a 500 dollar charge gets noticed. So come on Credit Card people, if we can PROVE it why can't we charge these people for taking up our time, system resources etc. As this article clearly points out SPAM is used very often for illegal practices.
Why won't the credit card companies help us clean up?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, it does seem a little fishy, but on the surface the facts seem reasonable enough.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
subpoena Anonymizer for logs (by law they have to keep them)
Excuse me? Since when was any entity required by law to keep logs of anything?!
--
So which is it, man?
You're totally right. I should have said "Lovecraftian" emphasis. . . ever notice how everybody says "Lovecraft" when they're actually thinking "Derleth"?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Damn media. Ok, I read the article. All it really shows me is that AOL users are easily duped. Other than being yet another example of how easily script kiddies can work, was there anything informative about that article? I think not.
That's allright. I filter aol's mail so they don't have to: all senders from that domain are shown the way to /dev/null with a quickness.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Maybe if AOL would stop spamming!
"LOL, ROFL" Is it just me, or does the guy that wrote this sound like an AOLer that is just living in a fantasy world? I was just waiting for him to say "A/S/L Got A pic?"
Probably carded her.
True, article didn't say anything about Social Security and PIN numbers which are MUCH harder to obtain.
Welp, I gotta jet. sQu1db0y (a 'hacker') teld me hes gonna score me some perqs. (UNIX 'shell' accounts) Dam. Some days it just feels like the whole worlds smeared with Vaz. (?)
--
share and enjoy
Firstly, I'd like to quibble some semantics with you. These kids are not 'hackers', they are 'crackers'. A hacker wears a white hat.
I thought the ESR fanboys had given up. If all hackers wore a white hat, then why the need for the term 'white hat hacker'. While its obvious that these guys are not hackers, crackers, or script kiddies by any sense of the word, claming that 'hackers' are all good guys is ludicrist. Please stop, you're making us all look stupid.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
If it is, I'm certainly not laughing. When people start confusing inept script kiddy morons as hackers we run into a whole confusion issue. This whole article starts out attempting to outline that these people are in fact not your typical moronic script kiddy.. then a few lines later in _both_ diary entries, there are endless references to total reliance on scripts? And it's always nice to see that competence level of these people be ever diminishing... Last I checked, both anonymizer and *67 can both be subpoenaed for information if it's in relation to some sort of malicious activity. If anything, these people need to be shot so they can be saved from their own stupidity.
Damn with your "LOL" you sound just like one of them...
give me all your garmonbozia
Education is the only way to stop this type of thing. heh and castration
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Somethings not right... Hacker #1 takes a break at 5:30PM to have a dinner-date with a girlfriend, and then returns at 7:30PM? I'd believe it more if he didn't have a girlfriend, or 2) took the reset of the night off to be with his honey.
Assumming it wasn't all made up to begin with.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I meant that. It was supposed to be funny.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
"SECURITY EXPERTS WILL tell you most of the computer attacks they see every day are initiated by clever teen-agers, so called ?script kiddies.?"
I started laughing when I read that. Most of the rest of it was very funny also. I never thought I would read the words "clever" and "script kiddie" in the same sentance. LOL
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Much like 'virii' or 'cracking', everything is subjective. Let's all ignore the colloquialisms used and focus on the meat of the article; spammers need lives
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Uhh... No matter how many times you change your number, there is always a record
A little clarification on this:
Almost all large customers of the phone company (i.e. those who have some kind of leased line or ISDN services) have a service called ANI, which stands for (AFAIK) Automatic Number Identification. The *67 service has no affect on whether this aquires your number or not, so you are pretty much screwed if you call in on your own phone line.
The only way I know of to get past ANI is to trick the operator to diverting your call to the number that you wish to call, thereby having the number of the operator (always xxx-0000) showing up on ANI. But, of course, you can't route data calls this way, so you are pretty much limited to either using someone else's line, or doing what Kevin Mitnick did and aquire a different number through the cellular telephone network, although, with the state of cellular networks today, that is considerably harder to do than it was 5 or 6 years ago.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Oftentimes, if an order through our store is fishy, the billing contact will be addressed. Since there is no overnight delivery available, deliveries can be delayed. We don't use the phone number so much as the mailing address, or the credit card company.
Online stores should be more paranoid about orders which have different billing and shipping addresses. Yes, people send out gifts, but then again, if they're shipping out a gift and you contact them, then you'll know whether it's a true order or a scam.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
also the life of a security administrator... :)
since somebody who lays in bed all day typing on a computer and eating pizza claims to have a real life girlfriend.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Anyone click over to Adcops web site? Go to their "member login" page and notice its not even a secure connection! And these people are signing up cusotmers to protect them from stolen credit cards and passwords? I think the whole thing is a joke.
5:30 p.m. I'm going to go meet my girlfriend. Take her out to dinner, go back to her place.
How did he meet this girl? By spamming a whole bunch of E-mail addresses??
Hey, then again...
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
They do have a niche to exploit... "stupid people"
Humorless sig goes here.
Since the late 80's and early nineties, phone companies have moved switching from the old card spitting stepper and crossbar systems to more computerized versions. Even with *69, you are still logged somewhere on the system. In the old days it worked because unless your phone companies system popped out a "trouble card" you would pretty much not be found. With newer databases, most companies can provide and exact record of EVERYTHING you have dialed from your phone, even if you dial only three numbers and hang up.
That story is full of BS. *69 is completely traceable and you are correct in what you say because ANI is done a "layer" below the CLID system which *69 works on. He would get caught so easily, especially dialing any number outside of his areacode which can often cause some friction between CLID interfaces at different switching stations, and the block may become changed or not even work at all!
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
i think you need a better example than priests and con artists. some of us are not sure what the difference there is. :)
I do not have a signature
hackers != crackers. Next!
sulli
RTFJ.
Thses guy's look like theif's and liar's not hackers. Hell even calling them script kiddies is a compliment. We don't call scam artits who use the phone Phreaks, so why do we call someone who happens to use a computer a hacker? I use GIMP to resize a picture at work am I now a multimedia professional?
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
> (Lovecraftian emphasis added)
Gah.... That's not a "Lovecraftian" emphasis. Howard Philip Lovecraft never did that cheesy italics-at-the-end thing. You're thinking of August Derleth, who finished a few of Lovecraft's stories after Lovecraft's death, and wrote a bunch more in what he wistfully hoped was Lovecraft's style. Sadly, Derleth didn't have Lovecraft's talent for foreshadowing and structured his endings so ineptly that he had to resort to italics to make readers notice that the last sentence or so of the story was important.
I watch what my parents do when they go online and it amazes me! They'll double click on anything and follow ANY link emailed to them!
LFS. Have you built your system today?
This whole thing is just too weird. Either the reporter wrote the story himself or the spammres are just stupid. I mean its obviously a story about spamming and not "hacking". And the thing that made my noggin go off is that the first guy seems to be working alone and doing quite good for himself (so he says). Then why would he taje this stupid risk for 250 bucks. And 11am-11pm ?!?! Those are his working hours. All that and he has a girl friend. Go figure /. If nothing else it would give people something to bitch about.
I just though I'd send this to
Tell me about it. When I first read it I was like, "huh!". but the again, the story came from msnbc. wouldn't surprise me at all if this thing came out as baloney.
An update for modern times? "There's a sucker logging on every minute."
Specifically, what law requires you to keep logs?
I don't recall the exact name of the law, but I believe the bill in congress was HR1984.
"And like that
Drat. You ruined my joke. HR1984. 1984. Get it?
"And like that
That's two weeks worth of IRC logs from a compromised machine. A typical day seems to involve hanging out on the #warez channels and begging for someone to give you some credit card numbers.
I have my doubts about this story too, however I can think fo a reason why the kids would want to accept the $250; I think that they probably want the attention, if you're alone in a room there's no feedback on your work like in a normal job. In other words there's noone that says -you did a good job on this or that etc. etc. I think that even though they might (and I seriously doubt it) be making lots of money that kind of attention is important to people too.
That is, until I saw it on an MSNBC article.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
whoa, hold on buster. sure, going from point A to point B direct? yes, you are quite correct. HOWEVER, who is stupid enough to do something malicious on the net without hopping ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE first?
this takes me back to early eighties, phreaking trashing daze.. when using a stolen long distance id#, i'd hop from sprint, to MCI canada, blow an operator offline at a pbx, back to the US and then to the intended target (just try and trace me through all that analog equip).
anyways, today isn't much different. what 'hacker' out there doesn't have 10+ hacked accounts on 'forgotten' university boxes with shell accounts? gimme a break.
gol
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
Couldn't resist. quote frome the article: "One virtual university even offers a mail-order degree in nuclear engineering safety." THAT'S how homer got the job.....
If ever having left someone's prescence, you feel as if you lost a quart of plasma, AVOID that prescence -W.H.Burroughs
Did they catch these guys and then have them do this, or what?
I mean, if I was a hacker, I sure wouldn't go doing something like a diary, and giving it to these people! Even if it was through a hot-mail account, it'd still be traceable, if they new a HAcker was defiantely using it.
I notice one thing from this fake article. MSNBC bashing their biggest internet rival, AOL. well at least bashing their users.
Oh give it up already. In common usage nowadays, the word "hacker" means, pretty much, "using computers for criminal activity". Most people have no idea of the former (correct) meaning of the word. Curse the credulous, stupid media and the technically illiterate public if you want, but that's how the language has evolved. "Real" hackers get so upset about this, but it's just a frigging word. Abandon it. It's a lost cause. Call yourselves something else. This is one battle the hacker community will not win.
You never heard of the "New Hackers Dictionary" by Eric S Raymond?
Phreaks are people who abuse the phone system. I believe these would simply be described as Internet-savvy con artists.
Ok, this is the funniest thing I've read since...well...yesterday, when I encountered this autobiography of Norman Spinrad.
Apparently, having a high fever can give you pretty 31337 phr33X0r p0w3rz too!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
He's on dialup, remember ^_^
11:00AM: I just woke up. Apparently I fell asleep while loading slashdot. I reload again.
11:01AM: Reload slashdot. I have a script to reload slashdot for me. I'll be sure to get "First Post" today!
11:02AM: Reload slashdot.
11:03AM: Reload slashdot.
11:04AM: Reload slashdot.
...
I don't think the reporter's telling the truth. I'm a law abiding citizen and if someone I didn't know sent me $250.00 and he didn't know who I was, I'd take the money and run. Diaries are too much of a pain. I'm just waiting for the reporter to get fired for making it up. But I'm sure the techniques are real. Good thing I delete spam immediately and have relaying disabled.
If that article is, in fact, true (I have some doubts about the veracity of it)...
;)
Obviously, straightforward scams like getting AOL accounts and cc numbers are much more productive than stupid pyramic schemes.
Gentoo Sucks
Did anyone else notice that bad guy #1 only spent 2 hours at his girlfriend's place for dinner? Not much time...
Wouldn't it be because he is supposed to be a great hacker-geek who also has a girlfriend, something NOT seen in real life?
In real world, Mr. Hacker would be having dinner with his old granny, tops...
Imagine the past, remember the future - Carlos Fuentes
Like AOL would do anything to improve their security
Spam is a hell of a problem. What happened with that anti-spam law anyway? I thought it was passed, maybe Dubya thinks those emails are real and doesn't want to read real email from citizens.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
11:03 a.m. Open up one of my new Yahoo accounts through an untraceable NetZero account.
;) LOL! Basically if I use a Wingate they can't track me at all! I should use gates more often ;( Hell I'm getting almost as lazy as a Fed. Ha!
Uh... And how do you suppose your gonna dial into it?
I use www.anonymizer.com to go to the Yahoo account because I'm paranoid. Hell if anyone's going to get my IP (Internet address). Screw the Feds, they are lazy they won't trace me back that far.
Uh... subpoena Anonymizer for logs (by law they have to keep them) then timestamp the occurances...
Plus I got *67 on, they'll need subpoenas to, and a ton of tracing to even get close to me. By then I'll have a new number. Hell, I go through telephone lines about one every 2-3 months.
Uhh... No matter how many times you change your number, there is always a record
If I'm super paranoid, I skip Anonymizer and hack me a Wingate. Then the Feds will trace back to one of the lamers' home computers not mine
Boy is this moron sure dumb
Seems to me like the only thing he "hacked" was some dumb ass reported who was an ass enough to get conned into thinking this e-tard was anyone special or had any talent other than bullshitting.
The media is going ballistic on "hacker" cases these past few months, and I'm starting to think they should be held accountable for promoting this activity, especially when you pay someone to do this (basically).
The media has totally bastardized hacking and those in the computer security field like the hackers at companies like @stake, Neohapsis.com, etc, end up getting bad reputations from morons like this. Its a shame to think people actually pay mind to idiots like this often casting dark shadows on to those that "hack" for just cause, such as fixing issues, e.g., Rain Forest Puppy, DugSong, obecian, etc..
Stupid news
360 degrees of Karma
Part 1: A School Day
7:20am: Elite hax0r wakes up to prepare for another challenging day of 7th grade.
7:25: Elite hax0r signs onto AOL (computer is never turned off)
7:30: Elite hax0r checks new mail for elite hacking progs and warez
7:40: After 10 minutes of chatting in with the folks in leet, elite hax0r's mom takes the telephone off the hook.
7:55: m0m and elite hax0r are having an argument about wasted time online.
8:00: elite hax0r's dad drops him off at Mitnick Middle School
8:05: elite hax0r enters typing class. this is his elite hacking playground, and he loves to confuse the teacher by pressing num lock, and shouting '3y3 hax0red j00!!!'
9:00: typing class is over, and elite hax0r travels to his history class. No 'puters here, so, he strategically places his copy of 2600 inside his history book and memorizes the 'how to steal stuff' article.
9:30: history teacher catches elite hax0r with the clandestine 2600 and takes it away from him. elite hax0r begins a heart-wrenching speel about freedom of speech, and his right as a citizen of this country to read his elite 2600 whenever he pleases. he compares this atrocity to the unjust imprisonment of hax0rs everywhere, and takes comfort in his martyrdom. leet is definitely hearing about this tonight.
10:05: elite hax0r goes to english.
10:50: elite hax0r goes to lunch period. here, he sits with his class in the cafeteria and takes his usual spot near the lunchlady's cashregister so he can write down people's lunch numbers. This comes in handy, as they could possibly use their lunch number as their AOL password. And if not, its always really leet to have even the most insignificant 1nph0z.
11:25: elite hax0r goes to pre algebra. today, he makes the kid in the desk next to him ph33r when he types 1134 on the calculator and holds it upside down. he wonders if this is similar to hacking an LED sign like in 2600..?
12:15: elite hax0r goes to science class where he learns about the reproductive system. elite hax0r excuses himself from class where he performs a quick wetware hack.
1:30: elite hax0r gathers his books and stands in front of the school
1:35: elite hax0r is picked up by the small yellow bus with the power lift on the back.
2:00: elite hax0r is dropped off at home, and he rushes inside to sign on and check his mail.
2:30: after 30 minutes online, elite hax0r is forced to sign off and take a nap. Ms. Hax0r cant have her baby getting cranky.
4:45: elite hax0r wakes up, and begins writing his manifesto, which he plans to present to his history teacher tomorrow.
4:47: elite hax0r gets tired of writing and feels like going outside. he and his little brother ride their bikes around in circles in the carport.
5:15: Ms. Hax0r calls the children inside for dinner.
6:00: hax0r children finish dinner, and elite hax0r asks for permission to get online and hack some stuff.
6:05: elite hax0r battles AOL's perpetual busy signal; its probably just a ploy by AOL to block him from coming online, in ph33r he might hax0r their network.
7:05: elite hax0r continues to hax0r away at AOL's "busy signal"
7:30: finally, elite hax0r crax0rs the busy signal and sneaks his way inside. He checks his mail for leet progs and tries to enter pr 'leet'. But, in another attempt by AOL to bring him down, the room is full (its really just their $3cur1ty 3xp3rt$ trying to keep him out).
7:40: elite hax0r finally busts into 'leet' in 137 tries. he chats with his homies.
8:00: elite hax0r is still chatting with the leets, when Ms. Hax0r picks up the fux0ring telephone and signs him offline.
8:35: after 20 minutes of crax0ring the "busy signal", in an angered retalliation attempt, elite hax0r steals mom's credit cards and scrolls them in 'leet' and 'phreak'.
9:00: elite hax0r finally finishes scrolling, and takes some time to work on his webpage; http://members.aol.com/Leethax0r/index.html. Here, he posts his new hax0r's manifesto, and lists $houtoutZ to his homies in 'leet' and 'punt', and his main chix0r Annie.
10:00: after an hour of figuring out how to use the AOL webpage software, he grows tired of all this brain work, and signs offline.
10:25: leet hax0r brushes his teeth,puts on his kevin mitnick pajamas, and goes to sleep.
11:00: leet hax0r dreams that he is Dade Murphy, and that he is having wild sex0r with Acid Burn, while hacking the FBI's Main Gibson.
Stupid News
360 degrees of Karma
I'm pretty sure *67 doesn't work on some ISDN/PRI Lines (which many ISP's used). I know for a fact it didn't work at a local ISP here (I tested it personally).
The "hacker/cracker/bad guy's" comment made me laugh uncontrollably for a few minutes. Having recovered from the initial shock at the stupidity of his comment, I'll share a bit of info as to how hard one would have to dig to find out who he was, or at least where he was calling from:
Note: I work for a national telco/isp, the combination of which greatly helps this process.
1. Find just one of spam boy's emails originating from his "phished" account. The message's headers will be more than pleased to provide you with time stamps.
2. Take the time stamps and userid, and compare them to the logs in the authentication servers (tacacs or radius, normally). These logs should, unless morons setup the system, indicate which NAS (network access server, the box you dial into) was used to logon to the ISP. The NAS should have sent a string to a syslog with connection speed (upstream/downstream), dialed number, and originating number.
3. You *will* have the originating number even if *67 was used. This is because *67 is a feature set for end users which can be disabled/masked, whereas the originating number received on an ISDN PRI has been provided by SS7 signaling, and is mandatory to the system's proper functionning.
4. With the originating number, the local telco will provide the line's physical address. This is assuming that a police officer/investigator/detective makes the request. Of course, there are many free number-to-address directories on the net that could provide this data.
5. All of the above requires about a day, depending on the size of the log files that have to be searched through, and the short delay in getting info from local telcos (they do move quickly if the right person asks).
All this to say that if these guys are getting away with their crimes for the time being, good for them. However, some "cyber crime" unit will eventually do a sweep, grab all of the above info for a bunch of small time operators in a given city, and shut them down. Yee-haw.
Did anyone else notice that bad guy #1 only spent 2 hours at his girlfriend's place for dinner? Not much time...
Actually, your analgy fits. A martial-arts student is studying to improve his life. A ninja is a luser who thinks running around in black pajamas is kewl.
As far as I am concerned, there is either a really creative reporter or a creative script kiddie behind this.
*maddest_hatter*
gir_in_reboot
"Z?"
"freedom of speech means being able to scream theatre in a crowded fire."
Day 4...
Gets job at Microshaft to try an fix all of the frigging IIS 5 holes
"Look where we worship" -- Jim Morrison
Here is the text of an email I sent to the author of this article. I just copied and pasted from my email window before sending, so please excuse any spelling errors. And the formatting sucks. But, if anybody has any feedback, I'd love to hear it. Or anything to suggest to him if he emails me back.
/., a 'News for Nerds' website. The thread can be found at: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/29/163624 0&mode=nested .
Bob--
I read your article located at http://www.msnbc.com/news/550567.asp and I found some things that I disagreed and thought that I would share my ideas with you. I am basing my statements from both my personal knowledge and a thread at
Firstly, I'd like to quibble some semantics with you. These kids are not 'hackers', they are 'crackers'. A hacker wears a white hat. The crackers wear a black hat. As far as that goes, these kids are not even crackers, they are spammers and thieves. They do not bypass system security in any way, they do not have to show any cleverness. Speaking of clever, you say "clever teen-agers, so called "script kiddies" Script kiddies are not clever. That is the point of the term. They use scripts that were formatted by someone who possessed skill and they just run them. This is not clever, it is, to use thier lingo ' 74m3' (lame).
Secondly, I think that you were had. I think that these were just a couple of bored guys on EFnet who decided to see how much money they could leach from 'the man'. If they are, in fact, making $100k+ a year or anything even close to that (which I doubt), why would they risk jail for a measly 250 bucks? There are, as noted on slashdot, numerous errors and inconsistencies which I won't go into here.
Thirdly, unless you knew this story was false, it seems like you were subsidizing criminal activity by paying these children to steal cc numbers; which is, last time I checked, illegal. A way your article could have helped people, instead of just making AOL users paranoid is to have explained what it was these people were doing and how to know to be suspicious. You could have made a sidebar of the major free e-mail providers and free webspace providers (geocities, yahoo, hotmail, e-mail.com, freeyellow, juno, ad infinitum) and explained how easy it is to get multiple emails/webpages from them. Also, did you do any validation of this story? I could have written a diary for you that would have been written better and more technically accurate. And you could have sent me a check at home instead of bothering with the Western Union subterfuge.
If you would like to contact me, feel free to do so by any of the information listed below.
Brant Pierce
512-xxx-2732
brant.pierce@xxxxxxxx.com
Numeric Paging: 888-536-7251
Text Paging: 5367251@skytel.com
----
This letter represents the opinions of Brant Pierce. It does not represent the views or opinions of xxxxxxxxx Communications, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries.
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
9:15am Reload /. darn no new story.
/. still no new story.
/. still no new story.
/. Ah, new story not posts, first post here I come.
9:16am Reload
9:17am Reload
9:18am Reload
9:18:20am First Post suckers!!!!!!
9:18:25am [#27] what the...???
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Living a paranoid life like that can't be worth any money in the world.
-he's making 6 figures...so he'll risk his behind for $250 -he uses a stolen cell to order pizza. Ingenious... -and, of course, he has a girlfriend!!! (the serial port?)
Taking this out of the context of IT for a moment, the verb 'to hack' generally implies destruction (and usually involves an axe), so maybe the MSNBC definition is better suited for the use?
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
Here's an old Wired! story about how phony degrees are a big scam. This may be related to the fact that you see so many PhD's at Microsoft.
six figures a year? and they spend it on laptops? wht the hell would you do with all that stuff? 'hey man i got a closet full of laptops' sure.. like no one would notice. feds and IRS is not that retarded to overlook some dude that has so much money. but then again maybe he just meant that it may earn him a two figures in jail.
Notice perpetual bachelor number one didn't spend so long at his girlfriend's place.
It must be true- I saw it on the Internet! In the midst of a growing government PR campaign to demonize those with a bit of knowledge and to reduce the abilities of the rest of us to access information (all in the name of protecting our children from porn of course) comes this wonderful piece of fluff from MSNBC. I mean if you can't trust the combined corporate integreties of Microsoft and General Electric corporation well then - I mean who can you trust? Bob Sullivan, the article's author, is a corporate tool who has brought us such notable articles as: "Now, e-mail is even more dangerous", "'Melissa' Continues To Wreak Havoc" and (who could forget) "Surgeon general of the Web? - The eruption of a new virus leads to confusion" Can you say agenda? I knew that you could? The article about the alledged hackers smells worse then a Unix geek on a three day coding binge - I don't believe a bit of it. Wonderful piece of fiction though. Want to find out how and why this kind of crap gets passed off as "news"? Check out these articles about cia partnership with our national news media: http://www.mprofaca.cro.net/ciapress1.html http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ MOCK/mockingbird.html
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
reporters are always looking for good stories. with all this take about spam and such, its no wonder that a story like this occurs. I mean people do want to know the 'faces' behind all the spam. I like to thing of it like something like the Scarlet of Pimpernel.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
The story that is filled with hacker-esque buzzwords went awry when he mentioned a girlfriend. Another flaw is how would a e-journalist locate such a mind fetus to get an 'expose' on the subject? Please.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
--
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"
-George Carlin
it's from star wars..
emperor palpatine said to luke.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Sorry. In the time it took me to type my reply, all of my points had been brought up already. Just wanted to let you know that I know that you know.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Reminds me of when I was on AOL. I used a program called AOHELL. It was quite useful. It included what was known as a phisher. The phisher generated authority style screen names and sent people messages that were very scary and formal looking that asked for a persons passwords. Me and my friends used to make a game of it and see how meny suckers we could get to give us their password, credit card numbers, mom's madain name, anything we could think of. Certian things were more points then other, password 5, credit card numbers 15, and so on. The one who got the highest score won a case of beer. We always just through out the information we got. The fun for us was getting the numbers off someone not actually causing trouble. That stupid game wasted many an afternoon.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
So this 'hacker' was paid $250 to log a typical day in their life. According to this 'hacker' s/he makes thousands in a day. Why piddle around for $250?
We here at AOL are deeply concerned with what we are reading here.
Remember just because someone puts pictures of boobies on a website and says you can see more or only $4.95, does not mean that it is a good deal. (It is only a good deal if they show booty also).
And remember never give your AOL password to anyone who doesn't claim to be an AOL employee.
Finally AOL billing needs your login and password. Please email them to aolpasswordthief@crime.da.ru