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Tracking Mafiaboy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the lock-him-up dept.

Cruciform writes "The National Post has an article on the police effort to track Mafiaboy two years ago as the DoS attacks raged against Yahoo, E-trade and others. An interesting read." Its a fairly lengthy story with lots of little bits in this tale of a script kiddie.

5 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. article illustrated something about family... by jeffy124 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the article showed something about a family's influence. Mafiaboy's father was a business type that cared little about his kids, resulting in some problems for them, as shown in Mafiaboy's DoS actions and problems in school (suspensions, expelled from one school, etc). During the investigations of the DoS attacks, they found that the father was trying to hire a hitman to kill a business associate for getting screwed on a deal.

    If anything, it shows why good family life generally fosters good behavior in kids. I wouldnt be surprised if other 5r1p7 k1dd135 out there have similar family life to that of Mafiaboy.

    --
    The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
    1. Re:article illustrated something about family... by neuroticia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's easy to observe that when children feel as though they are not having enough attention paid to them, they act out. Negative attention is better than feeling invisible. Some kids shoplift, some kids set things on fire, some kids torture small animals to feel as though they have an impact on things. Cracking or malicious-hacking is just another way of attracting attention. In a lot of ways, I'd say it's an even better way of attracting attention because of the impact that it can have, and because it (supposedly) involves some amount of skill.

      If you read the entire article, you'll recall that the boy's brother was bragging about him, and his father was even somewhat proud of his son's 'skill'. Imagine how sweet this might be to a boy who has been ignored most of his life. Yeah. Upbringing and family life have a LOT to do with a kid's motivations for lashing out, be it digital or physical.

      -Sara

  2. Re:Mususe of the term "script kiddie"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Didn't you read the part where the effabeeeye were watching his 'hacking' activity? It involved using logins/passwords given to him by others and using _hacking tools_ he downloaded off the Internet, and it took him a few attempts to get the commands right. If you use a tool that is created for the sole purpose of hacking, you are a script kiddie. This kid is a script kiddie, nothing more, and he should have been locked up for a while. Stupid teenage shitbag.

  3. Phew! by rsklnkv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good to know he's going to jail! I mean, now he will reform after spending countless hours locked in a room recieving nothing but negative attention. The reign of chaos he was about to bring upon us was narrowly avoided. He must be one of those terrorists. *End sarcasm* This kid is another fine example of the product our society is producing.

    --
    _____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
  4. Re:P(r)eachy.... by Interrobang · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmm, where do I start citing studies that show the negative effects of negative reinforcement (read: punishment). Maybe

    Bonnie, R.J. (1985). The efficacy of law as a paternalistic instrument. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 29, 131-211.

    Wilde, G.J.S. (1981). A critical view of countermeasure development and evaluation. In L. Goldberg, Alcohol, drugs and traffic safety. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, pp. 1145-1159.

    In short, punishment generally causes people to be more anti-social, resentful, angry, vindictive, and prone to committing acts of sabotage. (Hundreds of years of increasingly punitive laws certainly haven't eliminated crime.)

    Pillorying someone never stopped anyone else from doing the same thing (ever read The Scarlet Letter?); it only drove them deeper underground.

    Now enough with this ridiculous "mild punishments don't work, so let's punish them more!" attitude. (That poison made me sick; I'm gonna eat more to see if it'll make me better!) In order to stop someone from behaving in a certain way, you have to stop the causes, not the symptoms. People in occupational safety and health have known about this one for years, and I'm not even going to get into the politics behind prisons...

    --
    I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.