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Tracking Mafiaboy
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.
where he is not allowed to use any software that is not commercially available as part of his sentance. What does free software have to do with this?
I read this article in the paper version on Saturday, and it immediately made me think of a person I know. "Mike" is really big on trading "warez" and playing "gamez" (in fact, that is all he is doing these days).
Having known "Mike" for over 5 years, I can attest that he is not lacking for brains, especially with computers, but he just can't be bothered to apply himself to some productive end.
He is not especially interested in doing any worthwhile computer training now that he's finished high school. Strangely, his parents complain about this but can't be bothered with doing anything about it.
"Mike" seems to be typical of the script kiddies I've encountered... generally smart, but can't be bothered to put in the effort to do anything. Is this the experience of everyone/anyone else?
I'm also wondering if anyone has any tips for weaning people off the "warez d00d" "l33t" trip, ie. actually putting their brains to some productive use. Perhaps an AA style "five step plan"?
What is commercially available software?? Do GPL products only available for free download count?
Also, how do you ban someone from talking with hackers??? I think the true definition of what a hacker is was lost on the judge.
Lastly, why ban someone from doing something which is illegal anyway... hacking into other websites? The ruling should be modded down to -5 reduntant. :-)
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
Oh, come on. Did you read the whole article?
"Knesek recalls the wiretap and a portrait of a dysfunctional family. There were padlocks on the doors of the brothers' bedrooms. Mafiaboy "saw a lot, dealt with a lot, took a lot," recalled Knesek."
That, plus the part about the father being prosecuted for hiring a hit man, hints that some pretty freaky shit may have been going down in that house. At the very least, the boys were being raised in an ammoral atmosphere; it may have been worse than that. We'll probably never know what other bits of nastiness the feds got from the wiretaps.
Some years ago, a girl from my high school (years after I graduated) teamed up with a friend and ambushed her parents with a shotgun and an ax. Real messy stuff. Folks went around saying "How could that sweet girl ever do something like that?" It turned out in the trial that, since she could remember, she was abused physically and sexually, shared sexually with other cretins, was the object of homemade porn and was provided with a wide variety of drugs.
I'm not saying that sort of thing was going on in mafiaboy's case, but I've developed a deep [dis]repect for damages that can be done throught the effects of a "dysfunctional" family setting.
All things in moderation.
The people who modded up were most likely in the same situation as I was.
They came from good families yet still did drugs, had detention, were violaters, etc.
Let's take a look at Ecstacy for example. A good majority of the users and dealers are middle to upper class kids that grew up in the suburbs and found something that was illegal and fun.
Liberals. Bah.
Yup, a DoS attack with enough punch to take down Yahoo. Originating from ... erm ... a dialup line. Hmmmm, sounds plausible to me.
Ok, sarcasm over.
The kind of tools s'kiddies use are made to be installed on compromised systems with a lot of bandwith. However, they can be triggered with very little traffic from the cracker (often via IRC since then the s'kiddie only has to make one connection.)
They knew when he was surfing a web page because they could see the HTML tags? Although it was 'more difficult' they could tell if it was an e-mail? They thought game traffic might be a DoS?
ffs! Have they not heard of port numbers?
It would be the first thing I would check! Kinda narrows down the options doesn't it - knowing what kinda traffic you would expect it to be.
It sounds from the article like they were literally just watching just raw body data from the packets.
Perhaps they could do with a touch more expertise and some better tools? Then again, maybe it was due to misunderstanding and/or inaccuracy by the journalist - the writer doesn't sound like they quite know what they're talking about.
Julian
Middle class families are often just as messed up as everyone else. Friends of mine had parents who didn't speak to eachother, slept in separate rooms. Middle class families often keep up the facade of being normal, which can be even more damaging. Living a lie is harder than admitting you're fucked up. I was fortunate to grow up in a normal family, but many of my friends were not. I still smoked weed and got in trouble at school, but it wasn't because of my family. Family troubles can be a factor in being a troublemaker, but they're not the only cause.