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.

Comments

article illustrated something about family...

[jeffy124]

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.

Re:article illustrated something about family...

[Cmdr Taco (luser)]

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.

Re:article illustrated something about family...

[neuroticia]

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

Re:article illustrated something about family...

[garcia]

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.

Re:Mususe of the term "script kiddie"?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Are script kiddies smart, dumb, or just lazy?

[S Nichol]

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"?

Gotta love this part

[Anonymous Coward]

"The 14-year-old boy who liked basketball and girls would soon capture the attention of the entire online world"

Surely an interest in basketball and girls would make him ineligable as a hardcore cracker? I mean such wholesome interests, how could this possibly happen?!?

Phew!

[rsklnkv]

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.

Judge's ruling silly

[tapiwa]

How is this for a ruling by the judge??

The judge also prohibited him from possessing any software not commercially available and banned him from using the Internet to talk with other hackers and hacking into any other Websites.

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. :-)

Re:Judge's ruling silly

[Papineau]

Whitout the judge's exact ruling, you can't say for sure if there are loopholes (or problems) with it. Remember it's a recap by a journalist, which he probably interpreted some way or the other.

"Commercially available": if I sell commercially (or offer to sell commercially, along with a free (beer) version) some cracking tools (with or without a warning about not using them on other networks), can Mafiaboy use them?

For the "hackers", the judge probably didn't use that word, and it was probably more geared towards IRCing in crackerz (or 31337) chatrooms.

And your last point... it means if he does it again, he is liable for doing it in the first place, and then for doing it when a judge told him not to do it. I'm not sure about the name of that charge though, but it's more serious (recidivist).

Re:Judge's ruling silly

[Permission Denied]

What is commercially available software?? Do GPL products only available for free download count?

Spare me the sob story. If it were up to me, I'd keep this kid away from any general-purpose computer and have him complete his studies in juvie the old-fashioned way, with paper and pencil. Perhaps I would have allowed him to use a computer, but only if the computer had no modem, no NIC, no anything - I'll bet this kid never did anything off-line except play games.

We don't have the judge's actual ruling, only a snippit from a reporter, so we shouldn't even be discussing this - the judge may have given a very specific definition. If that definition excludes some possibly useful and harmless program, well then tant pis; the judge was generous enough allowing the kid anywhere near a computer as this kid has never used his computer for anything useful (Starcraft, IRC and launching DOS attacks are not useful nor educational).

I think the true definition of what a hacker is was lost on the judge.

This "true definition" is completely rejected by mainstream America, and in fact, by most of the computing world, both in academia and the business world, both inside and outside of the US. The definition of hacker that you'll find in the New Hacker's Dictionary is an MIT-ism. Nobody outside of MIT ever uses it, and the FSF is so intimately intertwined with MIT that they don't realize this.

The old-school "hackers" that you're talking about never dwelled in the script kiddie community. RMS was a math prodigy at Harvard; ESR was math and philosophy guy and never took a computer class; Larry Wall was trained as a linguist at Berkeley during the time when BSD was created, but he never touched Unix at Berkeley. And yet you would claim that barring this kid from using a specific set of software is going to stunt his growth?

So let's be honest: the warez hoarders and the script-kiddies on IRC - nothing useful has ever come out of these communities. All it has done is sully the reputation and the arguments of those who actually do any useful work: when Johannsen claims to a judge that he had a legitimate purpose for writing DeCSS, the judge won't believe him as he (and his peers) have already heard the same argument a thousand times from warez kiddies and the script kiddies trying to "show off" bad security.

My point here is that there is very little overlap between the kiddies and the "hackers" your talking about - all your insistence on propagating this MIT-ism of "hacker" does is confuse people as to which is which.

inaccurate?

[KidSock]

By the time it was over, the Yahoo! attack alone would involve enough data to fill 630 pickup trucks with paper.

But what font size did they use?

Re:Good lesson for all

[Johnny Mnemonic]

It's damn difficult to totally cover your tracks

Well, Mafiaboy himself sure helped. From the article:
The administrators at the university produced a copy of the attack tool used, which was registered to a user named Mafiaboy...

Moral of the story: don't register your hacking software back to yourself. Kinda like "don't sign each counterfeit bill you make".

Peachy....

[wowbagger]

Just what we need - more ego stroking for Mafiaboy. Doesn't anybody understand that articles like this are what drives these assholes into making these attacks? They do this for the egobo - "Look at me! All these major news outlets are talking about me! Aren't I wonderful?"

I think one of the single best ways we could discourage this crap would be to take anybody we catch doing this, and cane them on national TV. Show the piss running down their legs, show them crying for their mommies. Then follow up on them in prison - ask them how many times they've been the woman. Make sure they look as uncool as possible. That way, when the other would-be script kiddies see this, they won't think it's cool - they will think it's most uncool.

(/me continues to whack hornets' nest known as Slashdot)
There was a good reason for punishments like the stocks - it made everyone in the community see that breaking the rules was BAD, and that BAD things happened to those who broke the rules. Yes, it was cruel to the individuals in the stocks. News flash - IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE! It tended to make even the lowest miscreant reconsider his actions. I'm sorry if it offends you, but who better to suffer the consequences of negative actions but the moron who committed them!

Look - if somebody makes an honest mistake, cut them some slack - I'm not for throwing somebody into the stocks because they missed a stop sign, or because they accidentally didn't secure their computer. But if somebody with malice aforethought commits an act against the community, I say "Nuke them 'till they glow, shoot them in the dark, and let $deity sort 'em out".

Re:P(r)eachy....

[Interrobang]

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...

Re:Misuse of the term "hacker"?

[danamania]

Is that your naked body on the entrance to your site?

No, it's not.

But with that comment you've quadrupled the normal daily visits I have to my site... all in the last 20 minutes. I think that's a pretty good effort!

a grrl & her server

hacking session

[cr@ckwhore]

The FBI released a trace of Mafiaboy's hacking session... I've pasted it below

--
C:/> hack yahoo.com

Select hack type:

1) Denial of Service
2) Packet Trace
3) Steal Accounts
4) Get Root

Selection: 1

Enter Name: MafiaBoy

Proceed with hack #1 by MafiaBoy? [y/n]: Y

Hacking yahoo.com... please wait
...................FBI trace detected!
*abort*

C:\> cd 1337

C:\1337>

--
Thats pretty much all of the trace that the FBI released. I wasn't sure about the syntax of the hack command, but I guess this helps.