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: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.

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. :-)

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".

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...

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.