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Blaster Writer Caught
Henry V .009 writes "The FBI will be arresting an 18 year-old in connection with MS Blaster, reports The Washington Post." According to the article, the teen was witnessed testing the worm, and then turned in by a bystander. It's also worth noting that this is merely one of the Blaster variations. Hope whoever it was had fun, because a world of pain is waiting in store now.
How on Earth do you witness somebody writing a virus?
He's sitting in front of a computer, hitting keys on the keyboard and looking at the monitor. That describes the person who wrote this story, the person who submitted this story, the person who posted the story, me getting first post, and everybody reading and moderating this and every other post to come.
It also describes RMS writing Emacs, Linus debugging the kernel, and SCO issuing another press release.
Did this witness actually read the code? What kind of idiot virus-writer lets someone he doesn't know pull up a chair and start auditing his code?
Or was the witness tipped off when the screen start flashing "NOW TESTING VIRUS"? Damn, I hate when that happens!
This doesn't sound quite right.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The FBI will be arresting an 18 year-old
Coder: Huh? They are coming for me? I'd better get moving before they get here.
Lucky the authorities got to him first that is. Well they say there are more virus authors out there. Hopefully all that dental equipment I bought on Ebay will be put to good use.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I mean, maybe he borrowed his mates computer to do something, saw something interesting, then got told to take a long walk off a short plank when he tried to blackmail him.
Well until someone is caught and Proven to have written the virus, as far as im concerned it is a bunch of FUD.
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
Or SCO will report that he used their proprietary code to do it, ergo everyone infected with the virus will now be sued by SCO for illegally using their code.
That sounds fishy.
The average person wouldn't have a clue about what a developer was doing. There's no way someone can walk by and know that the guy was testing a virus.
The article states that this "18 year old" is the author, but later on it talks about how he was "observed testing" which all sounds a bit dubious. Assuming he is the author I have very little sympathy, virus writers need to be accountable for their actions. If however he is just been made a scapegoat......
Perhaps, as some kids are at that age do (not all before you flame me), he had been bragging about it in an irc chat room, had an enemy/concerned chatter catch wind of it and reported it to the feds with logs and IP information.
Why not eh? stranger things have happened at sea.
--Mods giveth, Mods taketh away--
I'm a firm believer that Microsoft, for all it's faults, isn't nearly as much of a problem as it's doting customers. Microsoft has ALWAYS been terrible at security. This is not news. So who the hell keeps buying their crap?
Start charging the folks who deploy Microsoft for negligence.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
...I got a virus in my computer and... and... it wrote another itself!
Just remember this
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Yo, RFTP/RTFA. It says in both the article and the post that the witness saw the person "testing" the virus, not writing it. Which is even more scary in a way. How did the witness know what he was doing? What day was it? Which version is he supposed to have written? Oh, and there has been "no arrest made in this matter yet."
The BBC article contains a bit more info: It says he's suspected of altering the original MSBlast worm into one that would cause more damage.
It also says: "Reports suggest he is likely to be arrested by the end of the day." WTF? They're giving him advance warning?!? Run, boy, RUN!!! LOL.
IIRC, the boy tried to DDOS www.windowsupdate.com, which is not the URL people usually use for windowsupdate.
Makes you wonder what a professional terrorist could do. The worm could have been far more destructive.
The worlds most intelligent bystander has just been identified.
Ralph Nader brought the automotive industries up to safety standards. I'm too young to remember the public's preception of him, but it sounds like we need someone like him around again. Microsoft has enough defects inside it's operating system to make it the 2000's equivalent of the Ford Pinto. They should be held accountable.
What about the users though? This isn't the 70's and information is readily available about Microsoft's security practices. Why do they do it? Is it like riding a rollercoaster that has a 6 junction split at the end, only 2 of which leads to the egress queue, 3 of which leave you hanging on the top of a hill until you debug the rollercoaster, and the final split has a jump through a fiery ring with no landing zone? I mean come on, they all saw the rollercoaster... They all knew the ramifications of their actions.. What about them?
-B
Or have we forgotten how the system works?
Alleged writer. Innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
Based on this report, the evidence so far is one witness of unknown competence. "Testing the infection"? I "tested the infection" yesterday by making sure that AVG can contain Blaster.
Oh, I'm sure that the FBI aren't (quite) dumb enough to announce this without doing some investigation, but the fact that they're announcing it as a fait accompli before they've even made the arrest indicates that this is a PR exercise.
But that's irrelevant speculation, because whatever their or my or your opinion on it, this guy is innocent... pause for breath... until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Let's drop the tabloid press pack mentality here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Researchers also discovered another message hidden inside the infection that appeared (emphasis added) to taunt Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates: "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!"
Yup, that's cryptic alright. I'll bet the FBI's first question will be to ask what he meant by that.
prison rape is not
a laughing matter. I think
you are all sick fucks
So the writers of these virii certainly are doing a bad thing and certainly are aware of this, but it seems to me that Windows/Outlook/Office ship with a big red button and endless admonitions not to push it. Of the two, the button maker and the button pusher, I know who I find fault with most, but I suspect that the media and most observers are becoming accustomed to these ridiculous risk exposures as somehow inherent in computing and thus tend not to blame the button maker. Think also that this effect has something to do with why these problems never seem to actually get *fixed*.
Folks, I know that "prison rape" jokes sound funny. I know that everyone gets a laugh when someone mentions "federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison." Yes, Office Space was one of the best movies ever made. No, that doesn't make prison rape hilarious.
Imagine if it were you in prison.
I have been incarcerated, and while I wasn't physically accosted (though I don't doubt that it may have happened if I'd been prescribed a longer stay), the sexual humiliation was probably the worst part of the experience. Prisoners have to shower. Together. And the jailors have seemingly no end of dick-jokes.
You have to disrobe before you get into the shower, obviously. You leave your prison garb in a "cubby" type lockeresque rack, and you hope that a) you remember which cubby you put your garb in and b) some joker doesn't forget such and take yours by accident.
After taking your clothes off, you have to pass by several guards before you get into the showers proper. And the guards utter sexually oriented insults to every inmate who walks past. "Hey smallcock." "How come you're so eager to get in the shower with a bunch of naked men?" "I bet all these guys want to have a big orgy!" "Today was grits and eggs for breakfast, but it must be sausage for dinner!" "Look at this, a whole shower full of little dicks!" etc. No, I'm not joking, the jailors really say this shit.
This was humiliating enough. I can't imagine the torture of actual prison rape. It happens, people, and it's very real. The things that go on in jail, most people (who, of course, have never been to jail) would not believe unless they witnessed it themselves. I hope that you don't have to, but at the same time, please have a modicum of respect for those of us who have been there, and those who are still there for whatever reason. I'm not asking you to have sympathy for people who have committed crimes; you do the crime, you do the time. But being a criminal does not mean you deserve sexual assault.
No aspect of prison is funny.
None.
Redmond, VA: The youngster will be charged by two companies with accusations of reverse engineering. Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Microsoft is accusing him of implementing a piece of code that circunvents patented Microsoft's Windows protection.
Richard Ludwig, attorney for Microsoft, said "My clients believe that the writer of this virus is actively destroying the value of my client's proprietary technology, and demand that this viral activity cease immediately."
Mark Scheise, attorney for SCO, said the teenager violated its intellectual property rights by using SCO code in the virus. He said that each bit from its code was a perfect match with SCO's code. "He was using exactly the same two bits as SCO, just in another sequence". Scheise also added that this was not just a coincidence, and denied any request to disclose wich are the two bits. "I can't tell you wich are these two bits, but I assure you they're the same as thos used by SCO".
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Reread the article. They didn't bust the original author. They busted the lamewad that renamed msblast.exe to penis32.exe -- all he did was modify the existing virus.
Granted, the dipshit _touched_ the virus code and released a variant (albeit an extremely unoriginal one)
It was probably about as difficult as hex-editing a file. Gee. 5 minutes of dicking around is going to get him a life long prison ass pounding. Way to go, Genius.
And of course the uninformed media is going to paint the dumb bastard to be THE msblast author. Can anyone say "Scapegoat?"
When I read the piece, my initial reaction was, "They really should arrest Bill Gates". However, on some reflection, I'm not so sure Microsoft is the sole source of all the disruption over these worms.
OK, so the MS software makes worms and virus spreading relatively easy, due to activeX, executable mail attachments and bad security "out of the box" (open ports, exposed services such as RPC etc).
Still, if a motor manufacturer sold a mass market car without locks, windows or an alarm system, would anybody buy it?
The answer is, probably not. There's the issue of personal responsability to obtain a secure car. Same with software. Maybe it's all of those major businesses and misguided "CIOs" who keep buying Microsoft who ought to be arrested. Between them and the Microsoft execs, they've managed to create an environment which makes it easy for these bored young men to create worms.
Poor 18 year old guy. Why should he be arrested? After all, what's a script(kiddie) among friends?
I expect the comments in the first place. It's inevitable among any community that has people the likes of the "Frist p0st" and "go to cnn.com [secret link to goatse.cx]" commenters. But the moderation system is in place so that crap like that can get ignored by the people who don't want to hear it.
If you think it's funny, Obviously I can't/won't stop you from moderating it that way. But think about the real issue behind it before you encourage lighthearted humor about rape.
Look it up, amigo. If you know about a felony and you don't report it, you are guilty of cover-up and can serve time for your avoidance of doing the right thing.
You have an amazingly rosy view of how the law works in this country. You must be those law-abiding citizens with nothing to fear that I keep hearing about. When we have laws that will revoke habeas corpus for the bizarre and impossible crime of loitering with space aliens (1982, Department of defense appropriations bill) and the hard-hitting "conspiracy of one", you can and will go down for anything if they want you.
Do you think it's an accident that we have the largest prison population, in absolute and relative terms, in the world?
Laws are for people with no friends.
The logic here is unbelieveable. So if you forget to lock a window in your home, and a burglar comes in and steals your stuff, and the burglar gets caught, YOU should be prosecuted for burglary for leaving the window open?
Yeah, some might say YOU should be more careful for not locking the window... but the REAL criminal still is the burglar that took your stuff! M$ has some serious problems, but that doesn't mean we should lose all of our common sense JUST to attack them some more.
Does M$ software have security issues? Yeah. Should script kiddies be let off easy because they take advantage of these problems? No. They are no better than the burglar that entered your unlocked window!
We need to start making people take responsibility for their own ACTIONS and quit blaming others. It's like blaming a door-lock manufacturer because someone can pick the lock! There will always be people that take UNLAWFUL advantage of real or perceived situations. That doesn't mean they are any less to blame for their actions.
-=-jw-=-
On the other hand, nobody ever said prison was supposed to be all Tea and Crumpets, either: it's punishment for crimes committed and convicted. .
The punishment is incarceration, it is NOT sodomy. I have never heard a judge say in his/her verdict, "and I convict the defendant to 5 years of incarceration, with the occasional guy holding him down and taking him anally". NO. It's against the law. Just because it's prison, it doesn't mean it's alright to break laws. Gee, if that's the case, you could slip small boys into the prison for the whole yard to have a little fun with, jesus.
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