WebTV 911 Hacker... Cyber Terrorist?

Mastab286 writes "Federal agents have arrested David Jeansonne, 43, of Louisiana on cyberterrorism charges under the USA PATRIOT Act for a malware attack against eighteen MSN TV (formerly known as WebTV) customers. As part of an online conflict in July 2002, Mr. Jeansonne wrote a script to change the dial-up number of MSN TV equipment to the 911 emergency number. He disguised the script as a tool to change the colors of the user interface, and sent it to his eighteen foes; the next time they tried to log on, they would end up calling the police instead. Several of the customers sent the tool to friends, bringing the total number of victims up to twenty-one. The script also posted the users' browser history to a website and e-mailed hardware serial numbers to a free webmail account. Prosecutors charge that the act meets the definition of cyberterrorism since it endangered public safety."

Comments

Waste of tax dollars

[poptix_work]

Please, it would be something *near* "cyberterrorism" and a danger to public safety if it were self propgating, but this relied entirely upon the studity of the
user to not only run it, but manually propogate it to other people, which is kind of hard when it makes their system unusable after having run it.

Another example of the DOH'S trying to justify their existance.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[allism]

So...If MyDoom had caused every modem it found to call 911, would you not have considered a danger to public safety? The qualifier here is more that it didn't spread rapidly - which is more an indicator that the author should have been smart enough to make it wait several days before calling 911, so that it would have more time to spread before being found.

If it had waited a while, and, say, jammed a city's 911 call center because several hundred people tried to call in at once, over and over (yes, I know hundreds of people don't use WebTV, but go with the hypothetical here for a minute), would it have been considered more of a danger then?

I think calling anything cyberterrorism makes most people in the tech community take it less seriously - could they have come up with a more asinine label? Makes me think of TRON.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[secolactico]

Please, it would be something *near* "cyberterrorism" and a danger to public safety if it were self propgating

I guess what matters are the author's intention. I don't know much about 911, but I believe they would investigate a series of call with the same origin and that would amount to wasted police time. I think that's what they do when somebody calls and nobody talks (it might be someone having a heart attack or otherwise unable to speak).

but this relied entirely upon the studity of the
user to not only run it, but manually propogate it to other people, which is kind of hard when it makes their system unusable after having run it

According to the blurb (didn't RTFA) some people did re-distribute it (I guess before they used it).

I suppose they'll want to make an example out of him, and quite frankly, I can't feel sorry for him. He is 43 years old, so this would hardly be a "harmless child's prank". He did endager public safety (911 has a finite number of lines/operators) and while he probably didn't have terrorist intentions, he should have known better.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[allism]

If it were blocking the use of the 911 services for a city, yeah, I think I might call that one terrorism. I consider 911 a public utility sort of thing, so cutting off the service for a city would be similar (in my mind, anyway) to killing the water service or the power for a city.

However, IANAL, etc., this is my opinion, which does not necessarily mean that it reflects the letter of the law.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[ffub]

But it wasn't a major threat to public safety because it didn't spread rapidly, so that is a good qualifier of whether it should be classed as a threat to public safety. It was clearly a malicious act aimed at serveral people in particular. The script doesn't seem to have been very well equipped for, or directed at, propogating itself arouind the net.

Now I agree it was nasty, and a pain to the 911 operators as well as being perhaps an act of terrorism, but it should be applied to anything that can scale up to meet terrorism.

Your hypothetical premise is to suppose the script was more threatening, and then ask if it would be considered more threatening then. Well, yes it would.

Seems to me the major terrorism has been renamed to terror anyway, so the word terrorism can be applied blandly to anything subversive, with more than one victim, that a government wishes to attach more stigma to.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[notque]

So, yeah, I think he was intending to intimidate people. He wasn't doing it on a mass level, but I don't think there's a petty terrorism charge available.

Exactly, there is no petty terrorism charge. This isn't terrorism.

It is not terrorism. At all. Not even a little bit.

It is a guy screwing with several people who chose a stupid, and by all means illegal way of doing it.

But it wasn't terrorism. We're talking the difference between a fine, or a small ammount of jail time, and a ton of jail time.

There is no way in hell this is terrorism. That is obvious.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[nehril]

I think that the rationale is this: while this 43 year old man thought he was targetting a few people, the target actually turned out to be against the 911 system (via an admittedly small DDOS), which serves *everyone* in the area. by tying up lines, police and firefighters, anyone who had a real emergency at that time was also a victim of this attack. there are only so many emergency personnel resources available to the system.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[allism]

Sorry, but I just have to ask - at what number of people involved does an act actually become terrorism? There's not a numeric qualifier in the definition you quoted in your earlier post. If only part of a society feels threatened by a terrorist act, does that mean it's not really terrorism? For instance, if you didn't live in OKC at the time of the Murrah building bombings, you probably didn't feel the same emotional response that many people in the area felt - just as I doubt that I felt the same response that people living in New York felt after the WTC attacks. Since the Murrah building bombing only affected a small portion of American society on a personal level, does that make the attack not terrorism? Does every act of terrorism have to kill hundreds of people?

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[cyt0plas]

How's this for a number: 1. As in the number of people you actually attempt to control through terror.

This involved no fear, no terror. It placed a few prank 911 calls, but there is no evidence that anyone was physically or emotionally hurt.

It didn't even scare one person. So, just like many laws have a threshold (civil versus criminal traffic tickets, fraud, etc.), this isn't terrorism if you set the threshold to even one person.

I guess you could just set the threshold to zero people, but then we are all terrorists.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[cyt0plas]

> You are amazingly astute in your ability to extract a criminal's intentions from the limited information provided in that article.

Ok, if I blow up a mailbox, how do you know that it's not a test run for a large-scale plan to blow up half the buildings in town? You don't, and the law doesn't either. And unless I leave some compelling evidence lying around that is my intent, the law will prosecute me for whatever is appropriate, but I would be no more a terrorist than this guy is.

In this society, people are innocent until proven guilty. What he did was not an act of terrorism, plain and simple. If they can show an appropriate amount of evidence he _was_ planning a terrorist attack, and convince a jury, then he would be a terrorist.

Regardless, this is still not an act of terrorism. What it's a precursor to is a completly seperate issue, and up to the courts to decide.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[Have Blue]

It may not have been terrorism, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't throw the book at him (with something other than the patriot act). You really shouldn't fuck with 911 service; he could easily have contributed to loss of life if someone couldn't get through to emergency services.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[randyest]

What he did was not an act of terrorism, plain and simple.

Yeah, I know you think that. I was kinda looking for the logic or evidence behind your certainty. Your mailbox analogy was not quite what I was looking for. But I (and the federal government) would treat an exploding mailbox as a possible terrorist activity. See, it's terrifying to check one's mail when such things occur. Mail is part of our infrastructure. Blowing up a mailbox, regardless of your intent, constitutes a use of fear to impede infrastructure use or operation (or both, in the exploding mailbox case, since not only would I be hesistant to check my mail, I'd assume letter carriers would be hesitant to deliver them).

If they can show an appropriate amount of evidence he _was_ planning a terrorist attack, and convince a jury, then he would be a terrorist.

OK, here we agree. If there is some evidence that he was planning a large-scale 911 DDoS attack, then he's a terrorist. Check. We don't know what evidence exists. That was my point.

Regardless, this is still not an act of terrorism.

But wait a second, we just agreed that there he could be a terrorist if there's evidence to that effect. A small test-run of a terrorism attack perpetrated by a terrorist isn't terrorism? It's at least attempted terrorism. And it's relevant, and should be pursued -- I don't see how it's a problem to charge someone under terrorism statutes while investigating something like this. It could be, and should be up to the court to decide if it is or not. I wouldn't grudge a cop for charging as such.

What it's a precursor to is a completly seperate issue, and up to the courts to decide.

Again we agree. That's just what I said. We don't know, the courts will decide, charges != conviction. See, isn't that easy? All you have to do is not make outrageous unprovable claims with the confidence of the omniscient.

Re:Waste of tax dollars

[Alien Being]

IMO, the attorney bringing this charge is the actual terrorist. He's a public official responsible for upholding the law. By abusing his authority and undermining the rule of law, he damages our society in a much more serious way than did the accused. He is making a threat against all Americans by using this guy as an example of what can happen if you break the law, any law.

I'm in no way condoning what the cracker did, but his actions don't amount to jack squat compared to those of the prosecutor.

Terrorism?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, terrorism is where you like blow up a building or gas people in the subway in the name of a political or religious cause.

What's going to be next next, kids who make prank calls ending up on death row for "terrorism"?

Re:Terrorism?!

[leerpm]

Guys, terrorism is where you like blow up a building or gas people in the subway in the name of a political or religious cause.

Initially, I was of the same opinion. But then I thought what if this had been an al-Qaeda agent who had done this? Would we still be so quick to deny it as being terrorism? Terrorism can occur by Americans too (i.e. the Unabomber).

OK, so what you are saying. Maybe you are thinking that regardless of who committed the crime, the incident was still too small to qualify as terrorism. But what if it had been 100 users? 10,000 users? 1 million users? 100 million users> (Though God help us if 100 million people are stupid enough to open and run an email attachment like that!) Where do you draw the line?

Re:Terrorism?!

[Kelerain]

The line is not drawn at a number of people affected. Terrorists have a specific belief or cause they are trying to bring attention to, and change. If al-Qaeda had done this, it would have been terrorism, because of the motive. But it depends on the motive. The Mydoom worm infected hundreds of thousands of machines, why isn't that terrorism? Motive (as far as we know). Suddenly lableing something terrorism because it might affect our emergency services is a gross misrepresentation. Sure it was illegal, possibly dangerous, but unless the intent was to further an ideoligical agenga through terror, then its hard to qualify it as terrorism.

Re:Terrorism?!

[mdpye]

Initially, I was of the same opinion. But then I thought what if this had been an al-Qaeda agent who had done this?

OK, so what you are saying. Maybe you are thinking that regardless of who committed the crime, the incident was still too small to qualify as terrorism. But what if it had been 100 users? 10,000 users? 1 million users? 100 million users

It's the intention to incite terror which makes it "terrorism". This was not an attempt to DoS the emergency services, it was a petty attempt to inconvenience some personal enemies, therefore it was irresponsible, yes, childish, yes, but I'm afraid it was not intended to instigate mass terror and therefore it is not terrorism

MP

A small handfull of calls to 911...

[Anonymous Coward]

...may not seem like much, but what if this file found its way onto the net or one of the popular peer-to-peer services? If it were to propigate it would create genuine problems for people who have a serious need to get their call to 911 through.

Re:A small handfull of calls to 911...

[pe1rxq]

I think for something to be called terrorism there needs to be atleast some intend...
This guy never intended to disrupt 911 services, he intended his 18 victims to have problems...
While not nice it still isn't anywere near terrorism.

Jeroen

Re:A small handfull of calls to 911...

[notque]

How can you possibly claim that? He wrote a script that was designed to call 911 and divert resources from actual emergencies to WebTV users. That's clearly disrupting 911 services.

Right, but I'm pretty sure his intention was to get them in trouble, as opposed to hurt the 911 system.

If you call 911 and hang up, the cops show up. This is obviously a very good way to interactively screw with someone.

Like when you take resources away from Dominios ordering people pizzas they didn't request.

A bit excessive, but...

[wundabread]

As someone who has worked in emergency response, this could have more consequences than if it called, say Dominoes.

The 911 system is not a toy; lives are at stake.

On the other hand, calling it a terrorist act for maybe 21 calls is way overboard.

Re:A bit excessive, but...

[DjMd]

I think that this 'trick' is totally short sighted and asinine to the n-th degree...

Not only is 911, not a toy and most cities 911 lines are understaffed (making every wasted phone call a potential significant distraction).
But the worse part is what does a dial up program do when it fails to connect... Redial.
It's not use twenty-one people. Its twenty one computers, all making multiple attempts...
and it's not like the 911 operator can leave the phone off the hook. Every call has to get answered and recorded.
Is it terrorism? No.
Is this guy an ass who deserves sever punishment for abuseing 911? most certianly.
Don't forget that prob the only reason he chose 911, was most likely to send the police to these enemies houses... further expanding the danger waste.

I still don't understand...

[Gonoff]

WTF has this got to do with terrorism?

A crime - sure, felony - if you like, even wicked. It has got absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. Why are your authotities mixing up that with your illegal invasions and war on "terror"?

Re:I still don't understand...

[bahwi]

Taking up 911 calls. I admit, it is ridiculous to call this terrorism, but I believe people who put others in danger need to be punished severely. Make it call a 1-900 number or some other number, but 911? Come on, he should think of more than just himself and his humor.

What a Dick

[handy_vandal]

Prosecutors charge that the act meets the definition of cyberterrorism since it endangered public safety.

The act also meets my definition of "this guy is a total dick".

-kgj

Re:What a Dick

[TheLinuxSRC]

Prosecutors charge that the act meets the definition of cyberterrorism since it endangered public safety.

By that definition, most Americans are terrorists. If you have broken the speed limit you have obviously endangered public safety therefore you are a terrorist.

There are some things you don't mess with

[prichardson]

Messing with an emergency number is really stupid. Not only do you waste people's time, but you may end up causing a real emergency to be left unheard. I don't think it's terrorism, but definitely criminal negligence. I honestly feel that this person should be put into prison.

Terrorism is the flavour-of-the-month bogie

[Space cowboy]

... so I guess he gets charged under the Patriot act. I don't condone what he did - he deserves a damn good kicking (metaphorically speaking, of course) for taking time from the emergency services, but a TERRORIST ? WTF ?

I can't believe there's not a more-appropriate crime to charge the guy with. Is there some sort of requirement to charge him with the most-serious charge you can, in the USA ? Perhaps that would explain it ?

Simon.

Very clearly "cyber-terrorism" for lack of...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there isn't a good descriptive phrase yet for someone who deliberately seeks to damage emergency infrastructure (which just happens to be based on a computer in some manner), I'll find "cyber terrroism" acceptable for this.

Technically speaking, it's about as 'cyber' a crime as splashing a hospital with gasoline and lighting it on fire is a 'chemical' crime, but it's still a deliberate act which put other people in harm's way.

His penalty? Well, it has to be severe enough that folks learn this is completely unacceptable behaviour and far from a simple prank. Jail for 10 years should do the trick.

If my own 911 call was blocked because of this goof, I know I sure wouldn't find it harmless. This was potentially life-threatening and served no purpose other than to be maliciously harmful.

Time to stop treating 'cyber kiddies' as something special just 'cuz they didn't think through the consequences of their actions.

*sigh*

[jedi_odin]

will it ever stop? people definately tend to go crazy once they learn they've been owned or cracked, however this whole thing is more of a prank than terrorism. I wonder, if I was to press one of those call button boxes here on campus for the police and just run away, if I was caught, would I be arrested for terrorism? how about if I pulled the fire alarm in my dorm during a drunken stupor? would I be a terrorist then? overreaction isn't good, just try overreacting when the roads are covered in snow and ice, you'll end up in a ditch.

Re:terrorism

[Hans Lehmann]

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

I guess that makes pretty much everyone in the current administration a terrorist.

just over the line enforcementwise

[jpellino]

yes, this guy's an idiot.
yes, he should be prosecuted for what he did
however, there are plenty of existing laws on the books that can punish him for screwing with 911 - use them.
this is too-bad-cop - a bit like the teacher in whale rider who tells the boys their dicks will fall off if they don't obey him - just deal with the situation and let the laws work.

but a few years down the line, the hs dept is going to have to show some deliverables - and one of them will be how many people were prosecuted under terrorism laws, and this sort of thing helps raise the count.

in that regard patriot could end up being the rustproof undercoating of the law enforcement world - make sure you try and tag it on top anything you can...

Sort of kinda terrorism

[portwojc]

With the calls going to 911 it can easily be put in the category of endangering public saftey. Since it's easy to assume that the machines make the calls late at night.

3:21am
911 operater: Hello
caller: Dead air

In this situation what do they do? They dispatch.

So with this great new wonderful bill they get to tack on more to something that already had a stiff penalty.

What possesed this guy to do this anyway? Come on "I'll hack it to call 911". That's just asking for them to hunt you down.

Re:What if this was a real attack?

[gerardrj]

This wasn't an "attack"
Any number of modified systems should not be labled terrorism. Terrorism is not messing with the public infrastrucure, it's making people terrified. I don't see how even a million affected systems dialing 911 instead of the local number would affect the public terror level.

This does however bring up a very good point... I've always hated that these "cunsumer devices" like WebTV and my satellite reciever don't display the phone number they are dialing on the screen.

Issues like this would be eliminated if the system displayed "dialing 867-5309" then waited 5 seconds before doin g so, with a "press any key to not dial" message.

Re:terrorism

[Ghoser777]

"Unlawful" - definitely meets this word.
"force or violence" - sort of like forced entry into their tv system and forcing the system do something they weren't suppose to do... I'll buy it.
"against people or property" - seems to meet
"intention of intimidating or coercing" - I think this is where the application fails.

The guy wasn't trying to intimidate or coerce someone into doing something - he just wanted to be an a**hole. The ramifications on the 911 system effect public safety, no doubt, but that doesn't make it terrorism. That word means next to nothing anymore, other than something happened/is happening that you don't like. For example, did you know that the NEA, a union of teachers was called a terrorist group by Rod Paige, the Education Security for President Bush?

Can we use words that describe the situation instead of words that invoke powerful yet completely unrelated images?

Matt Fahrenbacher

Unbelieveable?

[roystgnr]

What exactly is so hard to believe? Does my Red Hat box refuse to let a script edit ifcfg-ppp0 until it sees a GPG signature? Does OS X prevent you from installing a modem unless you're dialing an Apple-approved phone number? Could any company sell a product which refused to let users make arbitrary changes to their own settings, and not be rightfully reviled for it on Slashdot?

Are you just hunting for the (+1, anti-Microsoft) mod points?

Re:In case you were unclear on the subject

[qtp]

perhaps you might find their four-episode Creation Vs Evolution series enlightening.

Not only do I find it enightnening that these are the guys hired to sell DHS and the Patriot act to us, I find it downright scary.

Re:What if this was a real attack?

[JayBlalock]

Keep in mind I am NOT saying what he did was terrorism, I am just asking, if this affected 21,000 computers instead of 21 would we still feel it wasn't terrorism? This is why the government is supposed to exercise good fricking judgement in the prosecution of cases. OF COURSE if it was a deliberate attempt to disable 911 through thousands of prank calls, that would qualify as terrorism. There are degrees of scale here, and also of intent.

That's sort of like saying, if it's not terrorism to blow up a small firecracker in a men's room, then it shouldn't be terrorism to blow up a large load of TNT.

This is one of the things that truly scares me about our country at the moment. We have an Attorney General who has directed state prosecutors to always seek the maximum sentence possible, and to never plea-bargain unless it's a case where the person is rolling over to indict someone bigger than him. The Justice department is trying to make laws into absolute things - no sense of jurisprudence, no making the punishment fit the crime. Just, these are the laws, and THEIR rule is absolute, with no possibility of human compassion or understanding entering into the system. Don't bother trying to rehabilitate or teach a social lesson, just lock up anyone who transgresses.

In the long run, an attitude like that will always lead to absolutism, and therefore, authoritarianism. This progression has been followed in pretty much every applicable case in history. It's just started leaning that way in America, and it's far from the point of no return. But it's still something we have to watch, and have to fight against, lest the problem grow.

"Patriot" Act passed without reading

[Futurepower(R)]

The "Patriot" Act was passed without some Congressmen and women even reading it. It was named that to intimidate members of Congress. Vote against this bill and you will be against patriotism!

The "Patriot" Act was supposed to protect us against people who want to destroy our entire society. Now its being used to harass citizens who do something stupid, and have no political motive. If they get away with this, you will see more and more extensions of government police power. History has shown that, even if they don't get away with it, they will try again.

More and more we are seeing examples of prosecutors who don't want sensible justice, but who just want other people to hurt, because of their own personal mental issues. Last week the Oprah Winfrey show provided another example: An 18-year-old man had sex with a 16-year-old woman at his school. (Big surprise, there.) Later she accused him of rape, and he was found NOT guilty. But he was put into prison for 10 years anyway. The prosecutor said that was entirely justified, and that he had no problems with the punishment.

The U.S. government is rapidly becoming more corrupt. Here are just a few examples:

Killing people and destroying their property:
N.Y. Times editorial
"... Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week and a precious human cost."

Lying about scientific facts:
"The Bush administration has deliberately and systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals..."
N.Y. Times
The Guardian
Wired News
Union of Concerned Scientists

The present terrorism against the U.S. people is partly the result of the U.S. government's secret violence:
About a year ago, I hastily put together a short, incomplete history that shows what has happened: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories.

"The terrorists won"

[freeweed]

Sitting up in the Great White North (Canada), the general consensus up here is that OBL achieved his goals quite nicely. The terrorists have in fact won, at least as much as they attempted to win from 9/11.

The very existence of the Patriot Act, the hysteria that resulted from the anthrax scare, the massive delays going on with some flights, the incredibly annoying security checks, the fact that quite simply the life of the average American seems to have changed greatly...

You folks down there may not realize it, but what we see up here is that the US has changed, changed dramatically, changed permanently, and changed for the worse. The fact that the word "terrorism" even came up with this guy hacking WebTV is pretty much proof of that.

Yup, you (and we, in the larger global community) let the terrorists win. Now it's up to us to try to reverse some of the damage before it's too late. And I have no idea how to do that, sadly. The best I can come up with is "stop being so damn scared of your own shadow". I think we'll be dealing with these issues for decades to come.

"giving" vs "taking"

[sacrilicious]

Wasn't that one of their goals? Kill the feeling of safety, security, and common sense to the point that we give up what makes our country the "land of the free?"

Yes... though we're not "giving up" these freedoms, they're being taken from us. By Bush, Ashcroft, and the congress. If Bush gets re-elected, THEN the phrase "giving up" will truly apply.