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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."
... to justify the existance of the Orwellian Patriot Act. Not only did OBL manage to kill 3000 people and two buildings, it seems that he managed to kill common sense and reason as well.
When all else fails, run.
Heh, the script kiddies need to learn not to incriminate themselves in public places.
Seems to me that extra special zeal used by the prosecution should serve the public well as a publicized deterrent.
This is somewhat of a novel crime. Based on that, there is no such thing as standard guidelines for prosecution. The beauty of the prosecution to invoke the Patriot Act for this TYPE of crime, serves the public's best interests regardless of the severity or damages. This isn't Bart Simpson doing a denial of service attack on Moe's, it's 911! Improvised justice is fun!
"Don't fuck with 911, that's what terrorists do" makes sense on a number of different levels.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Or at least sued into oblivion. I don't understand why a massive class action lawsuit has not been brought against Microsoft for all of the hundreds of thousands of computers that have been infected with worms and viruses and cluttering up the internet with packet white noise.
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
I agree that he should go to prison. But not under a "cyberterrorism" provision.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
It seems to me that the punishment does not fit the crime here. Yes, I know he hasn't been convicted yet, but if he is, how do think that will affect his life? That will go on every resume and permanent record or whatever for the rest of his life. Would you be willing to hire a convicted Cyber Terrorist? I think it's safe to say his life might be ruined. Sure he should be punished, but not of Cyberterrorism.
Does anyone else think this is cruel/unusal punishment? You know, that 8th ammendment thing?(IF he is convicted of course! But appears he likely will be!)
I know this is really stupid, and the person shouldn't be labeled a cyber terrorist but what if this was a real act of terrorism? What if a terrorist decided to do something like this on a much larger scale?
If some sort of worm was on the internet changing peoples dialup numbers to 911, would we then claim it was an act of terrorism? How large does an attack have to be before it's labeled as terrorism?
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?
A Few years ago, here in Argentina, a National radio show (The best *ever*), had this asshole talking about "computing"; he was a 14 year old scriptkiddie, but he was actually over 30 :). Anyway, one day he told people he was going to teach them to [whatever], and he actually gived them the steps to open the DOS debug, obviously, the asshole overwrited the first bits of the assholes hdds, no more partition table for you. That "joke" for windoish users has been arround for years, but i think no-one ever has broadcasted it in that way ... off course lots of people lost data ... they complained ... he told them to go fuck themselves, they diserved it. :), but, really, it's people fault's anyway, and he can't be held responsible for that ...
So, If someone takes advantage of people stupidity in such a way, gee, HE IS AN ASSHOLE, and i wouldn't mind if someone shoot him
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I agree with the original poster, this guys intent was not to disrupt 911. However, using that number instead of about any other shows sheer stupidity on his part.
Right, I worked at an ISP years ago and that's what would happen when one of the 28.8k modems in our stacks would run amuck (probably from overheating) and start dialing random digits, eventually including 911. Two policemen would arrive, and we'd have to trace the number, tear the stack apart, and replace the offending modem. And when I say "stack", I mean exactly that. These were external 28.8k modems that were stacked on top of another. That's the high class way that this ISP ran it's computer room.
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
One person repeatedly calling 911 could tie up a good portion of the resources for a *small* 911 call center, I would think - not to mention, the police have to come out and investigate. Can you imagine the load of shit a police department would get if, shortly after this happened, someone was getting severely beaten, tried to call 911 but couldn't speak, and the 911 call center decided that it was just another one of those damned prank calls and ignored it?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
We don't need broad new powers to fight one guy who does a random criminal act just to show he's smart/cool. He didn't plan it for years and years, didn't get overseas funding and moral support, and didn't try to choose a crime that would scare the crap out of the most people.
Bush/Ashcroft's "trust us, we won't misuse it" line was always BS, it's just easier to convince the rest of the population now.
If you think what he did (wasting the time of the emergency phone service) is deserving ot some punishment, then you should listen to the 911 tapes at some media-frenzied event such as Columbine or after an earthquake.
Television news reporters call 911 to get interviews and information. They tie up this operator for sometimes 5-10 minutes asking questions. In that same span the operator could probably have taken 3-5 legitimate calls.
If a news media reporter calls 911 as a source for a report or interview, that person should at a minimum be fired, and should serve a manditory jain sentence of 15 days. Also the responsible entity (TV station, newspaper, etc) should be fined; $1 per average daily viewer/reader... the proceeds to be used exclusively for emergency telephone service improvements for the department they abused.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
One person repeatedly calling 911 could tie up a good portion of the resources for a *small* 911 call center, I would think - not to mention, the police have to come out and investigate. Can you imagine the load of shit a police department would get if, shortly after this happened, someone was getting severely beaten, tried to call 911 but couldn't speak, and the 911 call center decided that it was just another one of those damned prank calls and ignored it?
I agree. This was a horrible thing to do. Could cause additional problems in the more likely senario that someone who legitamately was calling 911, but couldn't get through as it was held up through people calling.
http://use.perl.org
how the hell did it endanger either the public, or their safety?
:) But he chose to attack a designated police emergency number instead. Frankly, I have little sympathy for him.
I don't know about you, but I would construe a Denial-of-Service attack on the local authorities' emergency dispatch number endangerment of the public safety. Suppose a catastrophic fire had broken out in the local theater and the first responders were ten minutes late getting there because all ten or fifteen 911 lines were tied up by 21 hacked WebTV boxes auto-dialing the emergency line. Dozens of people could have actually been killed or seriously injured... if that's not a threat to the public safety, then what is?
As other people have mentioned, if the author had simply chosen to dial phone-sex line in Japan, then the public safety would not be relevant here, and eighteen people would just be getting really large phone bills
Such broad definitions would result in including speeding as part of the definition of being a terrorist. Speeding does indeed "endangered public safety."
What the parent said is that your supositions ARE considered terrorism.
When you say: "what if this had been an al-Qaeda agent who had done this?" Then you're just saying that "they HAD political/religious motivation", hence: Terrorism
The parent wasn't refering to "only bombing or mass killing", i think it was only a weak example. The important part there was the "political or religious cause".
See? So, if al-Qaeda jammed 911 lines, it WOULD be terrorism. If a 9years old jammed 911 lines, it would be a unfortunate accident and a huge fine to the parents.
But IANA (i'm not american) and you guys already sued a 8years old for "sexual abuse" when he showed his tongue to a class-mate (sorry, don't have the link, but this is notorious news)
What don't you people get about the word endangerment
When Michael Jackson dangled his kid over a balcony, the kid wasn't hurt... but that was still endangerment. Endangerment is not that something bad happens. It means the probability of something bad happenning is raised to unacceptable levels.
This asshat created an environment where someone's life could have been in grave peril if emergency services where responding to "MSN TV in distress" (and 911 always dispatches when no-one talks to them) instead of being available for a truly life-threatening emergency.
I am all for this guy rotting for quite a while. I have no tolerence for people who endanger public safety in a fit of pique.
Clowns.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
Doesn't "terrorism" imply a very specific intention in the crime? I'm not going into whether the reason for a crime should affect the sentence, but surely it affects what you call it! This is like confusing manslaughter with wrongful death with first/second degree murder.
Terrorism is disruption of public services? So if bus drivers in a city strike, they're terrorists. If someone plays a prank on a local pool causing them to close, they are a terrorist.
This is one of the many words that take on new meanings every week. Someone define this thing before it goes even more out of control. While the person did interrupt emergency services, what was their intent? Or is every public nuisance now a terrorist act?
The only thing this guy is guilty of is making a large number of prank calls to 911. Does this really count as cyberterrorism?
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
Let's check the dictionary
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.
Nope, no force or violence, no real intimidation (annoyance perhaps), no attempt to coerce. Seems fairly straightforward. Since not even one person was intimidated, coerced, or threatened, it doesn't matter how many it takes - it still wasn't reached.
Also, if we make the definition of terrorism apply to one person, we make pretty much all major crimes (murder, extortion, rape, etc.) into terrorism. This is not the way it should work. Sometimes there is no logical place to draw the line, and it's up to the law (or the judges) to find a reasonable one.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
His penalty?
ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE? It makes me want to crawl out of my skin when I hear jackasses say things like this. Today everyone's solution to problems is "We need longer jail sentences. More jail time now!". You are advocating 10 YEARS for writing a script? Everyone knows that white collar criminals are scared just by being taken to court, let alone jail time.
If this guy went to jail for even two months I'd bet you all the money I have that he would never do something like this again. After being in jail for two months, his job would probably be gone, he'd have to suffer the embarassment of telling his friends, his family, his wife's family, his children, etc, that he has to go spend some time in jail because of a stupid thing he did.
10 YEARS!! You've got to be kidding me. I'd like to ask anyone that has ever thought that putting someone in prison for 10 years to think about what they were doing ten years ago. Think of what you were doing ten years ago, and what's happened since then. The people you've met, the girlfriends you've had, places you've been. Now replace that with the inside of a concrete room. Every day. For 10 years.
You are in idiot and an asshole for suggesting 10 years for a scripting prank. I guarantee you any jail time he gets will cause him to lose his job, he will lose his right to vote, he will lose a fortune on legal costs, and countless other things. If anyone here on slashdot had to suffer through all that, we would all be crying "Why? Why?", and it would be enough to straighten our fellow slashdotter out.
Before screaming for 10 years of someone's life to be stolen from them, think about what the hell you're saying. I'm sure the simple fact that he has been caught and is involved with the police and the courts will make this guy never do anything like this again. Don't make it obvious what a jackass you are by putting him in jail for a decade while ignoring real criminals like, say, the president.
It's even possible to "terrorise" one person, but it would be weird imo to call that "terrorism". i mean even threatening one person would then be considered to be terrorism. I guess in the US loads of things have gotten the terrorism tag.
anyway, all im saying is that it's quite a slippery slope if you begin calling all illegal actions which involve one person in some way damaging or negatively influencing another with the big word "terrorism". why not arrest all trolls on ./ for terrorising this site... hmmm might not be a bad idea...
PjotrP
The attack was against individuals, the government is only involved as a means to that end. This is a case of government using over-broad legislation to hack together charges against someone where older statute would do (but maybe not set as big of an example). This is a great illustration of the danger in bad law, bad administrators of the law, and the erosion of freedoms in the name of national security... except there is no national security issue here, only the erosion of freedoms.
Canadians have lived with this fear for some time thanks to the War Measures Act, especially after Pierre Idiot Trudeau's invocation in the 1970s in response to Quebec separatist terrorism:
At least we only had that one very scary incident... the US has an administration that seems intent on turning everything since 9/11 into a scary era. Good luck guys, the whole world is going to need it if Bush, Ashcroft, and others have their way.perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
How about:
- Removing the stopsigns at an intersection for a laugh?
- Splashing gasoline down a school hallway for a laugh?
- Spraying a road with oil for a laugh?
- Creating a scripting prank in an attempt to jam the 911 system for a laugh?
What if any of these cases hit their 'worst case'? How many people could have been killed?
Sorry, I don't buy the 'it's just a prank' B.S. line. This was a deliberate attempt to damage emergency infrastructure and put the lives of other people at risk purely for someone's amusement.
I don't care if the 'worst case' didn't happen. The idiot who did this was an adult and aware of the possible impact of what they were doing. Putting this guy away for what some might consider to be too long a time would send a _very_ clear message that you do not mess with emergency infrastructure. Ever.
The word "Terrorism" has been hijacked like the person who eats chicken calls themselves "vegetarian".
The families of Lockerbie, Sept. 11, IRA bombings, etc do not deserve to be disrespected in this way by a government deciding on an emotive term like "terrorism" in the same way a marketing dept would come up with a product name that "captures the public imagination".
Don't car pool to work? Then you aren't irresponsble with regard to the environment. You slaughter jews for a living.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
The term "terrorism" is essentially undefined beyond a certain gut feeling. So anyone faced with a borderline case where it's hard to tell if it is "terrorism" or "regular crime" will choose "terroism" or risk being called soft on terror. So the definition will keep expanding until "terror" and "crime" are synonymous.
The only change from now will be that there will be a new word invented for what we now call "terrorism", and all "emergency" legislation meant to apply to terrorism will apply to all crimes.
A dictionary definition of terrorism is, sadly, irrelevant to this discussion. The only definition that matters, for better or worse, is the definition in the relevant law. If Patriot XII defines cyberterrorism as disagreeing with government policy (see the Alien and Sedition Acts), then disagreeing with government policy will constitute terrorism. It's one side effect of a government based on the rule of law: definitions are sometime ambiguous and counterintuitive.
Just my 2c. This is the most insightful post in the whole thread. I don't really have anything to add to it.r rorism/ 20011025_hr3162_usa_patriot_bill.html/ /www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030NEW.h tm
However, while the question of "terrorism" is important, in this case we're talking about a legal issue. Change the name of the crime to "loitering" and then review the definition of the crime, and see if the act is an instance of that crime. In this case, it's called cyberterrorism, and the crime is defined here:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Te
and
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I would consider planting/spreading a script that deceptively changes the dialer to call 911 an act of terrorism, in the same way I would consider falsely reporting a fire, or accusing someone of a crime that you know they did not commit, to be terrorism. But I don't consider it at all to be terrrorism in the same way that I consider bombings or murders to be terrorism. It's not terrorism in the conventional sense that we talk about terrorists, and terrorist networks attacking people and nations around the world.
It is malicous, it is intimidation, and it is uacceptable behavior. If I had to call it something, i'd call it reckless endangerment, a threat to public safety, abusing a public resource, illegal wiretapping, creating/distributing a trojan horse, and unauthorized use of a computer. If you try to decduce the intent, I think you can conclude that the script author had the following intentions:
a) the victim(s) use the script for an entirely different purpose than changing the dial script
b) the victim(s) unknowingly placing multiple calls to 911 emergency response
c) the 911 emergency response operator to dispatch a response to the call(s)
d) the victim(s) to be approached by law enforcement responding to the call
e) the victim(s) to feel threatened/intimidated by the law enforcement response
f) the victim(s) computer to be bugged/monitored without the victims knowlegde
g) the logs of the monitoring to be transmitted from the victim(s) computer to the author
So I think this guy is beyond old enough to know better, and should be punished accordingly. The important point about the patriot act is that these acts were already illegal, and that using the patriot act is a hedge be prosecutors against te possibility that the court determines there was less than $5,000 in damages. I think you can easily show more damage by tallying the cost of the 911 response to the bogus calls. Nevermind that MSN may have been required by law to investigate, and they would have been forced to incurr expenses due to the script.
Making prank calls to an emergency-only system like 911 is akin to throwing rocks onto the freeway. Even if you don't hit any cars, even if there's no cars coming by while you're throwing rocks, it still a stupid thing to do, and more importantly, it's dangerous. Only children are expected to do such stupid things without considering the consequences. This is a 40+ year old man who has no excuse for such irresponsible behavior.
We don't know what evidence exists.
Did you read the story? He had a spat with the people he sent the script to.
I don't see how it's a problem to charge someone under terrorism statutes while investigating something like this.
You do not charge someone with something unless you already have evidence and reason to believe that is the crime they committed or intended to commit.
If I get in a span and cut down my neighbor's tree, you crage me with valdalism or destruction or property or something. You do NOT charge me with attempted murder simply because it might have been a "small test-run" of killing someone by dropping a tree on them. You only charge me with attempted murder if you already have evidence that was my intent.
But this argument misses the actual point. The outrage here isn't that he is being charged with an absurd crime he didn't commit. The outrage is that he is it being charged with a crime he most likely DID commit. Under the law he most likely DID violate the PATRIOT act and most likely is guilty of "terrororism" as the law defines it.
The outrage is that the law is fuxored. It's like a law defining "murder" as causing the death or a person or a part of a person. Under that law someone could be charged and convicted of murder for simply scratching someone and causing the death of a couple of skin cells. Accidentally scratching someone and causing the death of a few skin cells would be manslaughter. Scratching a police officer would open you to death sentence.
The PATRIOT act is a horrendous law passed in a fit of lunacy.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In Russia, a 911 is split to
01 - Fire
02 - Police
03 - Ambulance
04 - Emergency gas service
A 112 is a number somewhere like Germany (not sure). Also it's an emergency number for cell phones.