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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."
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.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
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"?
Denial of Service Attack against 911??? Maybe 911 should change their phone number just like SCO changd their DNS name to http://www.thescogroup.com/.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
terrorism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr-rzm)
n.
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.
...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.
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.
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"?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
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
-kgj
This isn't justification for use of the Patriot Act. It did not have the intent of anything remotely considered terrorism.
Now, I'm not saying he should go to jail, however it's a sad look at the United States when anything that you could mildly construe as something that a terrorist might do, becomes a terrorist act.
http://use.perl.org
... 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.
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.
Help I'm a rock.
... 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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
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.
may the source be with you
D.H.S. - The Series. ... a multimillion-dollar episodic series, will explore the inner workings of the Department of Homeland Security, teaming the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and National Security Administration (NSA) together with first responders such as local police, fire and safety administrators.
The series is being pitched to prospective networks and has the full support of President Bush and Tom Ridge. They love it. They think it is fantastic, say the series' producers at Steeple Productions. Not familiar with Steeple Productions? Well, perhaps you might find their four-episode Creation Vs Evolution series enlightening.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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!)
While you can certainly argue in favor of prosecuting someone who endangers public safety, I'm more concerned about the company that allowed such a security hole to exist. Why isn't there a PKI infastructure around configuration changes in the MsnTV firmware? Why aren't scripts that change user settings required to be signed? At some point the vendors who provide these infarior and dangerous products must be held liable. Recently, slashdot had a with a quote from one of the heads of Microsoft security who said that in the case of Windows (where patch application is optional) We have never had vulnerabilities exploited before the patch was known'. In the case of NsnTV, firmware updates are not optional, and the fact that an update still doesn't exist which would authenticate scripts that change user settings, is extremely telling. Is it that it never occured to Microsoft that settings changes should be validated? That scripts which perform cuch changes should be signed or otherwise secured? Unbelievable...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
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?
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...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
911 would really only have to worry about an extra 10-15 calls a day.
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.
Looks like they'll have to add 'WebTV' to the next Computer Attack and Cyber Terrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress revision.
When will some of you guys learn it's not about the act, nor the group, nor the victim, nor the attacker. It's about the ability to control perception. The spookier the 'villain' the more money gets funneled to 'groups' like the Department of Homeland Insignificance. It's how they justify their budgets at the end of the year. "By golly Mabel them be terrorists, maybe we should pay more taxes to them mighty fine boys at the DOJ they be tough on terrorists" Nothing less, nothing more. It's about stats. Sure the guy was moronic, and now he will pay for being an idiot, and the sinful part is many - if he goes to a jury - will be blinded by pseudo sympathy spin on terror. To quote that old annoying song "It's all about the Benjamins baby"
MoFscker
A 3 year old was sent to Guantanamo Bay after mashing random numbers on a telephone and reaching 911.
Overboard a bit? Not EVERYTHING is terrorism. Shit, this post is terrorism. Shit, that last statement was terrorism. I better hide.
Isn't it funny that something like this, in the past, would have not been considered terrorism? This was just a prank that went too far. It wasn't fair to the police for getting the prank to their 911 line. Their business line, yes, but not the emergency line. Does anyone think this have a different outcome if he had it go to their "business" line instead?
Also, I have seen others say the script relied on the stupidity of the person's foes. The guy had no motive to do anything after the fact, so how did it endanger public safety? Shouldn't the police be able to handle a few false calls to their emergency system? You think that prank calls to 911, as sad as they are, would be built into the equation of deciding how many people they need on shift in order to cover their district.
I guess this is just another overreaction by our lovely government.
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
He committed an attack against 911, took over peoples pc's, released a trojan, waster police time. Plenty for a judge to send him to jail. This guy sounds more like an idiot then a hardened criminal and for idiots even a week jailtime is enough.
Terrorism sounds a bit over the top. Yes the attack was potentially serious but during a recent "flood" (few centimeters of water) you had idiots on tv claiming that 112 (our 911) was unable to respond when they called to have their cellar drained. Hello? Flooded cellar ain't an emergency and all these idiots DID overload 112 and stopped real calls from getting through. Are they all terrorists? No. Deserving a night in jail with a guy called bubba sure. But not terrorists.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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?
sent it to his eighteen foes
Wow, I don't know anyone who has WebTV and this guy knows 18, all of whom happen to be foes!
Oh yeah, and if you're dialing 911 for your internet access, how is the evil program supposed to post your browser logs to a website?
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?
> But what if it had been 100 users? 10,000 users? 1 million users?
There is a difference between body-slamming some one once, and body-slamming someone a million times. (I've body-slammed well over 100 people in my career, but that's all legit.)
You're talking about a hyopthetical, alternate crime. In *this* instance, 21 people we involved/victimised. So: is *this guy* a terrorist?
webster:
Terrorist Ter"ror*ist, n. F. terroriste.
One who governs by terrorism or intimidation; specifically,
an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the
Reign of Terror in France. --Burke.
Doesn't quite seem to fit the bill.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
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
Some dude cut me off in traffic and because I am a law minding citizen I deem it was an act of Domestic Urban Terrorism. I was so frightened by the way they were driving. It put the fear and terror in to minds of anyone driving on that public throughfare.
This doesn't even match the US government's definition of terrorism.
...The concept of "terror" as systematic use of violence to attain political ends was first codified by Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. He deemed it an "emanation of virtue" that delivers "prompt, severe, and inflexible" justice, as "a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs."
From a Science article:
According to the U.S. Department of State report Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001 (1), no single definition of terrorism is universally accepted; however, for purposes of statistical analysis and policy-making: "The term `terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." Of course, one side's "terrorists" may well be another side's "freedom fighters" (Fig. 1). For example, in this definition's sense, the Nazi occupiers of France rightly denounced the "subnational" and "clandestine" French Resistance fighters as terrorists. During the 1980s, the International Court of Justice used the U.S. Administration's own definition of terrorism to call for an end to U.S. support for "terrorism" on the part of Nicaraguan Contras opposing peace talks.
For the U.S. Congress, "`act of terrorism' means an activity that--(A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping." (2). When suitable, the definition can be broadened to include states hostile to U.S. policy.
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.
People, it isn't like he just affected one or two MSN TV users. He affected all 21 users of MSN TV.
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.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If you look at the US Code as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, you'll see exactly what he's being charged with:
And it seems to me the punishment prescribed in section (c) for the crime above is reasonable and fitting:
In other words, the guy broke a bunch of computers in such a way that he endangered the public safety. If convicted, he gets a fine or up to a year in prison (or both). I fail to see what the problem with this is.
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.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
... Osias Griffin, who owned one of the first dozen telephones.
"Hello, Johnathan?"
"Nope. What number are you trying to dial?"
"Seven."
"Ah, well this is three."