CEO Indicted for DDOSing Competitors

ruland writes "It turns out there was a reason the hosting company CIT/Foonet was raided in February. SecurityFocus.com reports that the CEO of a web-based satellite T.V. retailer has been indicted for allegedly paying Foonet's administrator to arrange denial of service attacks against his competitors, causing outages as long as two weeks at a time, and $2 million in losses. Now he's skipped out on $750,000 bail, while the five packet monkeys who worked for him are left facing felony charges of their own."

Comments

Tin Foil Hat Brigade

[Tarwn]

I seem to recall quite an uproar surrounding the seizure before. People yelling about the government raping the constituion, etc.

Glad I was one of the people that decided to wait and see what it was all about instead of taking it as a sign that our government was overextending itself. Not that they don't, but I'm guessing this isn't one of those times if everyone on staff got felony charges.

Extradition?

[gclef]

According to the article, they think the CEO's skipped town to Morocco. Don't we have an extradition treaty w/them? If so, it shouldn't be that hard to get him back, assuming Morocco's police play along.

ABOUT TIME

[AcmeShells.com]

My company was a direct target of these assholes. It is about time the FBI finally did something. They are the reason I am paying more for my servers than any other IRC shell provider.

Using the attack logs for "good"

[plover]

From the SecurityFocus article:

RackSpace fought back, but the attackers proved determined and adaptive. In mid-October the simple SYN flood attacks were replaced with an HTTP flood, pulling large image files from WeaKnees.com in overwhelming numbers. At its peak the onslaught allegedly kept the company offline for a full two weeks.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to host these files from a tarpit? If you know you're under attack by zombie hordes that are going to repeatedly ask for a file, why not give it to them s--l--o--w--l--y? Although I suppose that since the attacks were being watched and changed frequently, the attackers probably would simply have switched tactics again.

Anyway, is it possible or practical to use the logs of the http flood to go back to the zombified PC owners and "fix" them? HTTP requires a real connection, which is traceable. Or should that list just be delivered to their ISPs and have the ISPs shut them down until they're virus free?

Put it on Paper

[Detritus]

If a manager asks me to do something that is morally or legally questionable, I ask them to send me a signed memo with their request. That usually makes them go away and drop the subject.

Please tell me

[onyxruby]

Someone please tell me why I should feel sorry for the poor "monkeys" that were helping him commit felonies? This isn't a digital rights issue, this isn't a case of big guy trampling little guy. They partook in organized crime and gave computer people a bad name, why should we care that they are left hanging?

Easy money?

[Snorklefish]

1. Short company Y.
2. Initiate DDOS campaign intended to temporarily cripple company Y and drive its stock price down.
3. Cover at the depressed price.
4. Profit.

Certainly the SEC would look askance at short-sales before a coordinated DDOS attack, but if a nebulous entity in Eastern Europe is doing the dirty work while a nebulous entity in East-Asia is doing the shorting, it could be extremely difficult to prove a connection.

No this isn't a recommendation or some novel idea. In fact, I'm certain that organized crime is well ahead of us in the nefarious schemes department.

perfect sense

[Archalien]

I actually got attacked by one of these guys' botnets (Krashed I believe) when a friend IRCing from my connection pissed him off. I traced him to Foonet thinking "great, I know the head admin from being an IRC junkie back in the day" and when I told him what was going on he acted like it was no problem. I thought he should have been a little more concerned about some punk kid attacking people from his net. Figures.

Re:wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as retarded as those criminals at this company who bribed competitors janitors to steal documents. Oh. But is retarded the right word - that company's doing well. Sad that sometimes these techniques do pay.

Re:This is too funny!

[dougmc]

Now it turns out the people raided were in fact "the bad guys" and the warrant (remember, the FBI HAD a warrant) was legit AND...er...warranted.

[ spelling corrected :) ]

As a general rule of thumb, the FBI and similar organizations don't go around raiding the `good guys'. It does happen sometimes ( one good example), but it's not the general rule. But the thing that tends to be forgotten is that even the `bad guys' have rights, and the FBI (and similar organizations) tends to violate these rights, and that's what people tend to get really upset about. And then there's things that aren't really `rights', but should happen anyways. For example, if they take all your hardware, and don't charge you with a crime, you should get your hardware back QUICKLY and UNDAMAGED. But I digress ...

As for Waco and Ruby Ridge, the people involved were definately `bad guys', but the government wasn't exactly being `good guys' either.

As for the FBI going after these DDoS monkeys, good for them. It's about time.

Log of emp

[AcmeShells.com]

Here is a log of EMP just a few minutes ago. http://www.xbox-irc.net/log.txt

You mean like Steve Jackson Games?

[Tangurena]

When the story first came out, many folks, myself included, were thinking about Steve Jackson Games. They published games and novels on their bulletin board system. The Secret Service confiscated all their gear and never returned it, nor charged them. It would be equivalent to raiding a local newspaper and siezing everything because one classified ad was placed by one crook. The SS even refused to obey a court order for the return of the gear. When the gear was finally returned, several years later, all of it was broken.

Or maybe you might remember Ruby Ridge or Waco. Or maybe you might remember some of the excesses since 9/11. Was this a good bust or bad one? It looks more like a good one. Don't automatically think that they are the evil jackbooted minions of the evil overlord. Nor should you automatically presume that they are the good guys.

Re:Guys, take note of this...

[maximilln]

Ideally bail is to give the accused time to prepare their defense. It's hard to talk with your alibi witnesses if they don't know you're in jail.

In reality bail is another method of enforcing an unofficial social caste system. Poor people can't get out to find decent legal counsel. They're stuck with the run-of-the-mill public defender who always advocates a "guilty" or "no contest" plea. The cycle repeats itself indefinitely.

In science it's called chromatography. If you have a jar of mixed large and small pellets you can separate the pellets simply by vibrating the jar for a long enough period of time. In society every accusation leveled against you is the equivalent of one vibration. If you're priveleged or wealthy you shake up. If you're poor or well-framed you shake down.

Re:Guys, take note of this...

[Aexia]

Al Quaeda endorses Bush

The statement said it supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."

In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:

"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation."

"Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected."