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German Teen Charged with Creating Sasser
nomoreself writes "Sven Jaschan, only 18 years old, has been indicted by prosecutors in Verden, Germany for allegedly releasing the well known Sasser worm. The PC World article has the details, including the fact that Microsoft's $250,000 reward offer was responsible for informants' coming forth with Jaschan's name, and that Jaschan has actually already confessed to writing several versions of Netsky, as well as the worm in question. Surprisingly enough, the 143 victims that have filed charges are only claiming $158,000 worth of damages." You might remember when he was first arrested back in May.
Boohoo. You do the crime, you serve the time.
Lucky, 143 plantiffs seeking only 158,000 in damages. Over here that kid would have been sued for 158,000,000!
Or so /.ers will claim. His program caused people to lose money. I don't care if it was linus torvalds himself, anyone who writes a program with the intent to do damage to systems, even though they are unpatched, should still be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and be made to pay. It IS a crime.
(Not meant as flaimbait or a troll, just staving off posts in his defence)
Those who study history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
Unfortuantely, those spyware/adware people have a bounty system keeping them in existant... why else would they pull our data our push out ads? Somebody's paying them somehow.
The main reason they do it is for bragging rights.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Have you SEEN how easy it is to exploit some of these bugs? Some require programming knowledge, but some only require a little Javascript or HTML.
It rarely takes brains to exploit a vulnerability. It takes brains to FIND the vulnerability (er, usually), and it takes brains to exploit the vulnerability WELL.
This guy is the dictionary definition of a script kiddie. A little knowledge, a lot of ego.
1. Write some evil worms
2. Get a friend to "inform" Microsoft
3. Pay $158,000 in damages.
4. Receive $250,000 from Microsoft.
5. Big party!?
Yes, I know - he'll probably have some other problems right now...
I'm glad damages here in Germany are a bit more realistic than in the US.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"The PC World article has the details, including the fact that Microsoft's $250,000 reward offer was responsible for informants' coming forth with Jaschan's name,"
I can't wait to see how this is twisted into "Microsoft is evil!"
"Derp de derp."
I realize these are two separate countries, but it's pretty fucked priorities when someone can lay in wait, then brutally decapitate two people, and then be sentenced to a life of freely wandering the nation's golf courses after snuffing out two lives.
The you get someone who rearranges some magnetic particles on a disk, and this person is thrown into jail like he was the anti-christ.
Moral of the story? Kill someone? Good for you, here's a nine iron. Write some code? Meet your new husband, Bubba.
In most of the (western) world, the damages awarded by courts are pretty down-to-earth.
It's the USA with its runaway legal system which is the sad exception to the rule.
As an american living in europe.. it's nice to see a court system work the way it's supposed to: As a last resort when you can't sort things out between yourselves, and where the damages you receive can only be expected to recover your losses, not make you a profit.
They're too busy hiring all the other brilliant software engineers who managed to find time in their days to *both* learn how to become brilliant software engineers, *and* develop even a minimal ethical framework for how to apply their skills.
Seems like an overwhelming task, but that's why they deserve a good job goddammit.
Jeesh.
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Unlike the powers that be at Slashdot, who continually slant stories like this in such a way as to try to make us feel sympathy for the little turds ("only 18", "only claiming $158,000 worth of damages"), I hope they staple his nuts to the wall with dull rusty 5-inch staples. Like I said the last time Slashdot tried to defend actions like these, lax security in Windows is not the issue, nor is Microsoft in *ANY* way to blame here. If I leave the front door of my house wide open and put up a billboard that says "my door is not locked" that does not give you the right to come inside and damage my property. Likewise, poor OS security does not give you permission to screw up my machine.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
"Call me very Kantian..."
Actually you're not very Kantian, and your misguided ethics might even stem from a gross misunderstanding of those ethics.
Remember that Kantian ethics does not support consequentialism in any way. The morality of an action is directly linked to that action's motivations, not to its consequences or indeed even its legality. Korsgaard has a lot to say about how many of Kant's conclusions as written (such as the famous one where he declares it immoral to lie to save a friend's life) can be "blocked by his own procedures."
If you think that you should be punished for stealing to feed your family the same way someone should be punished for stealing to feed a crack habit, you have a serious problem discerning between what is "legal" and what is "right." No matter the capitalistic filth that has been shoved down your throat by "the man," socialism was not founded on principles of lazy people leeching off of the community. It's about taking from those with an overabundance and giving to those who lack. It's about charity and love and most of all respect for humanity.
The law should serve humanity, not humanity the law.
Score -1, Arrogant, ignorant and stupid troll.
Wrong is wrong. There are no grey areas. Its a boolean function. its right, its wrong. Nothing else.
Sure, it's easy for you to say that - sitting in the comforts of your home with an Internet connection and time to kill on a discussion site.
But I bet that the several people who watch their children die of hunger or poverty would bet to differ.
I can understand malevolent people exist, but a large chunk of them are driven to it by the *society* we live in. Rather, the lousy excuse for a society that we live in.
One of my friend works for an international aid agency. Maybe you should see some of the pictures of people worn by war, strife, poverty and diseases.
There is NO right and NO wrong. It is ALL a perspective. When you are on the street with nothing to call your own, stealing is NOT wrong or right - it becomes a necessity. You do not have the luxury of morals when it is a question of survival for you and your loved ones.
If water were made a commodity, and if people died of thirst because they could not buy it, would you consider STEALING water to live a crime? If air were made a commodity, and people died because they could not buy air, would you consider stealing air a crime? It's a survival instinct, you cannot cull millions of years of evolution because of some cock-and-bull morals that you conjured up for yourself.
Narrow-minded and prejudiced thoughts like this make me want to puke. Sheesh.
While I don't agree with the boolean function analogy, I do agree with you that stealing to feed one's family does not make it okay. This reminds me of something else than disturbs me - that there are people who think that it's okay to steal from someone with a fairly large amount of wealth (like music artists or CEOs of disliked companies). Just because a music artists' income is much higher than the average income, doesn't mean that they don't deserve every penny they earn. I've heard many people say, "So-and-so has so much money; he can go without that additional twenty dollars." as a basis for stealing.
If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective. Theoretically speaking, is it okay to murder someone to feed your family?
Seems there may be a discrepacy between the damages you can plausibly put before a court and those you can tell the media.
Smart?
Do people here really think writing worms is a sign if being smart? I don't. Only a total loser would do something so mean and stupid.
Does it take some skill? Sure, not everyone can do it, but it's far easier to destroy than it is to build. It's like burning down your neighbor's house to prove you understand fire.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
What if I build your next house, leave the front door wide open (rather, the door cannot close even after you move in) and put up a billboard (that cannot be removed) that says "this door is not locked"?
Most humans know not to throw blame fully on one side all the time.
with 75 hours of work a week on Norton Anti-Virus programs.
Probably going to nuke my karma, but screw it, it's 3 in the morning and I'm ill, so here goes... Hooray for /. managing to turn a story about a criminal (let's not forget this man is a criminal) into a way to bash Microsoft - sure, their software has exploitable bugs in it, but that doesn't make it alright to break them - My real-life windows are easily breakable with a brick 'exploit' and a robber could easily break in and steal my posessions, but that's not the fault of the glaziers. I wouldn't expect the Association of Master Craftsmen to cough up a $250,000 reward for finding a prolific robber in my neighbourhood, even less so if every few days they posted me new one-touch ready-to-fit materials to make my windows more secure.
People can whine and moan about how this is 'really the fault of Microsoft for releasing buggy code' but it really isn't - it's not like Windows creates this worm itself without any outside input, it's the person on the outside exploiting it causing the problems. Sure, Microsoft releases programs with exploits in, but anything can be exploited, and like in the real world, it's not the fault of the manufacturer if a criminal comes along and breaks it.
Personally I think Microsoft offering a reward was a good PR stunt, but not one they had to make. No, I'm not that new here, so yes I do know that any story that can be twisted to have an anti-Microsoft angle will be, but in terms of the whole "it's the fault of the coders" argument, let it die. When Windows crashes and takes your important work with it, that's MS's fault - when some 1337 scriptkiddie exploits a security hole for kicks, that's his fault - same as if my car exploded once a month without warning I'd blame the manufacturer, but if someone broke in and stole it, I'd blame the thief. Zealotry just seems to cloud judgement a little too much sometimes.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
If we just replace the act of "stealing" with "murdering", then it would put things in clearer perspective.
:)
It also totally changes the meaning. You can't just interchange the two to make a point. Obviously most people would answer your question with a no, but that really has no ramifications for the justification of stealing. BTW, this goes both ways, too: Is it okay to violate the speed limit to feed your starving family?
So maybe stealing to feed your family is not totally okay. I don't think anybody said it was, because the original point was that moral evaluation is not boolean. So it's not totally okay (whatever that means; perhabs nothing really is) but it's more okay than stealing for no good reason at all, and a lot more okay than killing to feed your family, which in turn would be more okay than killing for no good reason at all. Arguably.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
No, morality is, in its simplest possible state, a map to the reals. (Although I suspect the math gets even more complicated than that.) Every action has a certain degree of goodness to it. For example, stealing is bad, but it's better than murder. So if stealing can prevent a murder, you should do so.
Boolean rule-based morality is useful because it's very easy to understand and spread to others (memes) but I don't think it's the true nature of right and wrong.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
There are a couple of problems with your argument (quoting non-existent characters in a serious argument aside):
1. Stealing bread to feed your family in no way compares to writing a virus and intentionally releasing it. One is a benevolent crime, the other is malevolent. Apples and oranges, dude. Apples and oranges.
2. While "legal" doesn't necessarily equate to "right" or "ethical", it's still legal and therefore not prosecutable in a court of criminal law. In order for laws to be "right", you have to change the laws. But then there is the question of subjective vs. objective, etc. and getting everyone to agree on what is "right".
3. Under the law, Microsoft did nothing wrong in this specific case. All blame lies with the writer of the virus. While the law does consider acts of negligence in some cases, whoever decides these things hasn't gotten around to crimes of omission in software coding (and you better pray they don't ever get around to it, either).
I think you would be hard pressed to find any law that applies in this case where Microsoft has any blame in this matter.
PS. I am a skeptic when it comes to the issue of natural law or natural rights. Those are human creations and subject to interpretation depending on who you ask.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Having absolute law is the only kind of law possible in a system run by imperfect beings.
:-)
C'mon, that's ridiculous. Following your path of argumentation, you'd need perfect laws first.
They do not exist. Can imperfect beings invent these perfect laws at all? I doubt so. Humans can invent/discover mathematical equations, but you're not a living equation.
IANAL and I don't want to be one (because being a lawyer/judge IS messy and I'd like to stick with physics, which is hardly deterministic nowadays, too!). If YAAL, you should have spotted such fuzzy words as "inadequate", "clear" etc. in law texts many, many times already. I'm sure the appropiate laws contain them. Not only in germany (where I live and where the whole spectacle takes place), but also in the US. Can you give me an exact definition for them?
Or, if you can't, post at least a mathematically sound definition of what constitutes "computer sabotage" here. Good luck
I saw this story on the front page and thought, "I wonder how many comments before someone makes a reference to prison rape." It was 14, and modded +4 Funny. Forgive the generalization, but what is the deal with Americans and prison rape? Every single time prison is mentioned (and most of the time criminals are mentioned), someone pipes up about men raping other men. I can understand the occasional reference, but this is obsessive. It's creepy.
The problem is that your archetypical virus author is (from what I've seen anywayz) at least borderline sociopathic. They generally have no regard whatsoever for the consequences of their actions or the potential damage, and likewise are most likely not capable of even being affected by punishment...they can genuinely be *that* fucked up.
My own feeling with such people is that they should definitely be detained/locked up, but only so that they do not have the ability to reoffend. I would also advocate sending them to a psychiatric inpatient unit, rather than jail par se...because at least there they have some chance of treatment/rehabilitation. Putting them in the prison system would probably in actuality be less humane than killing them, at least as far as the American prison system is concerned.
Virus authors are generally sick people, and need to be viewed as such. We need to determine what sociological factors are producing such tendencies, as well as treating individual offenders. If we can isolate the causes, we can erradicate the effect.
> Surprisingly enough, the 143 victims that have filed charges are only claiming $158,000 worth of damages.
Huh? You mean "surprisingly, unlike in this nutted country, in Germany they file claims for actual damages, not pie-in-the-sky imaginary figures" ?
surprise yourself, the world is not the US nor it works like it. And that goes both for the good and the bad you an find in it.
It's like saying that a criminal that breaks into a car with a SlimJim is some kind of genius. Most people don't know how to break into a car, but any idiot can get one of these learn how pretty easily.
This kid is just a criminal, and a stupid one at that.
Whats worse is that a year later you might be fixing your own code and have to face the fact you can't blame anybody else about your crappy code.
Sindri Traustason.
So you say a man that kills a girl because she has a blonde hair (not only a sick fuck but illegal as well) and a woman that shoots and kills a man trying to strangle her (self defence and legal in many places) should both get a life sentance?
Stop signs are only Suggestions
I'm still waiting for the part where you explain the need that prompted this upstanding citizen to write a malicious worm, or the evils that society committed against him that forced his hand.
The boundaries of 'right' and 'wrong can blur when necessity comes into play, but can you apply your moral relativism to cases such as this where there is no good served or need met?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy