Man Reportedly Jailed for Using Lynx

wezzul writes "A Londoner made a tsunami-relief donation using Lynx on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site operator decided that this 'unusual' event in the system log indicated a hack attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him." Honestly, though, aside from a BBC article about a tsunami fund hacking probe that doesn't mention user agents there's little to corroborate this. Hopefully Lynx users need not worry too much yet.

Comments

And for good reason!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats right; He shoulda been using "links" anyhow!

Re:And for good reason!

[Anonymous Coward]

Links is garbage, it doesn't use terminfo or even termcap, it just sends out Linux Console escape codes, no matter if the terminal supports it. Which a Wyse-50 or Wyse-30 doesn't, so everything is just garbage.

At least lynx works.

Re:And for good reason!

[grandmofftarkin]

I think you mean elinks. It has every thing Lynx and Links has plus a lot more. including Frames, tabs, basic javascript, some CSS support, etc. They are even in the process of adding bittorent support right into the browser. Best text-only browser going!

Re:And for good reason!

[DjReagan]

CSS support could work on a text browser by doing things like left and right alignment of text and justifying text. Making things bold or not. Possibly also setting the text colour if the terminal supports it.

Re:And for good reason!

[drsquare]

But that elinks isn't any good for us slackware users. It has debs and rpms for download, but no tgz packages, and no source code unless you have cvs set up. That seems very unreasonable, even the simplest of programs these days come with a simple source download or a non-distro-specific binary download.

I think it's a shame that writers of Linux apps generally assume that if you're not using Redhat/Mandrake then you want to compile the program from source.

Re:And for good reason!

[sepluv]

As far as I can see most visual CSS properties are applicable to the tty CSS media type (text-mode UAs).

That's why tty and screen both come under the visual group.

Re:And for good reason!

[EnronHaliburton2004]

But he was using Solaris. For some reason, 'lynx' is commonly installed on Solaris 8 & 9 systems, but not 'links'.

Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[PreDefined]

What's next? Sometime in the near future: Man tries to buy chocolate bar with paper money! Shock! Horror! Maybe this is just a little too random but that's where my mind travelled to.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[ActionJesus]

Up here in Scotland, we have our own paper money. Although its legal throughout the UK, a lot of english shopkeeps will give you funny looks if you give them a scottish fiver.

However, wheres fivers and the like merely look different, apparently the english dont have a paper £1 note (and we do, although they're much rarer these days).

How long until we get arrested for paying for something with "funny money"? Remember, every time you use a non-standard currency, your funding terrorists!

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[dasunt]

What's next? Sometime in the near future: Man tries to buy chocolate bar with paper money! Shock! Horror! Maybe this is just a little too random but that's where my mind travelled to.

We are already at the point where making a large purchase with paper money is unusual.

About two years ago, I decided I wanted a dishwasher. I went down to my bank, took out some money, checked a few places, and finally paid for a small dishwasher in cash.

Had some extremely strange looks from the salesperson.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[Drantin]

You've heard stories of the infamous $2 bills still floating around the US, haven't you?

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[andynz]

There was a story late last year about an elderly couple who tried to use a Scottish £20 note in woolworths. Not only did they not accept it, they called the police and held them there.

I have recently moved to Scotland, and think that the scottish money is awesome. I particularly like the latin motto on the pound coin, "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT", translates to "no-one provokes me with impunity". That is just so Scottish.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[Associate]

The problem with US$2 bills is that people are hording them. The banks and federal reserver have plenty. But people won't use them.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[ray-auch]

In the UK (and probably accross the EU) large cash transactions are unusual partly because they already come under the money-laundering regulations.

See quote below (from here).

Generally, dealers must make a "suspicious activity report" to NCIS on any cash transaction of more than 15,000 euros (about £10,000) - although smaller transactions must also be reported if they arouse any suspicions.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[hawthorne]

I take great pleasure in collecting as many £1 notes as I can whenever I'm in Scotland - and then using them sparingly (one per transaction) back in England.

Most cashiers realise that they should accept them, but then have to try to work out what to do with the note - there's nowhere in the cash register for it to go.

Maybe I'm just evil!

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[maxwell demon]

Anyway the euro notes all look incredibly bland and boring.

You know, people like to get money even if it looks boring. There's no need to make money look interesting in order to get people interested in it. :-)

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[rpjs]

Although its legal throughout the UK

Um, not exactly. According to this Wikipedia article Scottish banknotes aren't even legal tender in Scotland!

"Legal tender" is a bit of misleading concept though in that it only really applies to the settlement of debts - i.e if you owe somebody and pay them in legal tender they have to accept that payment, but they don't have to accept payment by other means. It's worth noting that buying something in a shop does not constitute settling a debt as you pay before you receive legal title to the goods, so "legal tender" does not apply.

Ultimately you can pay for anything with anything if the other party agrees. Shops in Scotland will of course accept Scottish banknotes because they're familiar with them and trust the Scottish banks to back them. Many shops in England will similarly accept Scottish banknotes for the same reasons. Some shops in England and Scotland will take Euro notes, and a few at airports US dollars and other currencies. You're unlikely to find a shop that will accept Bhutanese Ngultrum, say, though I suppose it's possible if the shopkeeper happens to be about to go on holiday to Bhutan and can't find a bureau de change that carries Ngultrum...

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[Molt]

I must have been lucky when I bought my laptop then, the discussion over payment went pretty much like this:

"And how would you like to pay for this?"

"Do you accept anonymous white envelopes stuffed with cash?"

"That'll do nicely, Sir"

This was in one of the more reputable shops on London's Tottenham Court Road (Micro Anvika). Was impressed that not only did he not bat an eyelid, but he was actually able to make the funny.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[slavemowgli]

There's an easy solution to that: just make more of them. When they're common enough, people will stop hording them since they don't have any novelty value anymore.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[zebs]

urgh, yes unfortunnatly. All greem, and all the same size. How any blind people in the US manage with money I don't know!

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You know, I have the same complaint about the gears in standard automobiles, whether they are automatic or manual transmission. They don't feel any different from one another at all... how does any blind person manage to drive?

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[mider]

Actually, all the new Canadian notes have braille on them.

I've never seen paper money with braille on it, so I'm curious how blind people ANYWHERE manage paper money?

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[displaced80]

Some eagle-eyed cashier is a local newsagent rejected a 20 pence piece I tried to pay with, and I had no idea why.

Turned out it was a Gibraltan coin. Basically identical to regular 20p. However, there's an image of (who I presume to be) the enthroned Queen, staff in hand, on the reverse. The text around the picture reads "Our Lady Europa - Gibraltar".

A really, really beautiful coin. Glad it got turned down so I could keep it I suppose!

It's geeky, but sometimes the artistry in currency design is pretty amazing. Some of the British banknotes are really fantastic. I'm not particularly opposed to the Euro, but it's a shame that the banknotes are a unified design (bridges & windows... the modernity of which increases as the value of the note increases). On the other hand, some of the national designs on the reverse of the coins are interesting.

Kinda weird to think how long these things stay in circulation... I've got a penny piece from 1978 in my pocket.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[Dogtanian]

Actually, there's nothing obliging them to accept them at all. Technically, they're not legal tender, and they're only accepted as such by convention, as far as I know.

Yeah; as far as I know, this is the truth.

And I used to get annoyed about the English not accepting Scottish banknotes; but later on I grew up and realised that since most English (or Welsh or people from Northern Ireland for that matter) wouldn't be familiar with Scottish notes, they would have trouble differentiating the real thing from fakes.

If *I* was running a business in England, I'd be quite happy to let my staff refuse Scottish banknotes if they weren't familiar with them, for that very reason. Pissed off customers could talk to me about it...

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[zebs]

In the UK all coins and notes are distinctly differnet, none have braille though.

For full details see:

http://www.royalmint.com/talk/default.asp, and

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/index.htm , and finally

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/knowyourn otes.pdf

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[biglig2]

Time for my usual pedantic pointing out that legal tender is nothing to do with buying something in a shop.

Legal tender defines forms of payment that, when used to pay off a debt, the creditor cannot refuse. This rule prevents an evil creditor from bankrupting you by not accepting anything you offer as payment.

In a shop, however, you are negotiating a contract, and so the shop can demand, as a term in that contract, that you pay in any way they want. If you don't like it, don't agree to the contract.

Scotish bank notes are indeed not legal tender anywhere, including Scotland, and for that matter English notes aren't legal tender in Scotland.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[alangmead]

When I saw this, I thought of this quote.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem which was this: most of the people who were living on it were pretty much unhappy most of the time. Many solutions where suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. -- Douglas Adams

And then thought that maybe it isn't the Euro notes that are bland and boring.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[I confirm I'm not a]

Nope, it's a common misconception that she's the head of the CoS. The CoS doesn't have a "head", just a elected moderator who serves as a spokesperson for one year.

Live and learn! I knew about the Moderator, but I was equating the Moderator with the Archbishop of Canterbury (which is - roughly - correct), and assuming the Queen had a similar role in both Church and Kirk. You're quite correct, however: The Queen is a member of the Kirk with the same rights as any other member except that she, or her representative, normally declares the General Assembly of the Kirk formally open.

Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked on bill identifiers a while back and one of the problems we had was the number of torn corners on $2 bills. As I understand it, horse bettors consider these quite lucky! The idea is to place a bet with a $2 bill, but keep one torn-off corner for luck (maybe it is supposed to return to the torn-off corner?)

WHY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why oh why wasnt it "Man Reportedly Jailed for Using IE"

Re:WHY!

[Hoagy]

what about "Man Reportedly Jailed for Creating IE"

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

First post with Lynx!

Thank God for people....

[Homology]

actually reading logs, now, if only they could understand them.

Re:Thank God for people....

[Stephen Samuel]

Sometimes they have complete idiots reading the logs.

Back when the nimda worm was running around, I wrote a home-grown IDS to watch web hits, identify nimda-type probes and, if I could find a reporting address for the offending IP email a complaint off to the responsible ISP.

We were being serviced by Shaw Cable at the time, and every once in a while, they'd misread my complaints, and figure that my box was the source of the attack, and they'd send a nasty email to my roommate (who the connection was registered to) threatening to cut off our internet if we didn't delete the viruses install a firewall, etc. (we each had our own BSD firewall).

I got to know one of the supervisors there reasonably well, modified the letter I sent out to make it all but impossible for the people who read the email to confuse the attacking box with the defender, and he even added a note to the file for our connection, which resulted in a period of quiet after which we got yet another threatening letter.

I responded with this letter. My roommate (who took this very seriously because he was paying business rates to be allowed to run servers on the line) thought that I was being a bit flippant about something so important (flippant?! It took me an hour to write the damn thing!), but the supervisor at shaw said that he got a bit of a chuckle out of it when he phoned me to apologize for the error and promise a fix. His explanation was that shaw had installed a new abuse reporting system and that the note about our account had been lost in the transition (but would be added back in).

If you read my letter, (which includes the original autocomplaint) then you'll understand just how far people are willing to go to misread log files.

Re:Thank God for people....

[ozmanjusri]

Just a quick heads up on this, the symptoms you're describing point to a condition called nasal polyps. They're a benign tumour and are faily common, so your doc should have checked for them.

If that's what you've had here (and even if its not), you should get to a decent doctor and get them to have a look. Polyps commonly recur even after the proper surgery, so its unlikely you've fixed the problem for long.

Re:Thank God for people....

[ArsenneLupin]

Solution: don't ever put your own IP address anywhere inside the complaint. Leave the tcpdump log away, and only keep the Apache access.log which is sufficient enough to "prove" that an intrusion was attempted. Nobody can misinterpret your IP address as the attacker if you don't even mention your IP address in the complaint.

Yes, your own IP still shows up in the Received headers of the mail, but anybody who spots it there has to have at least a minimum of understanding how the network works (Microsoft Outlook (tm) doesn't show these headers by default)

Same reasoning as for change of address notices, really: if you inform some business that you changed addresses, make sure to never mention your old address (or at least not completely...), or else you can be sure that some drone will attempt to confuse old and new, and revert back the change that one of his colleagues already did...

Re:Thank God for people....

[skahshah]

I think they have complete idiots reading not only the logs, but the mail too. Or maybe idiots who don't read at all :

One day I couldn't access to many sites I'm used to visit, I did some traceroute and found 2 nodes down, 1 in NY, another in South California. I wrote to the companies. The first one answered within an hour, saying they hadn't found any problem (it was working again), the second never answered, but the server was up within an hour too.

I had sent a third mail to my ISP, before anything had been fixed, explaining the problem, with the same traceroute attached, saying that I knew they hadn't anything to do with it, but that it could be useful to know, with the precision that I was running Mozilla on FreeBSD, and personnally hadn't any problem.

Two days later I received a mail explaining that I had a bad configuration and had to check some option (forgot what it was) in Internet Explorer !

Re:Thank God for people....

[cbreaker]

I don't know what Shaw is like, but Comcast seems to be similar.

I really like Comcast. They don't block any ports and none of the pushing from the big companies has forced them to do so. You pay for Internet service and you get it, full service with no restrictions.

When Nimda was around, they'd run automatic probes to check if someone was vulnerable. If their script came back as yes, they'd shut off your connection, and you could make a quick phone call and have it turned back on after speaking with someone. They did the same thing with open relays, although this doesn't seem to stop malware from sending out spam (since you don't need to be a relay to send out a set of spam.)

Even though there's a lot of really terrible technicians at Comcast, at least the don't inhibit your full use of what you pay for.

My provider, Cox, has taken another route. They block Outbound 25, and they block inbound: 53udp/tcp, 21, 23, 110, 143, 25, 80, 443, and several others. While this does stop spam from being sent, it also allows them to charge 10x more for an "unrestricted" service at the same speed and service level (ie no guarentees.)

I'd rather deal with a little more spam filtering then have my access restricted because of people that don't protect their systems.

Bonus Browser

[orangeguru]

Lynx - the adventure browser ...

He could still have tried to break in...

[Essef]

Just because he was using lynx does not mean he was not trying to break into the site.

Re:He could still have tried to break in...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it's a mickeysoft admin and he just googled what Lynx was and thought "jipes" a geek and pushed a big red button like it says on page 6534 of his Mickeysoft web admin book...

Re:He could still have tried to break in...

[odyrithm]

The kids intuitive, you can lean allot from him people of slashdot.

But aside from the joking, being a brit and having used BT for ADSL; yes I would say they are moronic enough to have done something as stupid as this.

Man Reportedly Jailed for Using IE

[SpikyTux]

In an unrelated news, A Londoner made a tsunami-relief donation using Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows operating system. The site operator decided that this usual event in the system log indicated the user has zero clue on how insecure Internet Explorer is, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him.

Technical in-joke

[Neo-Rio-101]

So the police saw "Lynx" and busted him? Just as well he didn't script a PERL WWW-lib useragent:-

#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP::UserAgent;
$ua=LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->ag ent("I p0wnz j00 d00dz hax0r/v.10 rev. fuq2 ");

Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up

[Anonymous Coward]

for false imprisonment, and sued for slander, liable, an anything else he can think of.

Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up

[Eivind]

Not quite, but almost.

If you are wrongfully jailed you'll get compensation. BUT they'll subtract "housing and food", i.e. the value of the bed and the food in prison from your compensation. Which lead some journalists to report that you're supposed to "pay for jail".

Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up

[Eivind]

It's a matter of definition I guess. The idea is that you get two different forms of compensation. First you get compensated what you've "lost" in real cash. This typically means something like your salary for the time you where imprisoned minus what you saved by having the state give you food and a bed.

Then there's compensation for the suffering of being imprisoned. i.e. the fact that being in prison is less desireable than being a free person, even if you get the same cash for it.

A person wrongfully imprisoned in the UK gets compensated for this from the state. Yeah, he gets compensated a tiny bit less than he would be if he'd had to buy his own food in jail. If "the compensation is smaller than it'd otherwise be" is what you mean by "pay" then I guess he does pay for being in prison.

But that's a bit like saying if I get paid a bit less from my employer because I have free lunch at work (i.e. the value of the lunch is subtracted from my salary) then I *pay* to work for my employer. The situation really is quite parallell. I get compensation for being at work. This compensation is a bit smaller because I also had a benefit at work (i.e. food). Similarily you get compensated for being wrongfully imprisoned, said compensation gets a bit smaller because you also had benefits in prison (i.e. food)

He doesn't pay for being imprisoned -- on the contrary he *gets* paid for being wrongfully imprisoned. He does however pay for food.

Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up

[Tooky]

The whole problem with this argument is that the only reason that person has eaten the prison food and used the prison bed is because they were wrongfully imprisoned.

governments are funny.

[ctime]

While not fair by any means, to me this is clearly an example of one faction of the governments: Setting examples.
I would speculate that the browser inadvertently sent some malformed HTTP POSTS or otherwise made some "usual" as in "unusual garbage posts to credit card processing engine" and spooked the sysadmin who had far to much time on his hand and the local police number on speed dial.

poor bastard..I bet if he was using linux this wouldn't have happend ;]

Re:governments are funny.

[L.Bob.Rife]

But the real question is, did this request go through a judge to get a warrant, or was it simply some sysadmin making a claim (which could be easily refuted by an expert) and the police arresting somebody on one mans word.

Will police arrest somebody if I claim they killed somebody, or do they still need evidence?

Re:governments are funny.

[James Fryer]

If someone makes a statement to the police, that is evidence, and they can arrest on the strength of it (in the UK at least).

No, *I* am Spartacus!

[cliffiecee]

We *so* need to name a 'Lynx' day in protest. Hit all your favorite sites with a text-based browser in a non-windows OS for one day.

Of course, with all the embedded Flash around, some sites will be totally inaccessible... which would maybe teach them a lesson about accessibility.

Re:No, *I* am Spartacus!

[minus9]

"When was the last time you purchased taylor made shoes? "

Who's this Taylor guy?

Because everyone knows

[L.Bob.Rife]

That hackers would never think to forge a browser agent tag.

I don't believe it

[John Seminal]

Thursday, January 27, 2005
Jailed for using a nonstandard browser

A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx -- a text-based browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him. From a mailing list:

For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx on Solaris 10. BT [British Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an access log and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's type and it's doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.

Armed police, a van, a police cell and national news later the police have gone in SWAT styley and arrested someone having their lunch.

Out on bail till next week and preparing to make a lot of very bad PR for BT and the Police....

So just goes to show if you use anything other than Firefox or IE and you rely on someone else to interogate access logs or IDS logs you too could be sitting in a paper suit in a cell :(

There is something more going on here than just using a different browser. Police would never arrest someone just because of the browser he was using. Was he trying to hack into the website? If he did that, then it is a crime and the police had the right to arrest and jail him (hopefully for a long time).

Re:I don't believe it

[gnuorder]

I'm sure there could be more to the story, like perhaps there were repeated log entries as if he had lynx in a script loop to do something as innocent as collect donation totals or something evil like password guessing. I wouldn't put it past the police/judges in any country of being largely ignorant of what a browser agent really means. It wouldn't take them much convincing to go busting down doors. The suspicious part of the story is the sysadmin thinking something odd with the user agent of just that one person and calling the authorities. Looking at the logs from fairly small web sites you are lible to see all sorts of odd user agents. If something did stick out, I would think a sysadmin's first step would be to do a google search.

Re:I don't believe it

[koi88]

Police would never arrest someone just because of the browser he was using.

I hope you're right. The link provided in the article doesn't provide much information about the nature of the attack.

Searching on BBC for "lynx" shows that this browser is very popular in Britain, they even named a real animal after it.

Re:I don't believe it

[dbIII]

I wouldn't put it past the police/judges in any country of being largely ignorant of what a browser agent really means

I see it as being "the expert says this guy is a hacker, so we arrest him" - while the reality is that the "expert" isn't an expert and is not under adult supervision.

I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing. Hopefully we'll get more info so the words "you got a customer arrested because you were too ignorant to do your job properly?" follow this guy around for his entire career - if justified.

I use lynx regularly, as do many others, any sysadmin who has never heard of it is inexperienced. If someone in a workplace is browsing pr0n for eight hours a day, the only safe way (grannies doing what?) to confirm that the URLs have dodgy content is lynx or similar things, or it's the simplest way to see if your web server is up or not from a console in the cold depths of a server room.

Re:I don't believe it

[d_strand]

Police would never arrest someone just because of the browser he was using.

BWAAAHAAAAAHHAAAAA!!! No wait, this is not even funny.

1) The police arrested him because they thought he was hacking stuff, not because he was using Lynx.

2) The police arrest people for insane reasons all the time in 99% of all countries. While I firmly believe there was no evil intent from enyones side in this particular case, you really need to wake up: The police are only human and most of them do whatever the people who pay their bills tell them to (that means the government, not the taxpayer).

3)The fact that the guy was released in a few days shows us that the system is limping along OK. The "sysadmin" making the hacking claim OTOH, should now be arrested for criminal negligence/incompetence or something

Re:I don't believe it

[slavemowgli]

I use lynx regularly, as do many others, any sysadmin who has never heard of it is inexperienced.

It must have been a windows sysadmin, then. But yeah, that probably is equivalent to "inexperienced", anyway.

Re:I don't believe it

[Council]

My first reaction was:

This has all the markings of a story retold by someone who grabbed a few selective details and made them into a blog story that is so good that no one questions it. I'm really hoping that someone comes up with the actual facts here; I see boingboing has a note that they'll have more details soon. Hopefully it'll be explained then.

I asked around, and from what I hear, he was using both lynx AND nmap. So right away he's doing more than he should be. I can't find the sources, but some friends who have dug in further say he was in fact simply trying to hack it. Again, someone should corrobarate soon, and I hope it doesn't get swept aside by the blog flood.

As I said when this story first came up on boingboing,

"Well, this will hit /. eventually, and it won't matter what the facts are, we'll get to sit back and watch the thread pee its collective pants with joy at the perfect victimization story."

Did he file a bug report?

[node 3]

BUG 6397: "Save As..." dialog doesn't work properly under certa...
BUG 6398: Lynx unexpectedly quits when Japanese text is...
BUG 6399: When browsing tsunami relief site, users are arrested by the police...
BUG 6400: Choosing "cyan" for visited links causes all links to show up as cyan...

Re:Did he file a bug report?

[js7a]

Ha! "Works for me, can you attach a scan of your police report?"

Cool hack

[farmhick]

I didn't even know the Lynx was able to go online. And then to be arrested just because you use old technology, what a bother.

Re:Cool hack

[farmhick]

Well, maybe he tied a couple of bills to it and threw it through the charity's front window. Then they could say he crashed their Windows with something called Lynx. The reporter could have just gotten a little confused in the details.

What's that ?

[Liquid Len]

Hopefully Lynx users need not worry too much yet.
You mean the three of them ?

Re:What's that ?

[lachlan76]

You mean the three of them ?

Two of them now ;)

Stupidest mod ever

[mirko]

That idiot doesn't know that besides Lynx, there is also Links.

Parent is not offtopic !

Re:Stupidest mod ever

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't seem to compalin nearly as much when their posts are modded UP incorrectly.

People do not compalin at all.

Re:Stupidest mod ever

[bicho]

It was probably the admin staff from BT that cought that "bogus" entry on their servers who first modded the comment offtopic

Re:Stupidest mod ever

[ALpaca2500]

i hereby complain that this post that i made yesterday was modded up incorrectly. it is in no way interesting. hopefully i will be modded offtopic for bringing this up here, to balance it out.

Re:Stupidest mod ever

[Kent Recal]

i hereby complain that this post that i made yesterday was modded up incorrectly. it is in no way interesting. hopefully i will be modded offtopic for bringing this up here, to balance it out.

Actually, you are correct in your assessment of your prior days post being offtopic, and as such I would recommend your current post be modded Insightful due to the nature of the content as well as the usefullness of the supplied link...

While I agree with parents' reinforcement of grandparents yesterday-post being in no way interesting I propose to mod parent down (e.g. Overrated) due to the misleading confusion of "interesting" and "offtopic". Grandparents yesterday-post was in no way "interesting" (not offtopic, as parent stated) and grandparent asked for his todays post to be modded "offtopic" to balance it out. Parents malapropism implied grandparents' yesterday-post would offtopic, that's no fair as in fact it was only "not interesting".
In summary I propose to meta-moderate grandparents' yesterday posts "Interesting"-mods as "unfair", to moderate grandparents' post of today "Insightful" (agree with parent), parents post as "Overrated" and this post "Redundant".

call an @ an @

[MorboNixon]

I'm sure it wasn't the fact that he used Lynx, but all the ascii child pr0n they found on his hard drive that prompted his arrest.

Insightful???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just because he eats apples doesn't mean he is not a child molester"

Where is the connection of the two? Parent puts some claim in the room, based on a connection which doesn't exist, and is modded up?

Re:Insightful???

[LarsWestergren]

I actually thought it was pretty insightful, but I'll post instead of mod.

So far, all comments are supporting one of two hypotheses:
a) The story is a hoax, no one was arrested.
b) The story is true, OMG they are after us just for using Lynx!

Grandparent pointed out a possible third alternative:
The person was using Lynx, the bastard really tried to hack the tsunami relief site, and that's why he was arrested.

Re:Insightful???

[oliverthered]

Man found molesting child was eating apples.

That's head line new, a man was arrested whilst eating apples.

You watch too much FOX.

Re:Insightful???

[ArsenneLupin]

Or a fourth hypothesis:

• Most crackers are geeks.
• Many geeks use non-IE browsers.
• Therefore, among the population of non-IE using people, the percentage of hackers is slightly larger than in the general population.

So there might be indeed a weak correlation between lynx usage and cracking activity, even if this particular user was not trying to do anything wrong. Think of it like "browser profiling"...

Re:Insightful???

[ktistec]

a) The story is a hoax, no one was arrested.

Well, anything could be a hoax, but I find this eminently believable. I heard somewhere (maybe even here ;-)about a fellow who got in trouble for using the 'find' command...

...You know all those 'permission denied' messages you see for all the directories you don't have permissions for? (Or rather, that you would see if you didn't redirect stderr...)

Well, don't you see, that's trying to break into those directories, isn't it?

Right?

Anyway, that's the view that was taken by the 'sysadmins' at whatever institution this was...

Then there are the librarians who believe that they've been 'hacked' when some student changes the wallpaper on one of the machines...

On the Windows machine I use at work, I've got a copy of my text editor. This... how to put it? ..._freaks_ my boss out. He hasn't told me to delete it, (some bosses would, though!) but it _disturbs_ him... Software he's never heard of on the machine! What if it does something weird in the middle of the night?

A lot of people have deeply irrational attitudes towards any aspect of computing beyond their knowledge -- there's something almost occult about knowing how to change wallpaper; using lynx, not using Notepad[1], y'know?

Heck, come to think of it, I've got a copy of lynx itself on the work machine, too. (Hope the boss doesn't find out! ;-) I was doing a little browsing during a break using lynx... A co-worker says, "what are you doing?"... "Looking at [whatever site]", I reply.

"So," she says very slowly, "you're... reading a story... OK..."

I tried to explain the concept of a non-graphical browser... Even showed her the same page in IE... I still don't think she grasped that I wasn't engaged in some fundamentally different -- and weird -- activity.

So, hell yeah, I believe someone sicced the cops on that guy!

1. Or, FTM, using a text editor at all. A lot of folks have no idea what a text editor is...

Inexperienced techies shouldn't run big sites

[grundie]

Apart from the obvious hole BT have dug themselves in to, this goes to show that perhaps BT should employ more experienced staff to look after their high-profile websites. If the techie concerned thought Lynx was dodgy then clearly he hasn't been using the internet all that long.

Probably a fake story but if it were true...

[Slashdot Insider]

Serves him right for not using a digitally signed and approved Internet! How could he trust Lynx?

Re:I had to use Lynx once

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Lynx is just plain wrong!!!

No, using Lynx is just plain text.

Another conspiracy by M$?

[Hido]

Whats the chances of his door being broken down if he was using Windows XP with IE instead of using lynx?

This just goes to show that in the long-run, the TCO for M$ products are a lot lower then using other alternatives. :)

Re:I had to use Lynx once

[wertarbyte]

You are right, (e)links is much better! :-) (Also support mouse control through SSH with PuTTY)

That's a bit scary

[Omniscientist]

I'm not a user of Lynx, but I use links quite often. The thought of being jailed due to my using of a text browser that makes the world of popups and the loading of images a world in another universe makes me laugh and slightly worried. I hope I don't decide to make a website about something relatively useful and get canned for it. Thinking that this is jail-able is an idea so exotic I'd never think of it.

https?

[beuges]

Last i used lynx (which admittedly was years ago), it didnt appear to support https connections. Is this still the case? I'd be more concerned about a "tsunami relief website" that accepted donations over a non-secure protocol.

Re:https?

[Dicky]

Lynx has (optionally) supported https for many years now - I used to use it for my online banking (one of the reasons I'm impressed by my bank's service - it uses javascript and stuff, but works fine without it) before I caught this nasty GUI bug...

The real headline...

[bani]

BT, astonished by having seen the first correctly formatted HTTP request ever in their logs, reported the incident to police.

"Nobody follows RFCs these days -- microsoft has firmly established that standards are there to be ignored. Anyone following the HTTP RFCs as strictly and to the exact letter as this individual did is obviously up to no good, so we reported the incident to police as an obvious terrorist act.".

I am so paranoid

[tearmeapart]

I am so paranoid that I use lynx.
I am even more paranoid that I use BSD. (Security is more important than speed, new developments, a friendly environment, etc.)
The paranoia continues because I use BSD's jail to secure lynx.

My command to open lynx:
'/usr/sbin/jail -U poor_england_guy /dev/null dummy233 192.168.2.233 "/usr/local/bin/lynx -disable_cookies -ssl-only -referrer='http://www.google.ca' -nocolor https://www.dec.org.uk/"'

So lets see:
1. You cannot save data about me because I disabled cookies.
2. You cannot see data that I receive or send because I use ssl.
3. You cannot use somekind of frame trick to send me to a site where I do not want to go.
4. You cannot use popups on me. Lynx does not exactly have any windows.
5. No frame tricks either. Lynx does not support frames.
6. If some hole is found in lynx, my automatic secure update (/usr/ports with freebsd) with fix it. It's secure and uses ssh2-like things, so it will take a few thousand/million years to get past that security.
7. Even a virus gets on the machine:
a. I can just restart lynx.
b. I boot off a CD. The filesystem is read-only. Really read-only.
c. Virii are unheard of on bsd.
d. I can switch to links or wget.

Conclusions:
1. I find it a good probability that this system admin saw the person's lynx setup (comparable to mine) and was extremely jealous. After a few minutes of being stuck on "hostname#", the system administrator just gave up and decided to sue this guy.
This jealousy is similar to SCO's jealous of Linux.

2. Everyone should switch to a similar setup. I am sure everyone would enjoy the interface, and some would especially enjoy the ASCII pr0n.

Re:I am so paranoid

[MyHair]

Amazing. Now please explain how you posted using a Slashdot account with no cookies and mandatory SSL. :-)

By the way, gotcha:

This virus works on the honor system:

If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward
this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your
files at random.

Re:Well I think JWZ put it best for Lynx users.

[Ober]

Lynx users might remember this from www.jwz.org

#
Greetings, Lynx users. There is a reason this page doesn't use ALT tags
on the images. The reason is that the bozos responsible for both MSIE
and Netscape Confusicator 4.0 decided that they would display the ALT
tags of images every time you move the mouse over them -- even if the
images are loaded, and even if they are not links. The ALT attribute
to the IMG tag is supposed to be used *instead of* the image, not *in
addition to* the image.

This looks absolutely terrible, so I don't use ALT tags any more in
self-defense.

If they wanted to implemented tooltips, they should have used the TITLE
attribute to the A tag. That's in the HTML 1.2 spec and everything.

I had to decide between making this page look good for the vast majority
of viewers, or making it be readable by the miniscule minority of you
stuck in the 70s. Those of you in the retro contingent lost. Sorry.
#

reference:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000303115840/http:/ /w ww.jwz.org/

We have no confimation of the Lynx bit

[Kris_J]

So far there is a single, mostly unknown, source for the portions of the story pertaining to Lynx. This is notable more for how opposite the Blogsphere and mainstream media positions are on the story. Currently, only the man arrested knows the real story and I have even seen a quote from him yet. We certainly haven't been exposed to any decent journalism yet.

Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla

[new500]

. . .

Now, I am trying to think up something appropriately insulting of their intellect to write to their logs with the UA spoofer extensions in Mozilla.

Any suggestions? :-)

. . .

Re:Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla

[SeaFox]

How about
'Mozilla/5.0 (Not Lynx/Do not arrest user) Gecko/20041107 Harmless/1.7.3'

First time using Links...

[YowzaTheYuzzum]

I just downloaded Links for the first time to try it out, headed to Slashdot, and the first article I see is how using Lynx can land you in jail... I guess I picked the right browser, didn't I?

Re:First Post - CowboyNeal called the cops

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

First post with Lynx!

And your last post here, you hax0r, you!

Just tried it out...

[ArsenneLupin]

Just made a small donation to the DEC site, using lynx.

Now let's wait and see what will happen next...

If lots of people do the same:

• BT will get the message that there are still lots of people who use lynx
• more money for the tsunami victims :-)

Re:Just tried it out...

[ArsenneLupin]

Oh, and I forgot to mention: my Street address has an apostrophe (single quote) in it, so I think I might really need to worry about police knocking down my door...

Re:Just tried it out...

[Anonymous Coward]

# BT will get the message that there are still lots of people who use lynx
# more money for the tsunami victims :-)

You forgot one:
Police get lots of free hardware

imagine how many non-standard

[Evets]

imagine how many non-standard user agents will be showing up in bt's logs tomorrow.

I bet there's a ton of LWP requests hitting BT as we speak.

Re:well

[nametaken]

It seems the good thing is we're now getting uncorroborated news stories from sites called "Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things". The BBC article makes no mention of lynx user-agent lines as the culprit.

Can we up the bar a LITTLE?

comon everyone, use lynx to go to bt.com

[cheekyboy]

I just tried lynx to go to their donation form

https://www.donate.bt.com/bt_form.htm

via http://www.bt.com/index.jsp

So I hope everyone does it and makes BT see 100000x increase in LYNX usage

So this is what you get when you hire A+ grads from 'prestigeous' institutions.

So everyone, fire up lynx, lets make em look even dumber.

Re:G. Orwell would be proud

[dasunt]

since when dose a "hack atempt" constitute hauling someone off to jail?

...1984 is today aparently

Ob Simpsons quote:

"ATTEMPTED murder, what is that!? Do they give a Nobel Prize for ATTEMPTED chemistry? Well, do they?!" -Sideshow Bob

mandatory script

[wooby]

cat /var/log/httpd/access.log | grep lynx > /dev/authorities

Purple Monkey Dishwasher

[astrosmash]

Dev Lead: "Hey! Monkey! What's this Lynx thing about?"
Web Monkey: "It's a web browser that old-school Unix hackers used to use."

-- later ---

Middle Manager: "Sir! An old hacker has comprimised our system!"
CTO: "Release the monkeys."

Re:Lynx & https

[Anthony]

Lynx has supported https for years. [adavid@adavid work]$ lynx --version Lynx Version 2.8.4rel.1 (17 Jul 2001) libwww-FM 2.14, SSL-MM 1.4.1, OpenSSL 0.9.6 Built on linux-gnu Mar 19 2003 15:33:59 Copyrights held by the University of Kansas, CERN, and other contributors. Distributed under the GNU General Public License. See http://lynx.browser.org/ and the online help for more information. See http://www.moxienet.com/lynx/ for information about SSL for Lynx. See http://www.openssl.org/ for information about OpenSSL.

Re:Lynx & https

[Anthony]

Darn - where did that preview button go? :(

Lynx has supported https for years.

[adavid@adavid work]$ lynx --version
Lynx Version 2.8.4rel.1 (17 Jul 2001)
libwww-FM 2.14, SSL-MM 1.4.1, OpenSSL 0.9.6
Built on linux-gnu Mar 19 2003 15:33:59

Copyrights held by the University of Kansas, CERN, and other contributors.
Distributed under the GNU General Public License.
See http://lynx.browser.org/ and the online help for more information.

See http://www.moxienet.com/lynx/ for information about SSL for Lynx.
See http://www.openssl.org/ for information about OpenSSL.

Re:HAHA YES THAT IS VERY FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

Avant is the equivalent of the scented beaks doctors were using during outbreaks of the Black Death in the middle ages ... sure, you might be lucky and not get the plague, but it had nothing to do with your fancy accessories.

*phew* that story scared me

[circletimessquare]

thank god i use gopher

Re:Well I think JWZ put it best for Lynx users.

[slavemowgli]

At the risk of being modded as flamebait, that just shows again that jwz is an idiot.

Yeah, he did some cool stuff like xscreensaver, but when you actually talk to him, you'll find that he's really just a hateful idiot who will insult you simply for being what you are - not a bit better than any racist, sexist or Rush Limbaugh.

I just had to say that. :)

Corrections

[ozbird]

From the article, he was arrested and released i.e. bailed - not "jailed".

If he hadn't been released, he would have been remanded in custody - still not "jailed".

If he was point on trial and convicted, he would have been gaoled - did I mention not "jailed"?

Re:Ask the horses mouth

[Ubi_NL]

oh come on. Get off your high horse and wonder how many donations you made to Sudan where over 2 MILLION people died in the last few years.
Yes, the tsunami is a disaster, but unfortnualtely there are many countries that are fare worse off. Just because you don't go there on holiday doesn't make it right to ignore it.

Re:False alarm.

[James Fryer]

In theory the police can bring a case of 'malicious prosecution' against the complainant. In practise they will just drop the case.

Hahaha

[mcrandello]

From the linked article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwic kshire/3378445.stm

"Mr Nichols says he has spent £6,000 in bail and legal fees"
Apparently his Euros weren't good for that either.

Perhaps...

[TeknoHog]

..this is just a clever way of getting all the geeks to donate

</tinfoil>

Re:False alarm.

[pjt33]

There's an offence of wasting police time.

BT is the joke

[OwlWhacker]

So the police saw "Lynx" and busted him?

No, the article here says:

BT [British Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an access log and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's type and it's doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.

So, it's BT.

This isn't surprising. I've had run-ins with BT tech support plenty of times, and the staff can't even understand a simple SMTP transaction.

For a company that can't explain what its own SMTP server is doing, I can't say that this surprises me.

Obviously the support staff's check-lists only go so far.

Note pad of bills

[SgtChaireBourne]

Years ago, a retired restaurant owner taking some night classes where I worked explained one of his favorite jokes with US $2 bills: He'd get a stack of new ones from the bank and then attach the stack to cardboard backing like a pad of note paper in the time before stickies/post-its.

When paying for his meal or coffee, he'd make sure he had the attention of the waitress and then make like he was about to forget the tip. The at the last minute, he'd "remember" the tip and in full view of the waitress, reach into his jacket, pull out the pad of bills, rip off the top one (or two) and place the tip on the table. Some would get quite flustered and want "real" money.

You could probably do this with the Scottish 1 £ note or 5 £ note.

Re:Wait a sec

[t_allardyce]

It occurs to me that they would have had his name and address from the donation, a break-down of communication would have gone something like this:

Log: Lynx - - 195.245.14.212
Windowz Admin: OMG WTF!?
Log: Lynx: Error 255 Is_not_IE
Windowz Admin: OMG WTF!? 0w3n3d? h4x0rd?
PHB: Whats all this then?
Windowz Admin: Hackers
Phone: Ring Ring, Ring Ring
Police: Metropolitan Police?
PHB: Hackers, Tsunami, Help!?
Police: Yes sir, the address?
PHB: The address?
Windowz Admin: [tap tap] 34 Solaris Road

Police: POLICE!
Lynx User: Okay?
Police: Down on the ground! down on the fucking ground!
Lynx User: Ahh? WTF? 0w3nd?
Police: 0w3nd h4x0r mother fucker.
Lynx User: Lawyer!
Lawyer: WTF?
Lynx User: Yes, WTF?
Judge: WTF is Lynx?
Lawyer: WTF is Solaris?
Expert: Shut up n00bs
Bail: Money
Lynx User: Poor
The Sun(tm): Hacker, lynch mob, page 3, Sun readers are tards.

BB: WTF?
Slashdot: WTF OMG?

Urban Legends

[Council]

Sounds like someone spun off a silly version of it into a "we are victims of big brother for trying to help tsunami victims while using linux" story, which has a slashdot/blog popularity factor of 13/15. The only way it could go higher is if the story had claimed the guy had been arrested by SCO's thugs while trying to post a complaint to his congressman about the DCMA stopping him from helping starving tsunami victims to . . . download open-source software.

Seriously. Too good to be true, sounds exactly like an urban legend spun from someone's possibly false details about a real story. The reason this happens is that when you weren't there, you hear some parts and make up the details in your head, assuming you know the whole story. This is how urban legends, in general, happen.

Blind drivers

[cbr2702]

In my town the delivery truck for a curtain and venitian blind company says "Caution: blind driver!".

Re:well

[the_mad_poster]

CBS:FOX::Linux:SCO

You've got that assbackwards.

SCO:Linux::FOX:CBS?

No, we don't know it's a hoax

[alienmole]

The reason for spreading the news about something like this is that whether it's true or false, more information may come to light about it. That's how something like the recent faked documents scandal in the U.S. was exposed - by bloggers who questioned CBS news, and who had or were able to discover more information.

IOW, you no longer have to sit back and suck your news from the BBC's tit, nor should you, unless that thin and sour milky substance is all you can handle.

Re:No, we don't know it's a hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not "news" if it's a lie, dammit, no matter how many facts come to light.

"EXCLUSIVE (AP, Tampa, 9:11EST): My car keys have been stolen!"

"CORRECTION (AP, Tampa, 9:20EST): Sorry, they were in my other pants where I left them."

Change SUCKS! Well, small change does....

[Dogtanian]

Kinda weird to think how long these things stay in circulation... I've got a penny piece from 1978 in my pocket.

This is horribly ironic.

The UK 1p and 2p pieces are the *only* members of the original early 1970s decimal line-up still in circulation, in spite of the fact that they are hideously oversized for their current value. Frankly, they should have been the *first* to be replaced.... but at any rate, they're the only coins that are going to date back that far.

The 1/2p piece was withdrawn in the early 1980s.
The 5p and 10p pieces were replaced with smaller and lighter versions in the early 1990s (the pre-decimalisation shilling remained in use until then, as it was the same metal, size, weight and value as the 5p piece).
The 50p was also replaced with a smaller clone during the 1990s.
The 20p piece and pound coins weren't introduced until the early 1980s.
The 2 pound coin is only a few years old.

But we still have the ******* original 1p and 2p coins. The 1p coin is so worthless now (less than the 1/2p was worth back when they got rid of that, I'd guess) that they should probably ditch it altogether. Only 2p is a weird choice for a 'base' coin, and 5p is just a little too much, so they'll probably keep it at 1p.

But why- at least- don't they shrink them down?

Probably not worth it now.. *sigh*.

I hate small change; taking into account the extra time I have to wait to get 1p back, sort through the worthless coins in my pocket when searching for 'real' change, stick them in the change jar, sort them, and take them to the bank, it's NOT WORTH MY TIME WAITING FOR THE 1P CHANGE!

Yeah, I *know* someone has proved you could make a living picking up small-value coins from the pavement. *But*... when you take into account their use in real-life, the overhead isn't worth their face-value.

Of course, since the US cent is worth less than the UK (new) penny, it would make real sense for them just to ditch everything below a nickel (5c IIRC).

Banned for using DOS

[Aliks]

Completely off topic I know, but a couple of years ago my 11 year old son was banned for a week from the school computer lab after being found using DOS.

Apparently the school authorities had decided that any type of command line smelt of hacking and subversive tendencies.

Re:Banned for using DOS

[MooseGuy529]

Please yell at the school!

At my elementary school we used to have an IBM network system (token ring--those were the days!) with a menu system in it. It was unfortunate, since a friend of mine and I liked to program in QBASIC, and all the menu allowed was Logo and Microsoft Works. However, Microsoft Works had a convenient "Launch Program" option on the File menu, whose first choice was a command prompt. That led to tons of fun in QBASIC. Fortunately my teachers weren't idiots, and didn't really care.

I just remembered, they had a really creative approach to "logging" superuser logins--the computer just made a loud siren noise when you logged on as SYSOP, making it impossible to do within earshot of a teacher.

I really can't stand the anti-geek (mostly anti-smarter-than-the-administration) sentiment in today's schools... people are idiots.

Re:Wait a sec

[AndroidCat]

Tune in next week when 133t theater performs Who Shot BSD?

Um, it's Cory Doctorow

[argent]

Cory Doctorow isn't exactly a random luser, he's a well-known commentator and online journalist.

Woz and the "$2 Bill Incindent"

[caveat]

Shameless Karma Whoring

Ignorance?

[lysium]

"Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things" (the name doesn't exactly instil confidence in the credibility of its stories)

Which wet rock do you live under, exactly? Your 'net lore obviously extends no further than your slashdot account. Speaking of which, what do you think "slashdot" sounds like to the tech-phobic businessman? Think about it -- you are now categorically defined.

Re:Wait a sec

[RenHoek]

Lynch mob? Lynx mob! :)

Re:well

[lysium]

BoingBoing is a news aggregator, one of the oldest and best known on the 'net. You did a great job displaying your ignorance, though.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Jailed for IE?

[digitalgimpus]

Jailed for IE? Why not?

It's insecure (your computer could be hijacked and used for malicious purposes)... national security risk.

Re:still will have novelty value

[lgw]

Rumor has it, though I cant find the law, that one is not required to accept pennies in payment for debts larger than 25 cents. This after too may jokers paid the IRS in pennies over the years.

Can anyone confirm or debunk this?

Re:Why not use "Links" instead of "Lynx"

[Teancum]

Although it has been a while myself, I used to be a rather avid Lynx user. Also, if you absolutely want to make sure that your website is 100% following standard HTML coding, I love to run it through Lynx if for nother other than to do a quick verification that all of the images are properly tagged, and other aspects of viewing web pages aren't all that cumbersome. If the webpage passes the Lynx test, I feel pretty confident that most other non-standard browsers will also work (in addition to IE and Mozilla).

Also, keep in mind that there are some (admittedly older) computers that you can shell into via telnet that only have Lynx installed. Rather than trying to hassle getting something new installed, Lynx is there and handy. It was also spread around quite freely in the early days of the web.

Re:still will have novelty value

[gatzke]

At nudie bars around here they give you change for a drink in $2 bills, thinking you pass twice as much to the strippers when you give them a tip, not that I would know ;-)