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Man Reportedly Jailed for Using Lynx

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the freak-outs dept.

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.

51 of 912 comments (clear)

  1. And for good reason! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:And for good reason! by grandmofftarkin · · Score: 4, Informative

      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!

  2. Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by PreDefined · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by ActionJesus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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!

    2. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by andynz · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

    3. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by Associate · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      Someone hates these cans.
    4. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Funny
      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. :-)
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    5. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by rpjs · · Score: 5, Informative

      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...

    6. Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? by Molt · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
  3. WHY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:WHY! by Hoagy · · Score: 5, Funny

      what about "Man Reportedly Jailed for Creating IE"

  4. Thank God for people.... by Homology · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:Thank God for people.... by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

      --
      Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
    2. Re:Thank God for people.... by skahshah · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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 !

  5. Bonus Browser by orangeguru · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lynx - the adventure browser ...

  6. Man Reportedly Jailed for Using IE by SpikyTux · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  7. Technical in-joke by Neo-Rio-101 · · Score: 4, Funny
    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 ");
    --
    READY.
    PRINT ""+-0
  8. Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    for false imprisonment, and sued for slander, liable, an anything else he can think of.

  9. No, *I* am Spartacus! by cliffiecee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  10. Because everyone knows by L.Bob.Rife · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

  11. Re:governments are funny. by L.Bob.Rife · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  12. Did he file a bug report? by node+3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    1. Re:Did he file a bug report? by js7a · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  13. What's that ? by Liquid+Len · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:What's that ? by lachlan76 · · Score: 4, Funny

      You mean the three of them ?

      Two of them now ;)

  14. Insightful??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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?

    1. Re:Insightful??? by LarsWestergren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --

      Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

  15. Probably a fake story but if it were true... by Slashdot+Insider · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  16. Re:I had to use Lynx once by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Using Lynx is just plain wrong!!!

    No, using Lynx is just plain text.

  17. The real headline... by bani · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.".

  18. I am so paranoid by tearmeapart · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  19. Re:Well I think JWZ put it best for Lynx users. by Ober · · Score: 5, Funny

    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/

  20. We have no confimation of the Lynx bit by Kris_J · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  21. Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla by new500 · · Score: 4, Funny

    . . .

    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? :-)

    . . .

    1. Re:Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  22. Re:First Post - CowboyNeal called the cops by Anonymous+Cowherd+X · · Score: 5, Funny

    First post with Lynx!


    And your last post here, you hax0r, you!


  23. Re:I don't believe it by gnuorder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  24. Re:https? by Dicky · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

    --
    Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
  25. Re:I don't believe it by koi88 · · Score: 5, Funny


    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.

    --

    I don't need a signature.
  26. Just tried it out... by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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 :-)
    1. Re:Just tried it out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      # 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

  27. Re:well by nametaken · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  28. comon everyone, use lynx to go to bt.com by cheekyboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
  29. Re:I don't believe it by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  30. Re:I don't believe it by d_strand · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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
  31. Purple Monkey Dishwasher by astrosmash · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

    --
    ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
  32. Re:I don't believe it by slavemowgli · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    --
    quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  33. Re:Wait a sec by t_allardyce · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
  34. Banned for using DOS by Aliks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  35. Um, it's Cory Doctorow by argent · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  36. Jailed for IE? by digitalgimpus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Jailed for IE? Why not?

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