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Teen Sentenced for Releasing Variant of Blaster Worm
ScentCone writes "Minnesota teen Jeffrey Lee Parsons got a year and half for releasing a Blaster variant. The lightweight sentence was due, said the judge, to the parents' neglect. Quoting the judge: 'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.' Which means most slashdotters basically have a get out of jail free card."
why should he be punished for the ineffectiveness of others people's software/inabiltiy to update?
No Kidding...
I used to read slashdot a lot. I have over 1000 posts, Karma bonus, I have had articles submitted. But i NEVER read slashdot anymore. Its not becuase i dont enjoy it. Its becuasei play WoW all the time im on my computer. Why am i here typing this up right now then if i never read slashdot. Well becuase there is a que to connect the the server. Well time to go check to see if i can go back to my reality.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Why didn't his parents get some time in the klink, if they're contributory in their neglect? And why does "try a child as an adult" make any sense at all? He was 17 when committed the crimes - the "child" treatment acknowledges that children have a chance to learn from their corrections *differently* than adults, for whom it's usually too late to form their social attitudes. Children can be educated, while adults usually must be intimidated with punishment. Kids don't get "mercy" because we're "nice"; they get different treatment because it works better on them, with less cost and risk to us. Meanwhile, the adults at Microsoft, who wrote the malware that his Blaster exploited, have learned that Microsoft profits from security holes, and we'll never see the end of them.
--
make install -not war
'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.'
But it is healthy to lock YOU in a cell to create your new reality!
I am personally glad that people not yet 18 -basically children- can get away with doing stuff like that.
Except... those children can ruin businesses and careers. I know, if no machine was ever vulnerable, it could never happen. But, truly, this is just like 14 year old kids who drop rocks off of bridges onto the highway, just to see if they can hit a windshield. Being older than 10, and not able to see at least a couple consequences of your actions is pretty much of a defect (or, indeed, the sign of some seriously loser parents).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Kids do stupid things. I know I did my fair share of stupid things when I was younger. Now I consider myself a highly moral, good standing citizen of society, with great future prospects. But if I had been put in jail for one of the silly things I did when I was younger, my life today would probably be a disaster, and to society's detriment.
'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.'
Yeah, there's all of those unhealthy millionaires like Douglas Adams, Stephen King, the Wachowski brothers, Stan Lee, locking themselves into a room alone to create their own realities. How evil!
"But, truly, this is just like 14 year old kids who drop rocks off of bridges onto the highway, just to see if they can hit a windshield."
Not even close. This is more like egging someone's car, parked on the street instead of in a garage. That's not entirely accurate, either, but at least it wouldn't involve people actually dying (like chucking rocks at cars on the highway could).
I think 18 months is more time than he deserves, he was stupid yes, but when this young, giving them years to life in prison does nothing but makes citizens fund his imprisonment, and create a useless person that can't give back to society.
If we looked at this at the cost of putting someone in jail for nonviolent crimes, and had him on probation doing community service, community service would win out. He could serve his time while going to school, much better for everyone.
We are not only trying to punish them, but also rehabilitate them. Which by all accounts, using the death penalty as an example, criminals will do criminal activity no matter what the punishment.
Our legal system is broke, and people are paying for it. The cost of law enforcement vs prison is really out of balance. Of course, Texas has turned prison into a money making business, which should show how absurd the whole thing is.
Kids still do stupid stuff, and writing viruses seem to be something kids do. Same as smoking pot, nothing is going to change if we put everyone in prison, other than making a prison state.
Non-violent criminals should be treated different, and then circumstances taken into account. Stealing excluded.
before surfing to Slashdot to check the headlines.
I remember seeing this kids picture when he was busted, and now that i've read his story, I've gotta say I feel sorry for him.
Not so much for his punishment, as much as his life thus far. His parents did get blamed by the judge for being neglectful, but I don't think that begins to explain how bad it was.
The guy was afraid to go outside. You can see in his photo that he's rather large, and not at all the typical 19 year old (He was what? 17 when he got busted?). It just looks like another case wherein a kid was an outcast, primarily due to a bad home situation, and rather than have friends or relatives to help him through, he retreated into his room, and kind of lived in his own world, which the parents did nothing to prevent, or try to help him outta.
Just sounds like a sad story... Kinda like you feel after watching one of those HBO Specials like "Black Tar Heroin" or something. It sucks that he is where he is, but what sucks worse is that there's lotsa other people out there in similar situations.
The Skatenigs said it best w/their debut album: "Stupid people shoudn't breed!".
That's why judges are involved. He doesn't need to trick a computer into thinking he's following the order. He needs to convince a human being.
I can't understand squirting out some kids and then letting them run rampant and not having any responsibility for a minor's actions.
First off, he's 17, and is an adult in most ways that count. At 17, he can't really hide behind the shield of your parents. He should be held responsible for most or all of his actions.
Secondly, I doubt his parents would realize he was making a virus even if they were looking. As far as they probably knew, he was programming, learning computers. He didn't get busted for drugs or playing with guns, which means his parents were doing something right.
Obviously they weren't perfect parents, but no parents are perfect.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Kids are NOT responsible for their actions, that's why they can't vote
But where do you (personally) draw the line? Candidly, I'd rather they could vote at 16, but not drive until 21. But a 17 year old (really, now) should be able to understand basic stuff like: millions of people rely on something that's not bulletproof, and this malicious thing I'm about to do will really, really screw with them. It's not that he doesn't know that, it's that he doesn't care. Same could be said about a 16 year old that decides to torch an apartment building, or throw rat poison in someone's food.
To some extent people like that are just plain broken... but cognitively, a 17 year old should be plenty functional enough not to pull crap like this, and should know it. If not, based only on his age, he sure as hell shouldn't be allowed to go out solo and drive 2500 pounds of metal across railroad tracks that carry, say tanker cars of chlorine. Of course, we trust 16 year-olds to not kill people, at the expense of some serious consequences. Can't we trust them not to trash people's businesses?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If this Judge thinks having a taste of reality is a healthy thing, they should have themselves placed into the prison system with which they punish people and see if they have any better grasp of reality afterwards.
Seastead this.
As a general rule I think that the idea of prisons as a whole (which mind you are relatively new) are a very odd idea, "Wait we're going to put a bunch of criminals in the same building right?" "Yep" "We're not going to segregate them based on what they did?" "Nope" "And when they get out we're hoping that they turn into perfect citizens, after spending the last x number of years surrounded by criminals"\ "Ayup, that's the theory" I just don't get it, but I imagine that this kid might think twice before trying it again. Can't see it stopping anyone else though.
Get a free Ipod!
When you're a fatty little weakling computer geek forced to toss the salad of a guy named Bruno who's been pumping iron since he was convicted of bashing his girlfirends skull in because he found out she was going cyber with some fatty little weakling computer geek.
I doubt that, if he is kept in school, and learns some structure from being incarcerated, and comprehends right from wrong (releasing a virus into the wilds of the internet is not that innocent). What you describe is generally what occurs if you put them in a hole and forget about them for the length of their sentance.
While I concur that the legal remedy for crimes is generally pretty screwed up, in this case, I do not think they will make a useless person out of this.
Besides, you're missing the entire point of the justice system. It's not there to get revenge on people who've caused damage. I mean sure, you can claim eye for an eye is justice but that view's been going more and more out of favor. Reforming people is generally more successful; not to mention, in the end more benefitial to society. As for preventiveness, I'm sure any amount of actual oversight - from their parents or otherwise - is probably enough to deter most 'script kiddies'.
Well, that's how I do my best work. Unfortunately, the real world around me is pretty grim, and when I can get to my little house and work on my computers, then I have something that is my own. I'm sure the Judge in this case was just trying to say something important about writing viruses, but there are those of us who do decent law-abiding coding work, and create something worthwhile under those circumstances.
Teenagers are often smarter than we adults give them credit for. That said, they are generally not wise. A teenager can understand that doing something is wrong, but he/she may not have the maturity or wisdom to keep from doing it anyway.
what exactly did he do to "release it to 40,000 computers".. it's a worm. he modified the copy that infected his machine and it went on doing what it does. Had he not done that 40,000 computers would still have been infected just not with his modified version.
He probably took too much credit for it thinking he wasn't going to get caught. If he had a better lawyer he probably could've walked clean
bite my glorious golden ass.
Read the parent before flaming off into oblivion. He's not advocating script kiddies. He's railing against the fact that it is illegal to even POINT OUT that security holes exist.
Let's say for example that you experience some persistent bug in your web server software, that is triggered whenever a user hits your site and does not have IE or Netscape/Mo'. This bug causes the server to crash whenever it reads the line that would contain the alternate browser's id... for whatever reason it cannot handle the 'malformatted' line that says 'browser=Opera'.
Gee, that's a pretty frickin' annoying bug. Now, normally when you buy a defective product, you can sound off on it, and give a bad review of the product for example.
Not so with BigIP's software. Sure, you can write a non-flattering review about how their server software crashes. But, just mentioning that carries very little weight. Prospective buyers, even if they SEE your review, are comparing your personal review with against the massive onslaught of the company's marketing machine. The marketing machine is going to say that the server software has records for uptime, and is fully compliant with all standards, and works with all sorts of end user tech, etc.. How is the end user to know you just aren't some jerk who didn't know what he was doing and is now pissed off because he misconfigured his web server?
The answer is, you post the conditions of how the software misbehaves and you dispell the notion that you simply incompetent. People will be able to see that the 'malformatted' line of code is actually something that could plausibly be sent to the server, and that the server will crash as a result. NOW... you've got something. Now your words have some force behind them as it is provable that your bad review of the software is not just spite, it points out legitimate flaws in the software.
HOWEVER.... posting this information can now get you into all kinds of trouble. The company that produces the web server product can now look at it in a couple of ways... one, how much will it cost us to fix the problem (Soft. Eng.s cost money, you know), and two, how much will it cost us to silence the problem (Lawyers aint free either). If one is cheaper than two, the problem gets fixed. If two is cheaper than one, the site owner gets a letter telling them to remove infringing materials from their site, that they are culpable for any hacking that occurs as a result, and that they are liable for any damages resulting from the offending review.
And that, to me, is the problem. Rather than fix the security holes, companies try to silence people who point them out. The theory is that by making exploitive information go away, they can make the problem go away. This is the "weak lock" theory. However, the problem DOES NOT go away simply because it is more difficult to find the flaw in the lock. The flaw still exists and dedicated theives will still find it. The weak lock with the widely known flaw will be exploited by the casual thief. The weak lock with not-so-widely known flaw will be exploited by the professional thief. This does not make the lock any better at protecting you against theft by those equipped to take advantage of it. Studies of whether or not casual, script kiddie type hackers do more damage picking a thousand locks than a few dedicated hackers using the picks on several dozen machines, and then using those machines to commit further crimes is another topic entirely. (My bet is on the dedicated types doing more. Reinstalling windows across 2000 machines is time consuming. Having a few hundred machines to run identify theft out of, is incredibly damaging.)
By using the weak lock theory, BigIP can market software as a strong lock when in fact it is a weak lock. They are free to state this and anyone who disagrees is written off / sued. Whenever it is against the law to hurt a company's revenue, by making truthful statements... well, I don't want to complete that thought, as it leads to all sorts of horrific ramifications.
Not funny. The kid may deserve to go to jail, but no one deserves to be raped.
I'm surprised nobody's commented about Microsoft being treated as the primary victim in this case. The worm attacked tons of machines across the entire Internet, not just ones owned by Microsoft, yet the offender is ordered to pay restitution to Microsoft. They're not the victim here! In fact, I'd go so far as to say that their shoddy programming and quality control contributed to the situation (as it has many times over for various other bugs since Blaster). Why are they receiving restitution when they could more easily be considered liable?
binary encoded ascii for: what are words?
be he's obviously not stupid.
He's obviously stupid. His actions served nobody, and landed himself in jail. That is not intelligent behaviour by any measure.
> Can someone tell me what is humourous about human beings being raped and sodomized ?
It's a variant of the banana skin joke. It's funny when something dangerous happens to somebody else but not when it happens to you. Read: Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's Reith lecture to learn about some of the neuroscience behind it.
I'm probably in a similar position to many in that I find the rape gags funny (I'd argue that it's inhuman not to) but I deplore the male rape that goes on in American prisons.
Remember that geeks like Dimitry Skylarov get thrown into American prisons and people wonder why Alan Cox refuses to go to the States!
It's just one of many reasons I refuse to go to the States...Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are just different aspects of the same culture of abuse within American prisons.
"Land of the Free", where "Free" includes a large tool jammed up your backside....it's funny because it's true :(
The Machine stops.
'It's not a healthy thing to lock yourself in a room and create your own reality.' But its ok for the judicial system to lock you in a room and create a seperate reality for you, please enjoy your 18 months in a Minnisoeta Pound me in the Ass Prison.