Slashdot Mirror
DDOS Mafia On The Loose
TivoLee writes "If you were worried that courts have been cracking down too much on Internet miscreants lately, think again. Sure, virus writers and spammers have been hit with some tough sentences in recent months. But what about this: the U.S. govt. has dropped charges against a group of four guys known as the DDOS Mafia. Two of the men admitted to releasing viruses so they could create botnets to launch DDOS attacks for hire. Their boss is accused of causing $2Mil in damage to victim sites. Yet prosecutors are dropping charges, so they can get the criminals to snitch on other criminals. Oi vey."
Ironically, when I clicked on the comment button, Slashdot told me there was "Nothing to see here. Move along." Denial of slashdot? :-)
Why is this bad? It's worked well against organized crime, why not try it against organized cyber-crime?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
This is a common prosecutorial practice... whats the big deal?
Here's a hint. They do the same thing for murderers, drug trafficants, gang members. Prosecuting them will take 4 places in jail. Getting them to cooperate will help stop others, and they probably have to engage themselve not to continue doing viruses / ddos. Everyone wins. Honestly, if they do it with murderers, is it THAT surprising that they do the same thing with script kiddies?
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In other words, normal lawyer tactics. Nothing to see here.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Moral of the story: if you're going to commit crimes, don't tell people about it :-)
Rewards are expected to be offered to anyone with information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Mr. Malda. :)
SopranOS
Their boss is accused of causing $2Mil in damage to victim sites.
...but I assume the victims can still file a civil lawsuit for damages? So it's not exactly like walking away as a free man.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why prosecute someone when you got bigger fish to fry?
:P
They should to go after Joe Q. Public who leaves his computer wide open for the script kiddies to cruise on. I hear he does that everywhere he goes. He really should be Public Enemy Number One.
This sort of thing happens all the time. Prosecutors are always willing to adjust or drop charges in exchange for information which would lead to big arrests for other people. Sure these guys caused $2 million in damages, but maybe the government knows these guys could help them find other people that have caused $10 million in damages, or maybe these guys could help the government find other people who are planning these attacks before these other people do $2 million or $10 million in damages.
I Am Not A Lawyer, but I've taken some criminal law classes taught by experienced attorneys, and I watch Law & Order. On the other hand, maybe there's something I'm missing.
Like a Karma rating of Terrible, a -1, Troll on every post and at least one more name on your Freaks list. Good luck.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Wait? Why are all the Slashbots packing suitcases for overnight trips to Canada?
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Part of agreements like that are "and you keep your nose clean in the future." These guys will have an eye kept on them, and if they go back to their old habits not only can they be charged with the new crimes, but with the ones they made a deal on as well.
I have no problem at all with this, provided it is used to catch more important criminals. I mean really, I'm not that interested in the script kiddies that write the software and create the botnets. I want them stopped, of course, but I'm more interested in the people behind the operation that pay them and benefit from it. Bust the kiddies, the backers will find new ones, bust the backers, it's a done deal.
Even if, in the end, all the charges are dropped, we will likely be very safe from the DDOS Mafia. Think about it: every bit of data they transmit will likely be monitored. Sure, they might try to pull a quick one past the government, but all of a sudden, at least for them, such an attempt just got much more difficult.
SlashDot: Jews for nerds. Stuff that's farklempt. *dodges tomatoes*
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
DDoS Mafia = Press' Term for Slashdot Horde?
In that case, the press should know...there's way more than four...and we're all willing to snitch...
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
For the gov't to use them, they must be trustable. It also sets a bad precedent for the gov't to hire criminals for their crimes.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, who, via his massively popular website Slashdot, has been crushing other, weaker websites for years. Prosecutors have a great deal of evidence, but are still looking for motives.
Speaking of this, has anyone yet solved the Slashdot Paradox?
Few read the articles, yet the web servers get annihilated!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Even if these guys cooperate, will their assetts be sized by the government under civil forfeiture laws?
At least that way, they don't profit from their crimes. If they can do it for someone getting oral sex in their car, they should be able to do it for a DDOS gang.
Fight Spammers!
Try "oy vey" instead. See Alternative Yiddish Dictionary under "O".
So they admit the did these DDOS's, cut a deal to finger Mr Big in return for immunity from prosecution.
If your company were one of the ones damaged by their admitted DDOS, can you sue them for damages?
This is a special case of a more general question: If a person has been accused of a crime, and been processed by the justice system, can the victims of the crime also sue for reparation? (Well, in one far-too-celebrated case (OJ) they did.)
I can see various arguments why it would be a good or bad thing to allow this, various possible compromises, references to weregilds etc., but I'm supposed to be working, not writing an essay, so I'll quit here.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The article states that the charges were dropped "without prejudice", which means that they can be refiled at a later date if the prosecutor decides that it is in the public interest to do so.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I'm waiting for an angry group of Russian mobster geeks to go postal on some U.S. Cyber Crime witnesses. I can see it now "Hax0r hacked in two, two days before testifying in trial."
Now, what would be funny is if they used a rail gun to do it. HEADSHOT.
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
What does "oi yey" mean? Google's doesn't know.
"Oy vey" (sometimes oy vay / oy way) is a Yiddish phrase and means roughly dear me or woe is me. Vey might actually have been adopted from the German "weh" which I believe is pain. Oy i'm not sure about. It should be an old Hebrew translated in the Christian bible as woe but who's to say. Where as "vay iz mir" (oy vay iz mir) is also a Yiddish expression for woe is me. Oy gevalt is a cry pain/suffering.
It's my belief that "oi yey" is some schlemiel's attempt to write oy vey resulting in ferklempt.
Shalom!
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
In former times, the Internet used to be the place where our clowns would laugh in happy anarchy. ...) those have brought with them banished from our networks.
Corporations and Business from "real life" have since taken over the networks.
We - rightly - want the filth (organized criminality, theft, fraud,
But the ultimate outcome will be a governed Internet. Already, DRM is around the corner and internet communications are being tapped.
Protect Internet Anarchy! Suffer the occasional virii and spam mails - for the sake of a free Internet!
"On The Loose"? They're being prosecuted yet somehow they're... on the loose? Stupid Slashdot.
I'm not suggesting, it's the truth. Go do a bit of research on it. There are two big purchasers of botnets:
1) Spammers. They are generally more interested in the zombie'd machine version to use it to send SPAM,.
2) Extortionists. They threaten sites with DDoS's if protection money isn't paid. If that sounds like a normal mob scam, well it is and that's often who's behind it, one of the OC syndicates out there.
There are certianly script kiddies that do it just for their own benefit, but those are generally the IRC variety. They attempt to take over channels and the like. Big attacks on major sites predicated by demands for money are generally backed by criminals with a little more experience in this kind of thing.
You are suggesting correlation without thinking about the possible causation. :P.
We don't read the articles Because we've already slashdotted the servers and therefore can't. Sometimes I don't even bother with the links cause I figure the server's already down.
Sometimes the server goes down with the <SYN> flood before anyone gets a page back
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Of course some would like the death sentence as a more effective deterrent/barganing power, but I'll not get into that debate.
AC comments get piped to
Don't doubt that they'll keep an eye on these guys. They might agree to drop charges to nail a bigger fish, but that doesn't mean that they can't nail these guys again in the future for another transgression.
DDoS mafia is terrorism: threats of destruction are a media attack against groups of people, hence political. Of course the US is dropping charges against them for cooperation: we have a terrorist government, with an express policy of creating terrorists like bin Laden and the Iraqi "insurgents". With every cyberterror czar we've ever had quitting in disgust, why should we be surprised that we're consistent?
--
make install -not war
The problem is, that the snitch can frame someone else as a bigger fish. One of the "terrorist cells" the US "found" was actually a few muslim guys a fraudster knew. When the fraudster got caught, well, he decided to rat them out as terrorists in order to get away with a reduced sentance...
Initial story.
Later story.
The video tape profiling Disney world as a target ended up being a tourist tape. The notebook with a sketch of a base in turkey ended up being the mad scriblings of a crazy guy who lived at the place before them that thought he was the head of the military of the entire middle east or something...
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Yeah, back in my IRC days I would know all these kids that would judge thier AWEOSME LEETNESS!! by how many bots they had. Kind of pathetic. But hey, if you can't get a girlfriend, why not try for a botnet?
-gjr
"Schmerz" is German for pain. However, "Es tut weh" means "it hurts", or literally, "it does hurt".
Wow, I hope that is from the mind of somebody who has watched the Matrix far too many times. If anybody actually wastes real time writing shit like that in a chat room, I feel sorry for their lack of a real life.
"Yet prosecutors are dropping charges, so they can get the criminals to snitch on other criminals. Oi vey."
You don't know how it works, do you?
I knew a guy in the Alameda County Jail (in California) who was, like me, a Federal detainee awaiting trial. He was the chemist for a drug ring. The ring got busted; he got arrested along with the kingpins involved. The Feds threatened him with 25 years or whatever if he didn't roll over on the kingpins. He refused. Although he had no other criminal record, he was going to be charged with multiple counts totalling a lot of years in the joint. Meanwhile, the kingpins rolled over on everybody and got sentences of probation, four months, time served, etc. In other words, they rolled right out of jail and went right back to work while the one guy who was not a dealer - but who also was not a rat - got major time.
This is how the Feds get their 98% conviction rate. You are arrested, threatened with fifty years in the joint unless you rat out all your relatives and everyone else you know. Then you get only ten years in the joint. Their evidence against you is the same crap info they got from YOUR relatives in exchange for the same deal. Everybody rolls over on everybody - whether they're guilty or innocent doesn't matter.
Of course, in some case, the relatives roll over on somebody who is not a relative in order to protect their relatives. The effect is the same. I had a cellie who was an idiot who merely held stash for some dealers. When arrested, his contact told the judge he was the major player in order to protect the dealer's brother-in-law who was the real local partner in the ring. When my cellie met the head of the ring in a holding cell, the head told him he'd never heard of him but he knew of the relative. When my cellie had his lawyer bring this up to the judge, the judge said he didn't want to hear the testimony of the head man because he was "just a drug dealer" - despite the fact that my cellie had been convicted on the testimony of a lesser drug dealer with a relative to protect and a Federal deal encouraging him to rat out innocent (well, relatively innocent in my cellie's case) people.
And of course, there's the case of Kevin Mitnick and Justin Petersen...The FBI ran this one-legged crook while he took advantage of the FBI to run his own scams - eventually embarassing the FBI.
Not to mention the FBI agents in Boston and the Whitey Bulger case.
You think there's any rationality to any of this?
You've got to be kidding.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!