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Microsoft Drops Blaster Author's Fine
bevo noted that Microsoft has dropped their fine against the author of the Blaster worm that DDoS'd Microsoft's web sites and hijaacked 50,000 computers. 225 hours instead of a 500k fine. $2200/hour seems like a good deal to me ;)
Luckily the community service cannot involve computers, otherwise this guy will get away lightly by cleaning up roughly 50 spyware/virus-infected Windows machines to clock up 225 hours.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said the sentence reflected that although he was 18 at the time of the attack, his maturity level was much younger than that. She also said his home life contributed to the problem.
Damn, that precedent means virtually everyone here on /. is immune from prosecution. For anything. Especially since "mom's basement" probably qualifies as a "home life".
John
Depends on what the community service involves!
So MS has been given judicial powers to grant clemency now? What is this world coing to?
I, for one welcome our new $2200/h overlords...
.. that had been me. I'd damage microsoft like that for only 225 hours. 225 hours is nothing, I'd do it all at once and get it over with in a few weeks.
How can MS "fine" someone? Are they really that close to the government now that they can hand out their own judgement and punishment?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Microsoft comes out looking like a good guy who brought this person to justice. Most of the media ignores that a large part of the fault lies with Microsoft Windows...and Microsoft appreciates that very much.
... by replacing himself by a shell script?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Script kidding just don't get you that kind of respect anymore, do it?
The Digital Couture Collection
How does that work? It can ignore governmental orders, pressure countries into software patents, and now alter someone's sentence in a criminal trial? What happens when they decide to increase someone's sentence instead of decrease?
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
This was the guy who modified the Blaster worm. The original author never got caught.
Great! I bet his community service will be fixing Windows computers. Talk about irony!
Billy boy dropped the fine was that he saw some of himself in the boy, totally ripping off someone elses work, rebranding it and sending out the door. It was just a variant, wasn't it?
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
Why doesn't Microsoft get punished for its faulty software which allowed this to happen?
Life just ins't fair....
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
What happened to the bully Microsoft of the past? I can't believe he did not get any jail time for fines. Granted community service sucks, 225 hours REALLY sucks.
Note: If he does 8 hours a week (assuming he has some other sort of job), it will take a little over 28 weeks to complete!
... system administration for MS clients?
Please shoot me instead.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
The article also contained this:
Jeffrey Lee Parson, of Minnesota, was sentenced this year to 18 months in prison and 10 hours of community service.
What the hell is the point of a day's worth of community service when you are also serving 18 months in prison!?
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
...gardening! getting to know the REAL bugs out there!
Three rings for the Elven-kings in the sky
First off. I thought the oringial writer was never caught, they only caught some chump that made his own version.
Secondly, what the fuck does this have to do with microsoft? Yeah it ddos'd there website, but how does that grant them the power to control his punisment. They are not the law.
Thirdly, 50,000 infected computers? Try more like 10 times that.
Why wouldn't they want to punish this person? At the very least they should hold him accountable for loss business (although how much could they loose, really?) All in all a more understanding MS than we've seen in the past. bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
Jeffrey Lee Parson, of Minnesota, was sentenced this year to 18 months in prison and 10 hours of community service.
So what is the significance of all these other numbers?
Also, since when did Microsoft have the authority to impose sentences and fines on individuals?
To all the people screaming "What, MS is part of the government now?":
The judge determined that the convicted owed MS damages of about $500,000. MS at their own discretion opted to allow him to to do community service in lieu of cash. As long as the agreement is acceptable to both parties, the judge will generally go with it.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
half of us here would eventually be bankrupt (seeing how everyone here are involve in the "dark" side).
What a great company Microsoft is!
Moof.
So MS has been given judicial powers to grant clemency now?
Yes. They first used it for this case.
So in fact the 225 community service is a more severe punishment perhaps. (Than declaring bankruptcy or paying the massive fine off at a token amount per week until retirement and still not paying close to the whole fine).
What happens anyway in the US legal system if someone is fined a $500,000 when they have a few hundred bucks to their name, and no or low income?
I can't believe that this fucktard is getting all my props. He doesn't even have the skillz to hide his IP address and they are giving him credit for one of my best pieces of work?
That's it. I can't take it any more. All you "news" agencies, prepare to be pwned!
Well, at least this kid didn't get a JOB offer from Microsoft. Seems he wasn't quite as lucky as the kid who hacked into T-Mobile and monitored Secret Service messages, only to get a job offer from them once he was caught...
...maybe when he matures and is looking towards real work, he'll consider a lucrative career in hacking government agencies, seems like breaking the law is rewarded nowadays.
It's not time for the tinfoil hats- yet. Microsoft isn't so close to the government that they can choose his sentence, but they could, if they wanted, ask the judge to reduce the sentence to certain terms that they think are fair.
Remember though, IANAL
I think it'd be great for this guy to get out in the sun and clean up graffiti! Maybe it'll build his character enough that he'll realize that making worms to smash Microsoft PCs isn't a cool thing to do- or is it?
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Why? Bill's owns a bunch of Microsoft and they're getting into the antivirus market.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It's too bad that TFA completely fails to even provide a hint that this is what it is about. In fact, it is impossible to determine what you state from TFA or any of the links within it.
I think it'd be great for this guy to get out in the sun and clean up graffiti! Maybe it'll build his character enough that he'll realize that making worms to smash Microsoft PCs isn't a cool thing to do- or is it?
...
Well, Paul Allen just got $20 million in tax breaks according to The Stranger (local weekly paper) and The Weekly (other local weekly paper), so
However, if they want to clean up graffiti, we have an underpass at Bridgeway N that can be repainted to remove the graffiti over here in Seattle.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If put a heavy fine on these guys, who's going write these virus, then who's going to pay them to upgrade and mantainance?
Eitherway, they're in big trouble. With virus, people will move to Linux faster, without virus, they have little income. They just choose to be the bad guy.
M$ just did their homework and discovered that they would gain more finanacially by playing the benevolent dictator than by taking this guy's payments for his $500,000 debt.
Really. They just got some good press. And it is better to have good press worldwide that to have some teen own you $0,5M which he probably would never pay to them at all...
Helping Bill Gates with his first Gentoo install..
http://request-header.info
Glass windows are a necessary element of a house.
What necessity is there for a bunch of open ports and RPC in an Internet-connected operating system? That's like using door locks that anyone can open with a common twig.
The story was really about an MS demo at an author's convention of a new consumer laser cannon that barely missed hitting Stephen King when the targeting system bluescreened.
Four words: "Education", Un-open (source), Lobbying, Attorneys
In cases involving damages, the victim (in the case referenced, Microsoft) is allowed to request leniency or harsher penalties: The judge ruling on the case is *NOT* required to accede to such requests.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Not superior software, superior service plans formerly but now only the market presence created by its history and effective monopoly status in the US keep the firm gaining income with any advantage over other PC software firms.
This kid still has to do 18 months in prison! 18 months! 13,128 hours! (linked from the same site)
18 months is almost 10% of the time this kid has even been on the planet!
Microsoft just helped him out by letting him live his life once he gets out of prison instead of being in debt for the next 40 years.
I bet it's extremely hard for a convicted felon to work off a $500,000 debt.
--
Fairfax Underground: For residents of Fairfax County and Northern Virginia
Microsoft is getting pretty big and powerful and can push the DOJ around, but I don't think they're yet in the position to fine people.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Looking at their webpage I noticed both IBM and Apple are members. Where did you find out that Microsoft is the biggest beneficiary, do you have any links? Or are you just pulling it out of your ass? And what power does the BSA hold?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
It may be a good deal to the criminal in this case, but not to the rest of us computer users who have to put up with this type of worthless scum on a daily basis. If all the worm/virus/adware/spyware/hijack/root kit etc. writers and those who use their products to infect the rest of us were to disappear tomorrow, I, for one, wouldn't miss them for a moment. Life is tough enough already without humans preying on other humans.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Is that NONE of the numbers are powers of 2. That is probably the most sick and twisted thing you can do to a geek. At the very least, the judge should have presented them in hexadecimal.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...they should make him apologize, in person, to everyone affected by the worm.
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
Writing a virus takes a fair bit of know-how... the article states he was immature and had a bad family life.
Maybe its just an example of a bored kid doing something with bragging rights.
Immature or not, there was intent and dedication, and if he's smart enough to write and deploy, he was smart enough to know it was wrong.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Well, this is the IT world, so he obviously won't be getting Any Respect
They've gotten it wrong from the beginning. He's not the author. He grabbed a copy of the virus, modified some text, and let it loose again, infecting computers that were probably already going to be infected by the original. For that he gets 18 months.
Just like how Bush has been accurately criticized for capitalizing on fear to push his agenda, many companies are now benefiting from fear in this context. Hell yes it was a bitch to deal with Blaster and friends, but I got paid cash money to remove it from a lot of people's computers. One time got some ass from it. So to those of us who are fans of capitalism and consumerism, or ass maybe, this is a Good Thing, and the economy has been helped more than it has been hurt by crap like this.
Apparently it's 10 months, but there was an error that got perpetuated.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
I always thought that a good community service activity was shoveling elephant poop at the zoo. 225 hours of poo shoveling would give this person some perspective as to the aguish they have caused! :-)
From TFA: Microsoft has granted clemency to the 19 year-old author
Normally, I would complain about slash-editors munging up a story, but this story is so farked its ridulous. The article makes it appear as if MS was ajudicating the proceedings in addition to the US District Judge.
The confusion is in the original article.
So, MS isn't going to try to extract several hundred thousand dollars from someone with no money or prospect of getting that sort of money, because it would cost more to hire a thug to shake down the punk than they would get. Hmmm.
See, MS can make a good decision on occasion...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I understand that we're actually talking about MSblast here, not Blaster or Nachi, but was the circulation really that low? I daresay that Blaster itself infected nearly 1/4 of student's PC's on our college campus alone. We never actually took data on it, but once it got on the network, the whole thing was down in a couple of hours.
"Microsoft has granted clemency"
What power does Microsoft have to grant clemency? The court decideds guilt and sentences, including fines and remedies. I could see Microsoft declining restitution, but who gives Microsoft the power to decide whether a guilty party is punished by labor, rather than a fine?
--
make install -not war
Back in the days when worms were an AI experiment and Core Wars were respectful contests, I would never have anticipated the morons who have made so many administrators' lives more hectic. I say he should be blinded and his hands cut off.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
but kudos to them for being human on this.
just check under /home :)
I think MS is the one that has ownership problems...who computer/documents is it really? "My Computer|Documents|whatever"...means "theirs" to MS....double so for anything under My Music that has DRM
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
a new worm has emerged which targets Linux exclusively. Reverse-engineering has thus far only revealed the string "!seineew era sreenigne xunil zes rekcah retsalB".
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
"U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said the sentence reflected that although he was 18 at the time of the attack, his maturity level was much younger than that."
was she talking about Billy?
I wonder if the community service IS the job offer...he'll get to be M$' bitch for 7 months. If his job were to locate security holes in M$ software, that would certainly qualify as a community service.
Hmm. I remember not too long ago you being a rabid supporter of all things Microsoft, up to and including jumping all over anyone who would dare to make a joke about Clippy or MS Bob.
I smell a karma whore/troll/hypocrite. Take your pick. They're all applicable.
So are you some kind of hotshot that can get any computer up and going in a vew minutes to an hour? Well, any monkey can format and re-install or restore-from-ghost in very short order, but in my experience it is those technicians that people call "useless" when they get their "fixed" computers back without properly configured drivers and all their email and data since their last weekly backup wiped out (if the said user is swift enough to even do a weekly backup).
In the corporate world competent techies have made it easy for themselves. They probably deal with a fleet of identical Dells, each issues with a standard ghost image, scripts up the wazoo, something like Altris or other big brother software do roll out updates/config changes, etc etc etc.
OTOH, 4.5 hours to clean up a machine is actually a realistic high-range estimate when you are talking about some of the personal computers or PCs at mom-and-pop operations out there like "nerds on site" and the like must see. I imagine they see everything from PIIs to the latest screaming PIV from any number of builders out there, and some of them are probably slapped together with leftover components too. These users don't have an image to restore to--unless you count the "rescue CD" if they haven't managed to lose it...they might not have any OS install CD at all! And backups? HAH! I've found you're lucky to even have weekly backups. And no matter how trivial their files look, all these users want to save as much as possible. These users are also rather undisciplined in their own maintenance. The worms and viruses are one thing--prepare to spend some time getting rid of adware attached to weather bugs, comet cursors, chat smileys and "free" P2P programs.
In any case, if you average it out you might spend 2 hours per machine. I'd say that for how much damage Blaster-variants caused this guy got off lightly--even including the hours he will spend in jail. I suppose, though, that suing someone who is broke for a half-million is pretty pointless. I DO like the idea of making the guy shovel elephant poo for a month as a substitute.
I do try to be optimistic though--one good thing is that this whole Blaster debacle brought to light the security crisis in Microsoft products. To this day, an unpatched win2k or pre-sp2 winxp machine will become infected within minutes when hooked up directly to a typical high-speed internet connection. It seems unfortunate that some jackass had to pull a stunt like Blaster before anything serious was done about security at MS.
Or you can take it straight from the horses mouth [search for apple]. Sure looks like they do a lot of work for Apple. If we compared Apples 622 documents to Microsofts 670 documents, they are pretty equal. And thats not a fair since Apple only has 3% market share.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
now he makes almost as much as gates does
Just because you stole my car doesn't mean you have to gloat about it.
To use the normal
Remember this, "property rights" exist only because of our social conventions. Have you ever seen two dogs sharing a bone? Among animals, property always goes to the stronger one that wants it. So, to have any rights to your property, you should follow social conventions. One of these conventions is that you should take reasonable steps to protect your property when the circumstances make it necessary.
You may sleep with open doors if you live in a farm somewhere, but not in a poor inner city neighborhood. Likewise, you must be sure to lock your system if you ever connect to the internet. If you don't do it, then you are guilty of the crime of creating an environment where cybercrime propagates.
MS-windows aren't a necessary element of any computer
Must be a machine spec'd out for Longhorn.
.
...shoveling elephant poop at the zoo...
I think it'd be best if such a sentence is carried out by not allowing the use of a shovel. Or gloves. : )
Again, dunno. Maybe I'm wrong. Comments?
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
That's the first post in a while I haven't replied specifically to bitch. In fact, I'm not replying to say anything except well put, and we need a helluva lot more people like you on /.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
This kid did not write the blaster virus! He just made a varient that involved small changes and his varient infected 50,000 computers.
The real blaster virus infected nearly 10 million computers.
but nice UID.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
Microsoft might have noticed that hardly any 18 year olds are going to have $500,000 to actually pay the fines.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
How is Microsoft allowed to impose a fine on someone, or is the wording of this article simply incorrect? Last I looked, Microsoft was a business: and only government entities held any jurisdiction in the realm of legally imposable fines.
-Vendal Thornheart
Too bad the orignial writer of the blaster worm never bothered to copyright his work, or else he could have sued this kid's ass for all of his $20 dollars.
XeRo
1. Create a sloppy piece of software with bugs and security holes ...
2. Wait until a 19-year kid figures out how to do damage with it
3.
4. Profit!
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Herbavore poo is not very unpleasant. At least as far as poo goes. For nasty, you really need to go with some sort of carnivore.
Yes, this sounds like a good way to get rid of viruses. (Because everyone will switch away from Microsoft software, and then the virus writers will find another profession.)
It was a fairly content free article, but that's par for the course for links on /.
Partial credit. The links didn't require a login to the largely content fee article.
Well, Billy-Boy Gates seems to have some respect for him. Even though he's not clasified a criminal yet.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I don't think that's the way it works here, but IANAL. In general, The Government exempts them selves from allowing people to relieve debts to them in bankruptcies for example defaulted student loans and such. Since The Government makes the laws, they get their $$$ one way or another.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
People like this are not left out in the cold for long. An individual who has done what this person has is very employable by large firms with lots of money, and no problems with paying someone who has been able to undermine most of the technical world with a simple mickey mouse virus. This guy isn't going to go hungry. he will seem to disappear but I promise you he will be in demand.
someone needs to fix that "author" of MSBlast, this kid didn't author anything. He downloaded a copy of it off the internet and changed two lines so that it would grab the worm from his server of choice.
Liberty and Justice for all, I seem to remember.
MS should have offered him a job rather than going after him (like they usually do). Can't wait until some guy from China or some other country thet does not follow US legislation gets pissed of at MS. That would be one great day. Instead of keeping 50 layers on staff they can kick some of them out an pay for developers to FINALLY fix the problems with windows or rewrite the damn thing. Windows is the longest going industry joke by far.
OK. So MS is taking 225 hours of a successful virus writer's development... er.. i mean "community service not involving ... heh heh ... computers... pbbbt!" instead of a $500,000 fine. Sure, they don't really need the money, and he surely can't pay it.
But they DO need a virus to hit some other OS so they can finally not be the security laughing stock of the world.
I bet they target OSX, since its about to release a new version, which (at least as far as Windows has shown us) should have hundreds of critical bugs waiting to be exploited...
I wonder who will win...
(go Steve!)
I think a better use of all of those zombie boxes would have been remote distcc clients. You know what kinds of computers people buy for their grandmothers/other stereotypical Windows users-- stats to put a lot of our computers to shame.
Help a poor college student. Send a couple cents via paypal to chucks86@gmail.com
but why didn't he just use an internet cafe? I think they would be great for spreading viruses etc., or do you need a passport to use them?
Tha-tha-tha-tha-that's all folks!
It doesn't say that anywhere in the article or in any of the articles links. So, why don't you RTFA and STFU? Ass Cheese!
Um, 10% of 18 years is 21.6 months. And sure 3.6 months is much of a difference....Unless you're in prison!!