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Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire
Ritalin16 writes "An Ohio computer hacker recently pled guilty to carrying out crippling denial-of-service attacks on a shady internet hosting company's competitors. From the article: 'In a deal with prosecutors, Richard "Krashed" Roby, 20, pleaded guilty in federal court in Toledo last month to intentionally damaging a protected computer, after launching a 2003 attack on an online satellite TV retailer that caused at least $120,000 in losses.'" Another article indicating an openness on the international stage to cracking for cash.
The ISP involved is CIT, aka foonet. Here's a link (google cache to information regarding the takedown.
"In his plea agreement, Ashley admitted he knowingly allowed clients and employees to control networks of compromised Windows machines, or 'bots,' from Foonet."
Now I realize that this may come across as trolling, but it doesn't make it any less true. If Windows wasn't so difficult for Joe Sixpack to lock down to the point where it can be used in a semi-secure fashion, it might be a different story. As it stands, you need a good antivirus, multiple spyware tools, browser hardening tools (if you continue to use IE) or a new browser, patches, service packs and more. And that's just the software end, not even best practice. In an average user's hands, it seems it's not a question of whether the system will be compromised, rather of who cracks it first. In this case, it seems to have been a script kiddie from Ohio.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
And if you read the article, this is one of "the right people" -- that not just used botnets but formed them by cracking Windows boxes.
I always like to retell my best buy experience when the subject comes up simply because it was so frustratingly lame.
I was going to purchase a laptop from them -- I did my research to make sure all of the essential hardware would run with my choice distro, yadda yadda.
I walked into a store and instead of just picking the laptop up, decided to go ask one of their sales droids about it. "Will it run Linux?"
The basic thing I got from him was that it would not. It was way underpowered to run a Linux server. (I had a 400MHz PII that ran RH, and this laptop had at least twice the stats of EVERYTHING the ol' PII had). I explained I didn't want a server but a desktop install. Same thing, he says. Says they all run their Linux servers on Alienware laptops.
Asks why I disliked XP. Performance issues, security issues, MS antics. Guy tries to sell me XP Pro instead. Tells me an alphabet soup of certification credentials to make himself the smarter one...then says Bill Gates had bought out Linux and that in a year we wouldn't even be talking about Linux at all. This was two years ago.
I politely thanked him and said I'd go home to rethink my strategy. I bought a Dell. Now running on Ubuntu Hoary.
So yeah, not sure if that guy still works at that Best Buy but the degree of misinformation to upsell shtuff can get ugly.
Non-guilty defendants have a change of arguing a couple of years off their sentence.
Actually, the hope is that non guilty defendants go free... the preference is to punish the guilty. Now, I assume you meant defendants who plea non-guilty which is different. Also, in most cases defendants who plea guilty usually do so because there is an "offer on the table". IE... the prosecutor tells them you can go to jail for up to 8 years, but if you plea guilty I will exercise my right to suggest a sentence and I will suggest 2 years. But yes, if you plea guilty you lose the opportunity to fight the system.
It doesn't give you absolute rights. When you license content, you as a consumer have certain rights too. That's precisely why copyright law has fair use provisions that prohibit copyright owners from denying licensees certain rights, and the media companies are circumventing those protections with technological measures.
"...get help to find something more worthwhile to do with his time."
??
How much help do you need to teach you not to be an arsehole? If you haven't learned through the usual persuasive techniques by the age of 20, then a spell in the big house might be a much needed wakeup call.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."