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Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire

Posted by Zonk on from the black-hats-for-cash dept.

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.

4 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Foonet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The ISP involved is CIT, aka foonet. Here's a link (google cache to information regarding the takedown.

    1. Re:Foonet by Gorath99 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here's another interesting one. The guy who paid for the attacks is one of the FBI's most wanted and is to be considered armed and dangerous.

  2. The Great Enabler. by Anti-Trend · · Score: 5, Informative
    Let's not forget the thing which made it possible for Roby to carry out these attacks in the first place. FTA:

    "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.
  3. Re:If you think this is corrupt for satellite peop by Eberlin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.