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Interview with a Botmaster
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is running a fascinating feature profiling a couple of botnet operators who make thousands of dollars each month installing adware on machines they infect. This is by far the most detailed examination of this issue I've seen so far -- and includes an interview with the CEO of 180Solutions, as well as interviews with some of the botmasters' victims. From the story: 'Most days, I just sit at home and chat online while I make money,' 0x80 says. 'I get one check like every 15 days in the mail for a few hundred bucks, and a buncha others I get from banks in Canada every 30 days.' He says his work earns him an average of $6,800 per month, although he's made as much as $10,000. Not bad money for a high school dropout.'"
This is sick. This is a terrible misuse of the internet. People installing this sort of software on other peoples' computers should be shot on sight - or connection. There needs to be a removal of the incentive for them - such as cutting the money they would receive down to almost nothing.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
So he sits home and chat all day? that sounds like a pretty empty and dull life to me.
I would not mind not having to work for the money, but i would properly do some programming or simular nerd activites.
Just sitting and chatting is okay, but not allday everyday.
Freedom or George Bush
I see a mod of "monster" hunters in this guy's future. --on the other hand, that's a nice chunk of change per month.. Oh, Wait... I've had to remove that Ad-Ware from customer machines... He's a witch. BURN HIM!!!!
Selling crack to highschoolers he could make a multiple of that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm frankly astounded that no other major newspaper has a guy on the computer security beat full time, though technically I think Brian Krebs is attached to the Post's Web site. In any event, I think Krebs is absolutely the best reporter writing about computer security in the mainstream media today. At least since I stopped :-).
Like most other high school dropouts, he'll wind up spending most of his days in jail.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
They'd have to rename their work folder "pr0n" to keep people from getting suspicious...
From TFA:
"I mean, most of these people I infect are so stupid they really ain't got no business being on [the Internet] in the first place."
And right he is!
The young hacker, who has agreed to be interviewed only if he isn't identified by name or home town,...
... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet," he says.
From the attached photo: LOCATION: Roland, OK
"To tell the truth
Oops.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
It's not victimless crime.
Just think if you're running mon & pop business and your daily earnings depends on PC that is infected.
Also, how do you explain that XXX icon's are popping up on your desktop to wife who uses same computer or is very religious?
I can think multiple ways what he does could hurt people in their private life or business.
Also, doesn't infecting one computer also open door to others too? What's stops from somebody else taking over already installed exploits and take with him/her stuff like passwords etc.?
On the other hand, some plame does go to MS and major tehcnology players. These kind of problems shouldn't be totally unexpected. Either there should be somekind of requirements akin to drivers license to go to Net or solutions should be such that no highschool dropout could hack himself in when he likes to.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Not bad money for a high school dropout.
He should have waited to drop out of college, steal some interesting new code to infect people's computers, and then go on a grander scale with his own BotNet mega-empire called 'Botulized'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It is a fascinating article, a kind of anti-CEBIT that must be played out in thousands of trailer parks and down-at-heel developments all over the world. No real surprises, though. Organized criminal activities are probably the same everywhere: long periods of boredom punctuated by brief spurts of intense activity, and all supported by lies of the "Naturally I wouldn't sink this low if my victims weren't so dumb they deserved it" kind.
I'd still like to see the CEO's of the top six IT companies put on a public platform and made to answer some tough questions. Like, with all their personal billions and access to hundreds of billions in corporate funds, what are they actually doing to track down guys like these and nail them? So far as I can see, the answer is "As little as we can get away with". And the Feds seem to be used as a get out: we've handed the matter over to the Feds so there's absoutely nothing we can do, nudge nudge wink wink, wanna buy Symantec Internet Security cheap to you squire?
Until the IT industry grows up enough to start dealing with some of the consequences it has created, I don't think it deserves anyone's support. And meanwhile Botmaster Dirtbags everywhere will continue to flourish. Just my two cents.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
is that what we are calling script kiddies these days?
You're seriously lacking in the critical thinking department. Honestly, how dumb do you have to be to compare this guy with Bill Gates and think that you're making a valid comparison? Furthermore, it's not a "victimless crime" like you seem to think it is. There are a lot of victims and if you can't see that you're simply an idiot.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
It will be in jail !!!!
There are only around 1500 males resident in the town, that's not a large haystack.
"I mean, most of these people I infect are so stupid they really ain't got no business being on [the Internet] in the first place."
He sounds like a slashdotter to me.
Windows is not to blame here. OK I'm not saying that Windows has nothing, but that kind the tool used by this kind of crook today.
... There are tons of way to make big money, when you have basically no moral value.
The guy is simply using the weakness of people to make big bucks in highly immoral operations. This kind of profile is old like the world. People making big bucks creating sects, selling drugs, breaking into houses, stealing cars, illegal gambling, slave market, child pornography,
Today a weakness is using being an average Joe user using Windows on the Web. Sure people will need to learn to protect themself, they will learn to use other operating system or to secure their computer. But it is an endless battle if it remains legal or at least very unlikely to get caught in such activities. If you want to blame somebody start by the Laws, Police and of course the Crook.
I kill botmasters for money. Quick and Discrete. Give target's name and credit card number (with sec. code) on the thread to order.
You're just jealous because I've been chatting online with hot babes all day!
The first, Bill Gates, when are you going to produce a secure OS that does not get owned in the millions by the first kiddy who tries?
The second to Joe "Windows == computers" Average, when are you going to treath your computer like you would treath your house or car and lock it properly and not put all you valuables on the seat of your convertable with the top down?
Botnets exist for two reasons, lousy software and the people that use it. Not very suprising the article totally failed to touch on this issue. I wonder how much MSFT spends in advertising at the wasinghton post.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
$6800-$10000 per month income. As checks. I'd bet that:
1. None of these companies are withholding federal and state taxes and social security
2. I'm also pretty sure he's not getting 1099'd either
3. He does not report this money as income
The IRS would love to get their mitts on this guy. Any income (including illegal income) is still taxable income to them.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Sounds like he's painted as someone in an economically depressed area with few opportunities, using his skills to make a lot of money for himself.
Which would be the same as with a lot of criminal activities, it seems.
By the end of TFA he's wondering why he hasn't been caught yet, waiting for his little game to blow up in his face. Then talking about joining the Army so he can get into college and make a sustainable future for himself.
Interesting perspective. Not a bad article.
The worst thing is that Microsoft is going to make m/billions more by charging $49.95 a year from every freaked-out Windows user who reads this article and it still won't do a damn thing to help them.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Whilst I don't like scum like the guy interviewed in TFA, if there was no financial incentive the professional botmasters would have to, you know, actually earn a living somehow other than screwing people over.
It's a cop out for the companies whose software is being installed to say, "Hey! Look, guys, honestly, we don't know anything about it!" They don't really care.
It's even more of a cop out for the companies whose ads are running on the adware that's being used - "We didn't know it was going to be showing without users' consent!" But they don't care either.
If companies showed some sort of sense of ethics this wouldn't happen. HAH! There's no room for ethics in business today.
One has little impact on anyone but himself, the other causes headaches for people all over the world.
Some priorities!
I hope at that rate the club had damn good wireless Internet access!
..6,800 dollars a month.. did the reporter for the post verify this ..only clamwin a bitdefender can see my software....oh, i see, this is the newest gen of spy-advertising
next week, the intrepid dupes from teh mainstream media interview the credit card thief who notes that "only brandx visa cards have good security...."
There are times when I wonder why some people think it's "cool" to pervert technology. Phone Phreaks, crackers, virus writers, and now botnets. I've seen them for almost 25 years, and each generation uses the same lame justifications for their behavior. "It's easy money." "It's free." "People are dumb." "If I didn't do it, someone else would." etc., etc., etc.
It isn't cool, and it's not a "victimless crime." People who get infected are victims, because they have software they don't want on their computers, risk identity theft, suffer through poor performance with their computers, and end up having to pay someone to help them. Companies and businesses lose, because they have to spend money and time fixing problems that could be spent doing something productive. We all are victims, since each one of those botnets create problems for us by taking useful services off-line through DDOS attacks, or forcing admins to block traffic from various IP's - and we might just be in that batch of blocked IPs. Even the ad company's are getting ripped off.
I found this quote from the article ironic: "It sucks, too, because the companies will shaft you, and there isn't a lot you can do about it," says Majy, 19, who claims to have had as many as 30,000 computers in his botnet."
He's complaining about being ripped off by the people he's trying to rip off! Excuse me while I devote a nanosecond to feeling sorry for him. They need to get a clue. Yeah, maybe with a real education and job you won't make 10 grand a month now and then. But, you also don't have to worry about people crashing through your door, and spending a few years getting pwned by the guys at the prison.
These articles are just so wrong on so many levels. First the accuracy. "Adware also known as spyware"? Now I know there are similarities but you can't say they are one in the same. Many other small inaccuracies. Then you have the victims who admit they would rather buy a new computer than fix the one they have. Come on! It's just your OS! Reload it! And they don't want to be bothered with learning how to secure their computer. Then the sysadmin who is notified that he has 10,000 machines on his network infected and he doesn't know what to do about it. And finally are the people involved in the underbelly of the botnet/spyware scene. The guy lets cigarette ashes drop onto his laptop and has to "gently kick away" a dog with matted fur. What a loser. I don't care how much money he makes. I'd much rather make my own modest income which is enough to live in a nice little house. Then the way the people involved treat each other. I swear this article was about all the different ways they screw each other. Then 180 Solutions. These are the ones to actually collect the money from the advertisers. At least they could be honest in what they do. Wait, no they couldn't. If they were honest, they'd be out of business. It was an entertaining and fascinating read. But all I can do is shake my head. Wow.
But why is the rum gone?
That's all really. Better yet find some physical labour camp and let him know what real hoest work is. Never let him out.
The picture is no longer linked from the article, but with the post here the damage has been done.
At the end of the article he said how he is thinking of quitting the botnet business and joining the Army to get a college education.
Poor guy, now he'll end up in jail instead of following his dream and getting his ass shot off in Iraq.
So the botnet guy is getting his money, and when someone has to call you to clean up, you get paid, too. Where's the real incentive for anyone with technical knowledge to make real advances in protection against these kinds of intrusions?
Admission: I am also the guy who gets paid to clean up adware, among other things. Adware cleaning is quite the profitable business, and there's little risk to it, since anything that goes wrong can be attributed to the malicious software, which the client is already embarrassed about having.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Instead of going after every "botmaster", lets unite as geeks and nerds for justice and take down the enablers of these cybercrimes. Starting with www.180solutions.com
Meh.
I think he was just saying that the victims don't matter due to stupidity. You know, the elitist view. Kinda like the one Hitler had.
Someone save me from this sanity.
What a disgusting piece of shit. May his balls rot.
If he's being serious then I'd go further and say he's lacking in the thinking department...not particularly uncommon to find elitist crap on slashdot but this is quite something.
IMO it's not the malware victims that need to be kept off the internet but inadequate urchins such as the botmaster and mr elite user here.
My definition of "bad" covers this one.
Well what do you know? One group's actions have a negative effect on another group. Now you know how artists feel every time they see their work on a P2P network. Hey! It's all digital*, and digital can't hurt you.
*Substitute "technology" and you have a different groups arguments.
From TFA:
0x80 says he got into writing viruses by accident after logging onto an AOL chat room named "Lesbians Only."
.]
"Someone sent me a virus that made it so that every time I typed anything on the keyboard it would pop a message up on the screen that said, 'I'M [expletive] GAY!'" 0x80 recalls. [. .
After that, 0x80 became obsessed with computer viruses and dedicated nearly all his time to tinkering with them.
So if any of you know the moron who spent his free time 7 years ago distributing comical viruses via lame AOL chat rooms. . . give him this message: the tech community which spends disgusting amounts of time fixing the problems your prodigy generates would like a word with you.
Come alone.
"There are times when I wonder why some people think it's "cool" to pervert technology. Phone Phreaks, crackers, virus writers, and now botnets. I've seen them for almost 25 years, and each generation uses the same lame justifications for their behavior. "It's easy money." "It's free." "People are dumb." "If I didn't do it, someone else would." etc., etc., etc."
"I never would have bought it anyway, so it's OK for me to download.", "I'm advertizing for the artists, even though I didn't ask if that's what he wanted.", "It's my GOD GIVEN/HUMAN GIVEN right to be entertained!", etc, etc.
A couple weeks ago I read a Tom Robbins story about a place in Nevada called "The Canyon of the Vaginas". Casually wondering one day if this canyon was real or not I googled it. Of course, googling "The Canyon of the Vaginas" is the same as googling "Canyon Vaginas" ... so I ended up with a bunch of porn links for Christy Canyon. And thinking to myself, "Oh wow, I haven't seen Christy Canyon naked in like 10 years" ... i followed one of the links and BAM ... i'm infected with some bs that my anti-vi doesn't recognize ...
... So what i'm tryin to get at is this:
... we need to stop pointing fingers and start coming up with solutions.
... its because not only does RIAA have the money and power .. they have the *free* time. Before Naptser, an exciting day for RIAA execs involved picking lice out of each others back fur. And I contend that they have plenty more free time where that came from. Ladies and gentlemen, just need to find a way to sick those storm troppers at RIAA on these inbred c junkies ...
Now just so you know, I haven't been infected (that i know of) in maybe 5 years. And I usually consider myself to be somewhat digitally savy
The poblem here is not that average users are incompetent, it's not that Bill and Larry are too busy gold plating their bidets, and its not because morally defunct script kiddies can make money annoying the every loving bile out of us
How many people to date have been arrested for file sharing and file sharing related activities? Hundreds at this point right? Why them and not Cleetus the BotMaster? Because the world is insane? Well yes, but not really
Not that I would ever do this, but am I the only one who finds the whole thing interesting? Who hasn't watched a movie with some high rolling criminal dude and thought, on some level, weeeee. Botnets are the perfect area for the average person to enter the world of illegal profit with a minimum of hassle. Be your own crime boss! And nobody dies! No children get sold drugs! This is a chance to make money, and get that special little naughty feeling, with very little moral violation. I just point this out to help emphasize the overall difficulty on stopping this sort of behavior, of course.
...
the way i kinda see this as, its just the excrement of microsoft software. they are the ones who alow it and do not FIX this problem..
so for me i say good for him..
microsoft is alowed to rip millions and billions of people off.. why cant he..
you dont like adware spyware virus's stop complaining about the people who make money from it and use the linux kernel or bsd suport oss.
my $0.02
There are flaws in Microsoft's Windows Updates:
.gif images to stop displaying on Web pages if they were made in certani programs. There have been more major bugs, but a proper test cycle is key, if not to lock things down short-term and then open them up with a better solution a few days later. There is no reason why these patches should change functionality when enabling security. Service packs and updates, sure. Not security updates that are required.
.net 1.0 framework, ipv6, and media player fixes... not to start the 'are these crap' discussion, but I mean they're not core security updates). So a user sees a bunch of checkboxes and users have no idea what any of it is.
1. First they seem to break stuff from time to time. A recent IE6 patch to XP caused
2. Microsoft gives the choice and this is bad. Formerly you had to go into windows update (a web site) and download updates you wanted (mixed in with crap like
Users should NOT have the choice. 'Safety recalls' on cars send letters and request that the user comes in as soon as possible, but this is because the actual recall of, say, an ignition switch causing a fire, may happen ever-so-rarely. With Windows, security issues will happen to 99% of the users with unpatched systems. Microsoft needs to force the upgrade to go in. No choice in the matter. No 'I'll do it later', no notification (maybe a log but nothing that you can change). It needs to just happen. No questions asked. Users will always say no. Users will always question whether this is mixed in with the thousands of other 'your computer is insecure' popup messages.
3. Microsoft's upgrades are intrusive. They require reboots. They thrash the hard drive for a good few minutes even on the fastest machines to replace a few DLLs sized at a few KB. Why? I should be able to turn my computer on and work. Not have it prompt me 5 minutes after I turned it on and got into work that I need to restart. It shouldn't need to be restarted in _most_ cases (I realize sometimes you need to for kernel upgrades). Restart the file-sharing subsystems, the web server, the shell... just don't make me save what I'm doing and leave. Not to mention the timing 'reboot countdown' feature that just keeps coming back whenever you tell it to go away.
4. Windows starts up open to the world. The network subsystem is one of the first to come up these days, due to the huge dependency on it for other services including login. Should a network connection be detected, or when a network cable is attached, or when a wireless network is connected to, Windows should have everything firewalled. It should then do a quick check to see if there are necessary security issues and make sure they're fixed before it lets you implement them. A simple overall 'security version' for the system could be easily probed right away. If all is up to date, the system then, and ONLY THEN, opens up its own firewall to accept and allow connections. This could also happen on dialup connections of course.
This may sound crazy to some, but think of the implications of this. Windows PCs get infected between seconds and minutes after bootup. We know an unpatched system will get infected quickly. We know the amount of spyware and viruses that you can get through just the IE browser is massive. So why does it let you start IE? Why does it let you fire up an unpatched IIS? Why does it let you run MSSQL Server with the Slammer worm on the loose infecting computers within 45 minutes (by my experience)? Why does it let you open up your e-mail when it KNOWS that Outlook will execute arbitrary code and attachments and that these viruses are so common that your average corporate users will get one within a few days in their inbox?
The answer is that it shouldn't! You shouldn't be able to execute code for which SECURITY updates exist (I don't mean general product updates). It's absolutely stupid to run MSSQL server su
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Is it just me, or does this job posting seem odd in the context of this discussion? Is there any evidence that 180solutions has ever pursued one of their affiliates for using illegal tactics to distribute their software?
I like how in the Building a Botnet graphics, the use images of old Macs.
I don't think this particular botmaster's going to have much luck...
DN
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have to say while it has a familiar ring of other articles I've read about "crackers", it was IMHO well done for a mainstream press article. I only hope that more "average" users will read it and then do a better job of updating and securing their computer.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
To see a well published example of this, check out: http://www.zangocash.com/programs/syndication.html
This bot twats address was posted under an image, as part of the meta data - now it isn't fucking there, it was a town beginning with P?????? SHIT I knew I should have saved it, I just went back.
Does anyone have a copy of this? It was under a location tag:
Location: P?????
DAMN!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Just a thought, but how many machines would it take to run a DDoS against 180? And (I assume they use XP) are their machines all up to date? I've always wondered what it would be like to have/use a botnet...
I wonder if he pays his taxes on that $6800 - 10,000 he makes each month?
It would be trival to find out if Sarah L. Voisin is a real person and where she was the date the photo was taken. Once you have that information confirmed you know for a fact he lives in Roland, OK. Now, what else do we know?
You have half of his face and with a computer you could guesstimate the other half, you know his age, that he is Tall and lanky, that he lives with his parents, they probably go to church, he only went to high school, that he is "good with computers", that he unlike most other residents REGULARLY receives checks/mail from Canada, and he sends and receives a ton of data traffic through some local ISP.
Some of that is simply generic, but add it all up and you have a very good profile to start with for a town of that size.
Give me a week in a town of that size and I'd find him. If I stopped by that strip club and gave out $500 I'd have his name with 5 minutes.
Well his details have been outed by the meta content of the jpeg. He's just dumb. Why?
"He claims he doesn't care but then confesses that he dedicates quite a bit of time to covering his tracks. "I do stay up very late each night trying to make sure nobody is going to kick in my front door . . . If I do [get caught], I'm not all that worried. I've got enough money. I can always get a good lawyer."
I've got enough money? Nope as your money is proceeds from a criminal enterprise, it is most certainly going to be frozen as restitution to his victims. Even if he makes $10,000 per month, a defense of these sorts of crimes is going to cost several hundred thousand dollars. I doubt very much this guys is saving much money. He just doesn't know how much these things cost. My prediction for this guy. 5 years in "pound me in the ass" federal prison.
Young and stupid.
Thalasar
He also smokes Marlboros and lives in a Brick Rambler.
They might win a gold medal! Whoo hoo! Spamming is now mainstream!
...of the people who frequent /., a lot of you sure seem to be ignorant. How many of you actually completed reading the article? You're quick to talk all kinds of smack about this guy, what a douche he is, etc. but it seems nobody has read near the end of the article where he talks of coming to realize that what he's doing can't last forever, and isn't really all that great, and that he is actually looking at making something of himself instead of doing the crap he currently is. While I don't like what he's been doing, I do applaud his self realization, and the fact that on his own he is admitting it's not great, and actually voices aspirations to do better things, to gain a little discipline. The knowledge he has now and uses to do bad could just as easily be used to do good, and be every bit as lucrative and exciting for him.
Just a little advice folks, as with anything else, be sure to have the whole picture/story before going off half cocked, because it makes you look as dumb as the kid in the article sounds.
I always thought it would make sense to charge the advertisers for cpu time on my machine. I'm not exactly sure how to do this or how much to charge, but I'm sure it would be very expensive.
The usual places where you rent botnets, Specialham and Spamforum are down today. When the heat is on, they tend to go offline, but come back in days or weeks.
It wouldn't take much for a [good] company to secure hundreds of thousands of computers and automagically install software that protected [stupid] users...instead of having people install malicious software, there could be some good in installing software that fixes the problems. Of course the bad people always seem to be 2 steps ahead of the good people anyway...most in between are so clueless they don't know what's happening with their PC's.
" And in fact on Linux/MacOS the user has to manually trigger a software update (at least in most versions) "
;p
Ubuntu, the only version I'd give to Mom & Pop, automatically lets you know about upates and installs them.
Mac OS X, the only version you can get, has software update setup to run every week. You can disable it (just like you can disable any autoupdate), but usually every Saturday Evening, I'll find it up and running with any updates I need. It'll also do it if I reboot the machine, but that happens about once a month.
Troll your boat gently down the stream
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You are right on about this. Billy Gates's company has sold an insecure product to hundreds of millions.
If all Billy did was repackage a BSD (something like what Apple does), this "Botmaster" would have a much harder time making money.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
The real reason /.ers have their collective cyber-panties in a bunch over this kid is because he comes off like sucha friggin jag off ... even if he does show some slight penance in the end.
... we want a pony-tailed, prison-raped Ben Kingsley or an angelina-spanking Dade Murphy. We'd even settle for wolverine getting a bj at gunpoint. (i'd more than settle for that actually)
... and the days of hackery lying strictly in the domain of the elite have well come to pass. And we have some right to be bitter ... I don't expect that we'll ever have a magic bullet, I don't expect that that is what we really want anyway. I expect that we'd all be happier if hacking was hard again so that Bojangles the Bot Smoker would have to earn his living ... legitimate or otherwise.
We want our black hatters to exude a character of conflicted, mischevious, misunderstood brilliance
But that's hollywood
How about looking up tax records or real estate assessments?
Roland's in Sequoyah County. Here's their web site (best I could find):
http://www.rootsweb.com/~oksequo2/
On behalf of Anti-Spyware Companies and myself (as a computer shop's technician), We thank you for your help on increasing our revenue! PS: Please add these computers: ... (list of my family and friends' computers)
on your "Do-Not-Install List".
Him along with most criminals are stupid, cash is not king, cash is a liability.
Buy gold you morons, you can store a lot more in a small volume, it wont BURN, even if it melts, it can
be recovered, nothing can destroy it, except a direct nuke hit.
20 gold coins/month, and its value increases in time too. No bank can 'freeze it'
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The picture with a cigarette in his mouth has a brown butt, so it could be a Marlboro. And there are a few of those in the ashtray too (though the lit cigarette is all-white), so he's obviously not too fussy about his brand.
The wireless card sitting beside his computer is a D-Link dual-band model. But I can't understand why it's there, or why his keybaord has a USB cable draped across it. They might just have been put there by the photographer (or even photoshopped in by the editor) to make him look more like the hacker sterotype.
Not sure what make his laptop is, but someone here must recognize it.
K I T C O . com
also look up silver-investor.com for some good buys
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You know...it's hard to say.
.01% of the people out there are doing in some IRC channel -- they just don't want half of their market trading audio around.
I've read about some of the exploits of Wozniak and similar wild-and-crazy types. It seems like a lot of times, there's some real technical wizard who just is happy poking through stuff that he shouldn't have access to. Yes, that's bad, but his main interest is probably learning, aside from some pranks. He's into this sort of thing, and he wants to play with it. Granted, that alone can cause damage, but I don't think that it's the bulk of the problem. I can't help but feel a certain degree of sympathy for the "it's just kids playing around" argument.
The issue comes in when easy-to-use tools enter the picture (which said technical wiz produces because he gets approval from his friends, be they IRC or otherwise) and you have a much larger number of people using these tools...and for them, the main appeal may not be learning interesting things about the system involved.
Then you run into problems.
I mean, I sit and think "Would the world be a better place if the Woz or Captain Crunch had gotten ten year sentences?" and I can't get myself to believe that that would be the case.
On the other hand, with networks the size they are and with the ease with which cracking tools spread, it seems impossible to keep that one first person from handing out tools to everyone else.
I kind of miss the days when copyright infringement was a little bit more underground, and not automated and en masse. The RIAA didn't really care what
Well, I guess that's the down side of Metcalfe's Law.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I never thought that journalists might leave metadata in their images -- I thought that they'd have some sort of automated content management system that would take in a TIFF or whatever and spit out a JPEG of the appropriate size for the current design of the web page.
I'm now wondering how many other news stories might have very much unintended data leaks through metadata tags in images. Possibly quite a hell of a lot.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Computer users may or may not understand what they are consenting to when they click "OK" to the lengthy, legalistic disclosures that accompany these games or videos. But those notices are legal contracts that essentially absolve the adware companies from any liability associated with the use or misuse of their programs.
*Wait* a minute!
(...looks back at the Linux kernel license...)
Damn you, RMS! Damn you!
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Of course, the botnets push kiddie pr0n, too. Something that somehow didn't get into the WaPo piece.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The economic laws outlined in Leviticus and elsewhere are actually quite sound and would be a boon if they were followed more. Interesting points: it's voluntary, a sort of voluntary taxation, capped at a max of 10%. Think of them collectively as a sort of voluntary socialism, independnt of the government or any form of coercion. It goes for good works. Cool. Now, the others: Charging "interest" is discouraged/forbidden. Cool, eliminates middleman skimming and buyswork "industries', forces a pay as you work rigeur, and discourages boom and bust economies. You ARE responsible for incurred debts. Cool. You are treated as a responsible adult. Merchants ARE required to have "honest weights and measures". Cool, should be obvious, no "caveat emptor", no sony rootkit, no gouged prices on 25 cent plastic disks. Money MUST have tangible value, i.e., no fiat currencies pushed by central banks/governmental conmen who push their debt on you and your children scams. A "jubilee" where periodically debts can be forgiven, allowing society a regular fresh start *across the board*, along with a true measure of ecological conservation, you rest the land, you are a tasked with being a good steweard over the land and animals and plants. This is good! Having so that the primary care of children and elderly is done by their own relatives,"honoring", cementing the family bond and strengthening society and building integrity and cohesion based on love and respect and common sense. No sweatshops were both parents have to work and their children raised in some lowest common denominator creche. No abandoned people in the old folks "throw 'em away and forget about 'em" centers.
and so forth
I see little to argue with. Look at what we have now, taxation for most people working over 50%,yet all of us are supposedly "in debt" according to the government, and most of the taxes used as political tools for oppression and social engineering-usually not in your/our favor. Rampant inflation. In one century the dollar is now worth only 2 cents of what it was. Huge numbers of non workers getting wealthy by scamming the system as paper financial skimmers and middlemen, a lot of the time using legislative acts to legalize what in other circumstances would be fraud or buncoism. So called "money" that the fatcats can just print up on a whim, yet *you* incur the debt when they "overspend" what they print up out of thin air. Other places like banks are allowed to "loan" money that doesn't even exist, merely having a fraction of actual cash in hand, it is "legal" for them to "loan" you this non money and then charge you interest on those numbers. What sort of serious scam is that? Rewarding the still able but non workers with "entitlements" in order to get a "vote". Big companies and individuals being able to dodge debts *on purpose* by operating shady deals then going "bankrupt" instead of working more honestly and intelligently. A lot of issues that could lead to other bankruptcy caused by scam artists posing as 'businessmen" plying on peoples normal human weaknesses and extending credit, usually in very dubious circumstances, or by using bait and switch like when they hijack still useful jobs and tell you you'll make more money by being put out of work. And etc.
What we have now just *sucks*. All they have done is throw a ton of shiny on *sucky*, then shill it to the max and keep telling you this crap smells wonderful.
Check the latest headlines, world record governmental and corporate debt, world record deficits, world record trade imbalances, world record "low" on personal savings, world record personal debt, no way in hell that all these pensions or social security benefits could ever be paid in any "money" that will have comparable purchasing power, a stock market that uses numbers that are so far out to lunch on what companies are really worth as to be laughable...
Naw, I'll take the old simple and honest way if I could. I try my best in this society, but the crooks make it hard on everyone. Unfortunately, those are the political and business "leaders" and most of the MSM "economists" who push all these weird dodges. A lot of the older biblical ways-even taking religion completely out of it-make a lot more sense and would work better if implemented.
I'd personally thank this punk, of course only after punting him off AOL, for some job security. Maybe it's wrong to say so, but there's always pc repair jobs to be done. And I'd say 90% of those calls are spyware/malware/adware related. I could, and have, made a dependable income on these repairs alone. Even now, after finding comfort in the reliable 40 hour paycheck from 'the man', the cost and time to remove and prevent spyware for a client sure is more rewarding than overtime at work! Plus we all know that this guys actions will lead to improvements (and hopefully a more public awareness to both Windows problems AND alternatives). It's how it works. The
I think I'd rather keep to myself, or thank this coward, than see him out of commission. Perhaps jealousy is germinating most of your hostility?
People should know better. There's a reason not everyone has AIDS.
Nice guys finish last. - Money or friendship, which do you consider wealth?
Yeah I'm sorry I robbed all those banks, but now I'm thinking I could get caught so I think I'll go straight ... is there a security service that wants to hire me, just get in touch with my PR (aka news reporter!).
You didn't find out what he had for breakfast this morning?
I know you were trying to be funny, but I, for one, would much rather have any sort of malware you can dream up on my computer than friends who smoke crack. I have had both. Watching my friend sacrifice his wife and kid and untold hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars for five-minute highs, and the way he would pick up crumbs off the floor and put his lighter flame to them to see if they'd crackle or not, and how he swore while he was smoking it that he would not buy any more of the stuff and as soon as the rock he was smoking was done he would call his dealer up and buy more, and all the times he's "quit" only to start again a few days/weeks/minutes/months later, just hurt me immensely. I don't talk to this person anymore.
Whereas I got pwned by a jpeg trojan once and got rid of the problem with Norton AV. And I would happily install it and any other malware again if it would guarantee that no one close to me would ever consume addictive and/or brain-molesting and/or mess-up-your-life and/or otherwise-fucked-up drugs ever again, ever. My hometown is overrun by the shit (coke and crack, probably more than that by now. Wow, I wish this place would just die.).
Nope, better to have malware than crackheads.
Bollocks.
"A few months back, Norris found more than 10,000 infected PCs on the inside of a Fortune 100 company network, all trying to contact a control server located at ChangeIP.com. When Norris called the company with the bad news, its poorly trained network administrator had no idea how to respond. "I call this guy up and say, 'Hey, you've got 10,000 infected computers on your network that are attacking me,' and this guy is basically, like, 'Well, what do you want me to do about it?' ""
Tell me again how sys admins are hired on ability.
Tell me again how sys admins are worth the money they get paid.
Tell me again how sys admins all know what they're doing and therefore Windows is better than Linux because they all use Windows.
System administration isn't like system design and programming. In those professions you have to produce something that actually works (however inefficiently and bugridden and with a poor user interface). In system administration, as long as someone can log on, you've done your job - no matter how many viruses, botnets, inefficient servers, and system crashes occur (as long as the system crashes are short term, anyway) or how much excessive money you spent on licenses.
Face it, the IT industry today is so fucked it will take a major meltdown of the Internet or a major corporation going out of business because of shitty enterprise software to correct it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
slashdot is dead.
6 4208 which is actually nothing but a continuation of the age-old war on dissent http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oi d%3A158729 by the powers of the day against those who would usurp them, for good or for bad.
Not one pro-cracker comment. I don't endorse their behaviour personally, and I personally suffer when these guys attack our networks.
But along the lines of getting an insight that the linked article represents, I expected at least some readers here would advocate the pro-botnetters view.
But if they're there, they've been modded into oblivion.
This shows the harm that overpolicing, overconforming sheepism does to our world. The botnetters still exist, its just that their culture and the media/blogger culture do not intersect.
And so we have very little insight, and very little will occur to reconcile the two positions. This mirrors the "war on terror"-come-"war on porn" http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/18/0
Have fun twiddling your knobs, future slashdotters. You are 2 l33t 4 m3.
Why hasn't some white-hat hacker written similar bots that put up a pop-up with a message saying something like:
f ault.aspx
"This is a message from the 'Computer Protection Advisory Group.'
Your computer has a security hole that can be used by hackers to take control of your computer.
THAT IS HOW THIS MESSAGE WAS ABLE TO BE SHOWN!
Go to Microsoft Windows and run their 'Windows Update'.
This is the URL to type in (do not click):
http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/de
Also, please be sure to turn Windows Auto-Update on!"
Or something similar. (Of course the white-hat bot checks which OS is being used and posts the correct URL for that OS.) The message needs to be something that is not scarey, is clear about the message that the user must do something, and has a URL to help them solve the problem. Note: I added that they should turn Auto-Update on, because I am assuming that they are new to Windows. I know that Slashdotters will argue that turning this on might be a mistake. Let's not rehash that here. Focus on the idea of a white-hat botnet to fix the darn problems.
Any thoughts? It seems that white-hats could run bot-nets that spread benign information just as easily as black-hats could spread adware/spyware. When ever I see Windows machines that are not being updated, this questions comes to mind... Why not?
Or am I just too naive?
JWedg
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Doh!
o /2006/02/16/PH2006021601512.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/phot
Don't even bother with the meta-data -- just View Image then View Source.
If this guy was really 21 when the picture was taken on Dec 20, 2005, then that would make him 16 in 2000. Well according to www.city-data.com ( http://www.city-data.com/zips/74954.html ), there were about 40 people in the town his age. I am sure the amount of people in town his age has not grown a lot in the past five years. The local school district can propbably do a search on the local high schools for whoever dropped out of school, and then go from there. I am sure he went to either Roland HS, or possibly Muldrow HS, which is near Roland, OK.
K /Roland.html )K /Muldrow.html )
Roland Schools ( http://oklahoma.publicschoolsreport.com/schools/O
Muldrow Schools ( http://oklahoma.publicschoolsreport.com/schools/O
The name of the photographer seemed familiar to me, so I did a little google. She and I went to jr. high school together in western mass. small world. she was one of a very few people i thought well of from that era. i hope this doesn't backfire on her and make her life miserable along with "botmaster"
From various samples I can tell you he has been eating a lot of corn.
I am Anonymous Coward only because I don't wish to take the time to create an account!!
After reading all of the Hate Monger replies I realized my response was needed to bring the focus of what is really taking place here back into perspective. Let me stand and say I do not know this person nor do I agree with what he is doing. I for one despise spammers and my first thoughts were similar what each of you has relayed. I totally despise what this kid has been doing in regards to spam mail. I'm even more discussed with the comments of those which have posted. It's unfortunate this talented kid used his abilities to send each of us tons of annoying junk mail instead of something more productive.
The Question now is should his life be destroyed by the system simply because he wasn't the first person to figure out a way of sending record numbers of Spam Mail and actually make money doing it? Had he been the first and made billions selling his know how we would be reading his story in Fortune magazine and praising his accomplishments. In stead we're all ready to stringing this kid up.
This case has drawn so much interest simply because he does not work for or own some big Corporation and there Law Firm padding legislatures pockets in Washington passing bogus laws to protect their business. That's right you heard clear "Their Business" I have learned from my own personal experience both the Media and the Legal System are in bed together. 99% of what is Broadcast by the media and quoted as accurate since coming from a Police Officer is misleading or even fabricated yet the statements are never questioned even when no evidence backing up such damaging statement are ever brought to light. The Misinformation is the thing that makes for Good Headlines.
It sure would be interesting to know just how many of you Stone Throwers screaming for this kids hide are as innocent as you would wish us to think. I will bet nearly each one of you have at some time or another broken the law. Whether it was by copying a video your buddy let you borrow or plugged into the neighbor's cable the he was paying for or used a Satellite TV system that you were not paying for. Better then that.... photocopied a page out of a book or magazine. Where did that copy of Windows come from your using on your machine? Did you borrow your buddy's disk to install it? What about all those time you were driving down the road not wearing your seat belt or not paying attention to the speed your going only to look down and see your speeding but lucky for you there didn't happen to be a police officer around to catch you.
Now you're asking yourself where all this is leading to
One of those dumb thing I did but was unfortunate enough to have weeks earlier embarrassed a Redneck Deputy also from small town Oklahoma while he was working on an unrelated case. Causing him to vengefully come after me no matter what he had to do. Under normal circumstances the law wouldn't of wasted there time. What amounted to a hobby but involved what is known as the copy write infringement. A law which if enforced 9 out of 10 homes in America would be prosecuted.
After 2 1/2 years and three indictments I gave up and decided to plead guilty for the very same law that makes copying a video tape a fallen. I am waiting at this time on sentencing for my case. Two peoples lives which included the untimely death my dear younger brother due to the pressures caused from the slanders remarks to the Media and Customers of his Legitimate Business that was well established and been in operation for nearly 10 yrs by the deputy His threats towards customers, the false allegations and slanderous remarks completely destroyed his Business.
Any personal property having any value was legally stolen by our Wonderful POLICE Force any thing left was allowed to be carted off by unknown individuals. Personal property that was taken clearly had no known evidentiary value in the case. Yet all efforts to have property released have been refus