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Google Search Convicts Hacker
An anonymous reader writes "Google search terms have helped convict a wireless hacker. The queries the hacker performed were introduced into evidence at court, where Matthew Schuster was charged with disrupting his former employer's wireless network and imitating other users' MAC addresses to obtain access. From the article: 'Court documents are ambiguous and don't reveal how the FBI discovered his search terms. That could have happened in one of three ways: an analysis of his browser's history and cache; an Alpha employee monitoring the company's wireless connection; or a subpoena to Google from the police for search terms tied to his Internet address or cookie. Google has confirmed that it can provide search terms if given an Internet address or Web cookie, but has steadfastly refused to say how often such requests arrive.'
But when Google does it, it can only be for the common good, right? A malicious Hax0r gets put away??
Because Google can say ANYTHING it wants about you and people/police/FBI/government/corporations/your_emp loyer/etc will believe them without an OPEN REVIEW of how they obtain, generate, and store that information.
Is the information faulty? Did someone munge with the data? Were Google's databases corrupt? Was the data recreated or generated from other data? Has Google's spy software been through open source review? How well was Google's software tested?
It continually astounds me how intellectually lazy Americans have become! It continually astounds me how the American people are willing to look the other way when it comes to their liberty and civil rights being encroached on!
THINK FOR ONCE PEOPLE!
...is not a bloody security feature. This is why people who actually want to secure a wireless network use some combination of Radius and VPNs...
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Actually, the first thing he should have done was to stop using his former employer's wireless network by appropriating its other customers MAC addresses to gain illegal access. The second thing he should have done was to not launch DOS attacks against said customers' websites. That automatically raised damages to above $5000 which led to the FBI getting involved. Once that happened, he was screwed.
There are numerous ways to make yourself anonymous, however, they are for another discussion. Which is why I just suffice to say this guy is a piss-poor hacker.
He didn't even try. He was just a disgruntled IT worker. Instead of using a machine gun to mow people down he wanted to use a transmitter to mow packets down. In this day and age people take that very seriously. So he's going to jail for 15 months. End of story.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Because now you have a lot fewer of those rights.
In what way? To claim that a "right" has been violated here seems tantamount to making an assertion such as "Of course I may leave footprints, but no one has a right to follow them."
Why should an electronic trail have legal protections that a physical trail does not?
Yeah, what with being forced to use Google and all.
I mean, seriously, which right was violated here? The right to use a search engine without records? The right to use someone's wireless network without records?
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
Kudos on the post's headline being more accurate than TFA's headline.
The article's headline says: "Google searches nab wireless hacker," but the article actually says:
That may seem like simple semantics, but it's actually a pretty big difference.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
That's not comparable.
In this instance it would be like talking to person X on company Y's premises. Company Y certainly has a right to know what is going on in their building and if it's illegal have every right to call the police about it.
That's my view, anyway.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
True, but the GP's point is still valid ... conviction based solely upon server log entries (or even the use of such logs to intimidate, such as the RIAA has been doing) should simply be unacceptable to a judge. Such information being a part of the fabric of evidence in a larger case is one thing, but it is simply not reliable enough to be depended upon in such important matters.
Courts need to become more technically competent, I think. We're too accustomed to the idea that if data comes from a computer it is implicitly trustworthy, and that's a big problem.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.