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Teen Phone Phreak Targeted by the FBI
Wired has an interesting editorial on the latest resurgence of the old days of phone phreaking and the latest phreak that is rising into the FBI crosshairs. The most recent hoax, "swatting", involves malicious pranksters calling police with reports of fake murders, hostage crises, or the like and spoofing the call to appear as though it was from another location. "Now the FBI thinks it has identified the culprit in the Colorado swatting as a 17-year-old East Boston phone phreak known as "Li'l Hacker." Because he's underage, Wired.com is not reporting Li'l Hacker's last name. His first name is Matthew, and he poses a unique challenge to the federal justice system, because he is blind from birth. If he's guilty, the attack is at once the least sophisticated and most malicious of a string of capers linked to Matt, who stumbled into the lingering remains of the decades-old subculture of phone phreaking when he was 14, and quickly rose to become one of the most skilled active phreakers alive."
I love a good prank as much as the next guy, but sending the SWAT team to an innocent persons house? That's not that cool...
Why is he a challenge? If he broke the law, he broke the law, blind or not.
The justice system should be blind, so who cares if he broke the law.
For this he will (rightfully) be tried as an adult because this kind of behavior can cost real lives. (I'll get modded down for being a troll)
--sig fault--
I think this is more a sign that the telco's really need to look at phone security. If a teenager can STILL phreak, decades after it started.. Something needs to be done.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
if phreakers or hackers target the feds
but please don't target the local law enforcement guys. you're actively denying some poor shlub 911 resources who might need them in a real emergency
that makes you worse than anything you say you are opposing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just like this kid, Stevie Wonder is blind and gifted. This kid send swat teams to innocent people's houses. Stevie made songs in the key of life. What is the FBIs "unique challenge" with putting the kid away?
Help! I've fallen in a karma hole and I can't get up!
Because the phone system was originally a monopoly, it is not designed for network security. This is an example. PBX's can be programmed to report any originating phone number. I don't know the type of line that the swatter was using, but trusting the source to report the caller ID is due to AT&T not having to worry about connecting foreign equipment.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
50% of this so called "phreaking" sounds like childish playground antics and textbook bullying straight from middle school. The other 50% are con jobs and social engineering. I don't see any great hacks there.
Crimes where the criminal gains somethig I can sort of understand. This whole misplaced teenage angst and messing with the system because I can get back at some associates is just so pathetic.
I'm not just talking about the 14 year old blind kid. Doesn't take a rocket-psychologist to figuire out what he's mad about, but the other punks ont he "party lines"?
Grow up. Get a real job. Move out of Moms basement. Oh and 1982 called, they want your "Phreak Club" back.
Instead of calling him a "prankster", a "hacker", etc. and then complaining that he is giving "the rest of us a bad name", why not call him what he really is?
A sociopath, a criminal.
When I was a kid and used to phreak..... um, I mean, when I heard about people doing this..... it was all about connecting to long-distance BBSes for free and downloading games. What this kid is doing is just sick.
There's hackers/crackers/phreaks, and then there's people who are just plain assholes.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Our police SWAT teams always comport themselves justly. Of course, due to cowardice of many American voters, they can now just bust in and start shooting without saying a word. If a few innocents have to die so that the retarded "take my freedoms and tell me I'm safe" can be shown how wrong they are, so be it.
:D
Of course, I'm betting it won't be my house...pretty good odds
Blar.
I've felt for a long time (since I began to understand Windows security issues) that whenever a teenager is caught for hacking/phreaking/whathavu, that TWO entities should be prosecuted:
1> the teenybopper;
2> The company that designed a digital infrastructure so insecure that a teenybopper could hack in and cause those zillions of dollars damage they always claim at trial.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Calling up and making prank calls isn't phreaking.
Even spoofing Caller ID, while a possible phreaking tool, is now common enough today that it's trivial for almost anyone to do.
This is just some stupid punk kid making an ass out of himself and cost the police time and taxpayers money.
This is equal to screaming fire in a crowded theater.
Again, making prank calls to the police and emergency services is stupid, not phreaking.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
How many of you haven't done regrettable shit when you were 17? blind or otherwise, the kid is just being normal. When I was 17 I could hack into the library computers to renew material that was due for return. Sadly, I did that from the library's public computers, as my PC at home was not wired yet, and all my hack did for me was "save" me the effort to get up and get in line (forget the time it takes to run netware utils from a floppy and get to work, all while switching back and forth to a benign browser window every time somebody walked by). if I was caught then it would have been a hacking case.
In this particular story at least, no one was killed. Considering just how often SWAT teams kill innocents with their no-knock, shoot-first tactics, this kid is lucky he hasn't been implicated in a wrongful death (yet).
It seems to me that there is a big difference between phone phreaking to get free long-distance calls and spoofing phone numbers to bring SWAT down on an innocent family.
Militant Agnostic: "I don't know, and damn it, neither do you!"
If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from your militarized police force!
Blar.
Wired is so kind not to identify the juvenile...
Thanks to this reporting, anyone who knows him now knows what he did. This will follow him around forever.
Wired could have at least left the first name out and kept the story intact.
What ever happened to the good ole days where phreaking used to mean getting free long distance, free sex chat line and messing with the phone company?
Sending a SWAT team to someone's random house is not a juvenile prank, someone could easily get shot.
Now having a gay 1-900 line call a buddy back and thank him for his business, now that is a prank.
Stick to free 1-900 calls and messing with phone switches. Think before sending heavily armed, trigger happy police into a perceived hostile environment.
Though he may seem like just an ordinary blind 17 year old, he is considered by many to be the most dangerous man alive. If you help us apprehend a known felon, we'll just clear away your record... give you a fresh start.
I agree with everything you said except the "moving out of your parents basement" bit. He is 14, we must remember.
It's not that the cops are busy with the prank, it's that the cops think they are walking into a violently dangerous situation and conduct themselves accordingly, placing the innocent victims in real danger. It sucks about him being blind but not as much as it would suck to wake up at 2 AM because a bunch of goons have smashed your windows and invaded your home, grab your gun and attempt to defend yourself, and get shot by the cops for your trouble. I have zero sympathy and hope his stay in the pen is as much fun as his pranks are.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
If he really is the culprit I give him props for being resourceful.
Since all the switches are computerized nowadays I'd figure that a lot of todays phreaking is done with computers which really makes it more like hacking.
I assume computers are a little easier to use with sight.
The sad thing is that if this type of talent is used for good the possibilities are endless.
What he did was wrong and should be punished if he infact did it.
I mean I don't disagree that we should shoot for better security, but the idea that the problem is that they don't have perfect security is stupid. Not that long ago, within my lifetime, E911 didn't know where you called from, you had to tell them. So phreaking them was as simple as giving a false address. What's more, it had been this ways for DECADES.
So while the telcos should work towards a better identification system, it isn't necessarily the easiest thing in the world to develop and deploy, especially since the phone switches aren't the world's most extensible architecture (new features often mean adding hardware, not just changing code). We have to accept that virtual security is just like physical security: It cannot be perfect and impenetrable. We can have better and worse, but just because a failure is found doesn't mean the security is necessarily bad.
Besides, I see a bigger problem in kids who think this sort of thing is ok to do.
...they have too much power. I hope this kid beats the rap and the abusive powers we have given law enforcement are brought to the attention of the nation.
Your scenario has already happened, and no phreak was involved. Incompetent pigs with too much firepower and the right to bust in with no knocking resulted in the death of a grandmother. They got the wrong house.
I, at least, am not so pants-fillingly scared of the bogeyman that I want my law enforcement to have these powers.
Blar.
Wasn't there some really famous trio of blind Palestinian phreakers? Clearly, blindness should be outlawed, as it leads to anti-social behavior.
This has happened a few times in Dallas, pretty amusing but pretty dangerous too.
On a related note, The crew that filmed Dallas SWAT use to hang out at a coffee shop I frequent and they said more often then not when they got deployed it was to a vacant house or the wrong address. It was amusing hearing stories about late night raids on an address that didn't exist or empty houses/buildings.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I'll borrow a link from another poster that is better than the one I had.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
Hell, a 80-year-old grandmother was killed dead because the cops could just bust in with no warning and start shooting. Too bad the scum got the wrong fucking house. Makes me sick.
Blar.
Now isn't that interesting? Least sophisticated and most malicious, at the same time? And this from someone who is "one of the most skilled active phreakers alive"?
This is sounding a lot like a frame-up job.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
If I break in to your house, and make no mistake I could easily do so, should you be prosecuted for not having secured your house well enough? Because unless you have extraordinarily good security, it really isn't hard to get by. You think a pin-tumbler lock and a simple alarm system do anything? Get real, trivial to get around. So should you be held accountable if I break the law and get in to your house just because you don't have superb security?
/. there seems to be this attitude with regards to digital security that if you can do it, it should be ok to do. It is all on the person who owns the system to make it completely invenerable. So I'm just wondering if you feel the same way about physical security, since I can say with 99.99999% certainty, yours sucks (since almost everyone's does). If you don't feel the same about it, why not? Why should it be ok to break in to a computer but not a house?
I am just trying to understand here, because on
This isn't phreaking, it's thuggery. The Coast Guard has a BIG problem with phony emergencies on marine radio, like at it's peak 2 or 3 pranks per week in the SF Bay Area.
When you get caught you are not released to the custody of your parents, they make sure you go to ass-pounding school.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Shouldn't the emergency services be using ANI rather than caller ID?
Companies routinely make caller ID lie to people they call. There are services that you can pay to do this. There are legitimate business reasons for it.
Now, granted, he may be making the ANI lie instead of the caller ID. Although I don't personally have any idea how to do that, I suspect it isn't real hard either.
So what we have here is a 17 year old Bart Simpson, only he's calling Chief Wiggum instead of Moe, and he's putting people's lives at risk.
I don't care if he's blind - that doesn't get him some sort of special pass to endanger others. He should be arrested, prosecuted, and, if convicted, sentenced in the exact same fashion as if he had sight.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
No, he isn't. He's 17. And certainly old enough to understand that what he is doing is wrong and the severity of it. A 13-year-old can understand that.
i am a soviet space shuttle
but there's something really wrong with attacking the notion of policework itself
"the abusive powers we have given law enforcement"
we give them those powers only because there are guys out there who happily use those powers to do evil things. these people are not police at all. they are something far worse. do you understand that? you don't sound like you do. it seems like in your mind, the worst thing out there are the police themselves. which is kind of insane
its impossible to police this world without those powers you think police shouldn't have
read that again. make sure that simple obvious reality sinks in
policing is a human endeavour. meaning, police make mistakes. also meaning: evil assholes can wind up in the system and do evil things while wearing a uniform
and when that happens, you fix the mistakes, and you prosecute the abusive assholes
but you don't attack the notion of policework itself!
you have some sort of mental problem if you think attacking the idea of policing itself and the power they need to do their jobs has any value or meaning in a sane discussion about police
its obvious you don't like the police. that simply means you have an irrational bias and are slightly unhinged when it comes to your ability to understand and intelligently comment on reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joybubbles
Young, blind phreakers seem to be the best...
Not to mention the Whistler character from the movie "Sneakers"
Now call me crazy on this one: Don't send SWAT teams based on a FUCKING PHONE CALL. Why would any law enforcement arm be so dumb as to send an army to a house based on a phone call. You would think the cops would be wise as to think maybe not everyonw who calls is honest.
You would think they have enough surveillance & snoop equipment to look into a house they've got a call on to find the house empty, or have no struggle going on.
Can't they just send one officer instead of a whole SWAT team, why not just send one officer in to kindly inquire? That's what they do for prank/hangup 911 calls. This may sound sick, but it would better if 1 cop perished on an actual call than a whole terrorized family from a SWAT team. They put their lives on the line while the families don't.
This reminds me of the gullible managers at a McDonalds that were supposedly called by "police", instructing to strip serach & molest an employee. Haven't we had telephones long enough to realize the other end might not be honest. Proof, evidence, heard of 'em?
The SWAT teams/dispatchers could have solved this problem ages ago. 9/11 isn't some sort of excuse to say "oh we can't take any chances" and turn a family into swiss cheese.
E911 doesn't use Caller ID. It uses the same set of signals that the phone company uses for billing, which are much harder to spoof.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Sorry if you have an ocular deficite, but thats still no reason to fuck with other people.
What he did relates to "phreaking" like burning down a server rack relates to "hacking".
There is a word for that kind of people. Its "sociopaths". Dont believe me? Look it up.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Please mod the parent up as high as it can go.
Having toyed with the telephone networks, back when it was "cool" to do when you were bored with irc... I know the difference between learning something new about the latest release of audix and making prank phone calls.
A decade later, as a volunteer fireman; looking at the weather report for tonight - forecast 10inches... I would like to think that the calls I go out on tonight are legit and not some punk kid making prank calls. Yes, my fridge is running. As a lieutenant, too, I would like to think that my men (and one manly woman) are rolling for legit reasons, too.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
from the summary...
"His first name is Matthew, and he poses a unique challenge to the federal justice system, because he is blind from birth. "
Why is this a unique challenge for the justice system? Haven't blind people committed/been accused of/been tried for crimes in the past? I'm confused.
I think the summarizer just wanted to mention that he's blind and couldn't think of a better way to do it. Crappy writing if you ask me.
-w
calling all destroyers
A blind prankster? What a phreak!
If you tried to phone freak Chuck Norris he'd roundhouse kick you through the receiver.
As to the crime - it's whatever is applicable to other nuisance 911 calls. This is no different than calling from a public phone and saying you saw a gunman at 1234 Somewhere place, or whatever, and sending the SWAT team there..
Thanks for posting this, I'm glad I read the comments before I posted a response.
Prank phone calls isn't phreaking, even if you faked where the call was coming from.
Years ago a friend's stepdad was killed in Kansas City. The cops followed his stepdaughter (my friend) home from a party where drugs were present. An hour after she went home the cops busted into her house with flashlights and guns. Their uniforms were black. Well, the step-dad hears the ruckus and comes out with his handgun that he kept near to his bed. Without warning the police shot and killed him. AND, there were no drugs in the house and my friend had LEFT the party because drugs had been present. The cops busted into their house for NO legitimate reason. The family won a large lawsuit against the city and the police department for a wrongful death.
What if something similar to this happened after the blind kid called the SWAT in on somebody? I'd sue the crap out of this kid's family, their cousins, their cousin's cousins and anyone else whose name I had. I'd sue the folks that make the technology that allow 'spoofing' of the calls origin. I've read about phreaking and it could be stopped instantly if telecos went all digital.
This kid should have the privilege of prison cell for a few years.
"No one will really be free until nerd persecution ends."
I didn't say company should be prosecuted for imperfect security, but for security SO VERY FAULTY that even teenagers could break it. Companies like the phone company and Microsoft make big claims about security, or at least saying that they 'care' about security; I don't brag about having an unbreachable front door.
Monopolies' products don't just affect their own customers, but all customers in their marketplace. This is especially true when the gov't is a big customer. These companies SHOULD be held to a higher standard; if not in their products, at least in the claims they make about their products.
Why should it be ok to break in to a computer
I really don't know where you got that. I didn't say it. I did say the company whose system is so insecure should ALSO be prosecuted. (OT, but I also think people's houses should also be harder to break into.)
Like the other poster said, "If you store top secret files in a cheap file cabinet," This logic is only applicable if NON-cheap file cabinets are available in the marketplace. The phone companies, tho no longer a monopoly, might as well be, because most of them act the same within a narrow range of 'innovations'.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Your house is private property, and it's 100% your responsibility. The phone lines are a service which you don't own, but purchase services on those phone lines. The phone company offers grandiose promises of great service and the like, but they suffer nothing at all when someone pulls a very easy prank on them like this. And there's very little in the way of land line phone competition (and not much more in cell phone competition). Therefore, you have little choice as to which service you use and the market cannot help you very much influence carriers to improve security on their lines. You don't have control over the security of the phone line by yourself. They "outsource" enforcement of hacking to the feds in order to save their own money. These systems should be regulated and asked to confirm to a specific standard.
Another analogy. If you buy a defective door or lock, you don't think the person who made that is responsible for selling you bad merchandise?
Yet another analogy... there's only one window installer in the city, and they offer these great windows they can install in your house that look great, but make it easy to break into your house, and you have no choice but to buy from this person if your house needs a new window.
I could go on.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Broderick?
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
That couldn't be fixed in 10-15 minutes with a roofing hammer and a waterboard.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Wrong. This is not at all like yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater. If you did that the worst that would happen is people near you would look over with a startled/angry face and notice there's no fire and wouldn't get up. The people farther away would see that people near you aren't getting up so they wouldn't get up. You'd make a few angry and/or startled people.
What this kid is doing is costing LOTS of taxpayer dollars (my dollars), taking emergency personnel away from potentially real emergencies, risking lives, scaring the people who get busted in on, and making emergency personnel a bit less likely to jump when the next legit call comes in. It's much more than a prank.
I see you haven't bothered to RTFA. Go do that before you start whining next time.
I have no mod points, but Derek gave the best answers to the questions of the GP.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
one of the most skilled active phreakers alive.
Has anyone seen an active phreaker who is also dead? That really would be impressive.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Are you going to sure the lock maker if I break in your house? All door locks I've ever seen are defective. I have yet to see the door lock that can't be picked. The high security ones are much harder, it takes an expert to do it (I can't) but it can be done. However even if you decide those high security ones are ok, almost all of the ones on the market are not that good. Regular locks are rather easy to pick (I can pick them). The kind you get at Home Depot and such are rather simple. For that matter, I needn't even bother. I can just get a key for them, which is easy since the blanks aren't controlled, and make a bump key. What's more, some of these same companies even make high security locks that are better, they just aren't sold through normal channels (or at normal prices).
So are you going to go and sue Kwikset or Schlage or whoever makes your lock if I break in? Should your insurance refuse to pay because you got a normal lock, instead of a high security one? Again I ask: Do you hold physical security to the same standard as virtual security (which like most geeks seems to be perfection), or is it different? If so, why?
Geez, you would think that on slashdot people would know the difference, this is prank calling, NOT phreaking. Phreaking is about getting free phone calls, not about causing a nuisance and most certainly NOT about sending swat teams out to third parties. A real phreaker would absolutly at no point consider causing harm to others (other then the phone company offcourse :P ) as even acceptable, let alone for it be the only goal.
This guy and others like it are at best doing prank calls and at worsed doing real harm to the people around them. How would you like to be really need the emergency services and find that they are out because some lunatic send them on a wild goose chase? How would you like it if swat stood on your doorstep.
What next, smashing somebodies face in and stealing their mobile is phreaking too?
Put this guy in jail, and if he is blind, well I am sure he can find a cellmate to show him the ropes. I am sick to death of the bleeding hearts, you do wrong, you go to jail. Just remember the thing about equality, all people should be equal for the law, and that means being blind or whatever doesn't get you out of jail.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
It's fairly trivial to setup an asterisk box with a SIP client and make up any outbound caller-ID you want... It's a stretch to say that someone who does this is a "hacker" comparable to what someone could do with switch access... Being able to forward/unforward a phone arbitrarily from within a switch -- this is power. Does anyone remember the "Phone Masters" guys Zibby, Gatsby, etc? -- That's the most recent example of hacking/phreaking that I can think. This is some kid playing around with asterisk and making prank phone calls.
TIME, that is what emergency services are all about. Swat, fire service, police, ambulance, when the call comes it is ALWAYS to be considered urgent.
I recently called 112, I heard some screaming from outside my window and it sounded real so I called them, without even yet knowing what the problem was, I gave the adress as I ran outside and saw smoke. I didn't even think but told the police dispatcher that there was a fire. Couple of minutes later a fire truck and ladder truck arrived plus an assortment of police. All for what turned out to be a small grease fire that had already been dealt with by neighbours alerted by what turned out to be a young kid who had wanted to fry some chips.
BUT what if it had been "real". They could have first send a guy a bike to check it out, he could have dealt with it. BUT that takes time and in an emergency every second counts, let alone the minutes sending a scout first would take.
As for your delusions of the police being able to snoop from the dispatchers office to see what goes on inside a random house. Go see a shrink, because you are insane. Really kid, get help, it is one thing to believe the CIA snoops on your calls, it is quite another to believe your local police has anything more sophisticated of seeing who is inside a house then to knock the door down. Stop watching TV, it ain't real.
You got issues mate, have them seen too.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
his disabilities matter not when deciding his punishment.
They do if you want proportionality. Ideally fines should have some proportion to the severity of the misdeed and the richness of the culprit. The same with the punitive component of prison sentences. If the same sentence would mean death for a weak person and a holiday for another, you should adapt it to the actual punishment suffered by the individual convict.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
If a company's infrastructure is responsible for permitting such access, then the injured party can sue them for 'negligence.' If enough people were injured in some way, then you can get a class action lawsuit. Thus the idea of "Well, it's kind of but not really their fault, where do we draw the line" is already handled in the current legal system/environment. There are all sorts of standards for successfully claiming negligence.
I recognize people by their sigs. Is that a bad thing?
It is obvious that blind people pose a unique security risk to the infrastructure of the United States. Because of the possibility of further acts of terrorism by blind people with the unique skills that particular condition seems to bestow, I am hereby widening the scope of the Patriot Act to also include all communications that could be linked in secret court to that individual. Therefore, warrants will no longer slow down the process of keeping America safe. Our citizens can rest easy knowing that we will protect them from our blind terrorist phriggin overlords.
Also, I'm happy to announce that our courts will have regular internal audits to insure compliance with federal mandated procedures. If the individual(s) associated with the court feel they have overstepped the authority granted to them, they will have the opportunity to possibly reign it back in should they feel it is necessary to avoid corruption.
This just might be the saddest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. And considering the gigaTards that yammer here, that's saying something.
I think why they're making a big deal out of it is that it is mischief (not phreaking) being conducted by a known phreaker via telephone. Seems to me though that if he really was a phreaker, he wouldn't have left such an obvious trail back to his home that the authorities could use to identify him. Of course, that could be due to him bragging about his "accomplishment" to the wrong people....
>(Note to 2nd amendment types: your guns will not keep you free. If the government wants your ass, they're going to get it.)
Of course, the government getting one or two asses is one thing. Thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of asses - that's a bit harder to contain.
Ask the Vietnamese. Or the Mogadishuans. Or the Iraqies.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I used to be a part of calleridmask.com until what we were doing was 50 state illegal. Of course, a few kids got busted stalking their ex-girlfriends or something like that using our service. The police found our site in the kids' phones and that was the end of that. I really hate litigation.
The game.
Well, a quick Google search for 'bounty hunter kills wrong person' yielded this one and this one. The 'getting community service' statement I made was just hyperbole, but still.....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Oh, seriously. Just fuck off with the glorification bullshit already.
Just because there are holes in a system that he's inadvertently exposing through his exploits doesn't make him a hero any more than the Russian mafia are heroes for exposing flaws in the credit card system.
Morally, this tosser is no better than the scum who make phoney calls to the fire brigade and throw stones and objects at them. The consequences have the potential to be just as- and possibly more- serious.
Of course, this guy's a hacker- one of us, right. He's not some antisocial ned or chav from a council estate (who'd probably attack you and film it on their mobile phones). So that makes his actions alright, doesn't it? Way to go with the double standards.
Is he clever and talented? Probably, yeah, but since he's using his "skills" to fuck about with mostly decent people for his own amusement, fuck the prick and let him rot in prison.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Phreaking is a trivial offense. Calling ID spoofing isn't even illegal, and there's perfectly valid reasons to do it. Hacking the phone system to run silly pranks is likewise pretty much harmless - depending on the prank, it might be offensive, but it's highly unlikely to do any real harm. Done well, it can even be fun for the target. "Stealing" long distance service is at WORST, petty theft, and should carry an appropriately minor penalty - a few hours of community service and maybe a small fine.
Sending an armed SWAT team to innocent man's hours, on the other hand, is NOT trivial in any way! Neither is calling ambulances to nonexistent emergencies. There's 2 issues here:
1. The SWAT teams are being called to what they think is a deadly situation involving hardened criminals. The innocent homeowner hears someone break into his house and is quite likely to do what a LOT of people would do in that situation - grab the nearest weapon. If he happens to own a gun, he's probably going to at least load it and make it quite visible, and quite possibly fire it at the intruder. Not only will he get mowed down in a hail of a gunfire from the SWAT team, but he may very well unknowingly kill a cop before he dies.
2. Guess what happens when some random guy has a heart attack, and arrives 20 minutes late to the hospital because all of the ambulances are busy responding to pranks?
"Swatting" and phoning false emergencies are NOT harmless phone pranks. They can both directly and indirectly kill innocents.
Whether the guy bribes a cop to get a false swat report put out or hacks the phone system to do it is totally irrelevant.
I guess it easy to do if you're blind.
instead of this:
"When you get caught you are not released to the custody of your parents, they make sure you go to ass-pounding school.
we have:
"When you are found guilty you are not released to the custody of your parents, they make sure you go to a controlled school."
Lets go back to innocent till proven guilty and reform shall we?
Prison alone doesn't help. it makes things worse.
Allowing rape to go on only makes it a mockery, and makes people more likely to do criminal activity when they get out.
Yes, the person in question has done something very serious, putting peoples lives at risk, and should be punished. We should be thinking about appropriate punishments. The tend to work better and be cheaper.
In this case(basedon my limitied knowledge of it) perhaps he should be fined, his computers monitored for a period of time and some community service and public apology.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The moron, didn't he see it coming... oh
Rewrite of the summary: A blind teenager and a pack of a middle-aged losers got busted for swatting. Nothing more to report.
The last superphreak was blind too... Cap'n Crunch.
"Please deposit five dollars for the first minute"
"Thank you"
-"No-no-no-no-no... thank you"
Here be signatures
This guy, poor SoB he may be, has lost all sense of proportion. The possibility to call emergency services and have them come by with an ambulance, a set of firetrucks or a SWAT team and fast, without verifying you story, saves lifes and is one of the true advantages of living in the western world today. Anybody sabotaging this is highly antisocial.
So, hard as it sounds, if this guy is not insighful in his misdeeds, his ability to abuse the system has to be removed. That may mean mental institution in his case. I really hope it will not be necessary.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
the leveraged violent elimination of a rival is something to be gained, something quite valuable indeed.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
So, from reading this article, I can deduce the following:
We're looking for a blind kid, heavyset, with a shaved head. Lives on the East side of Boston. Has a single mother, older brother, younger sister. His last name starts with W. His birthday is April 7, 1990. His mothers name is Amy Kahloul.
Hey, Wired, great job of protecting this kids identity! Shit, not only could I track him down, I could probably get a credit card in his name with all that!
(Of course, I wouldn't, because I like having a phone. )
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Here here. Steve Wozniak was a phreaker. This kid is a delinquent. The FBI darn well better be going after him.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
human life >> data
Breaking into a computer is extremely unlikely to result in death(s).
"Be afraid to die until you have won some victory for humanity" -Horace Mann
Yes, you are playing the devil's advocate. The difference between this and other pranks is that this will likely result in someone getting hurt.
Its not a question of who did what in the end. Its a question of who is responsible for starting the whole mess.
Since you're playing devil's advocate, grant me the leeway to use an analogy. If I yell fire in public area, and people get trampled by others, its not my fault because the people that were stampeding caused the injuries, even though I incited the stampede.
Does that make sense?
If I were a fireman, I'd hope that all of the calls I went out on were pranks. Because that would mean that there weren't any actual fires. Of course, if there's a prank AND a fire, that's a problem. But if I'm going to get 10 calls, I'd rather have 9 pranks and one fire than ten fires.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Speaking as someone who has worked in that field, when you dial 911 the phone sends ANI/ALI/ADI information to the 911 call center that shows the name, number, address and additional information in the system on that residence. Faking caller ID is trivial, but sending through false data for 911 would actually fall under the traditional definition of phreaking... actually, on second thought, the system as it is designed these days would have be more like cracking to be honest.
That aside, though, these jerks who get their jollies from sending SWAT around need to get SWAT sent to their homes and see how they like getting M4 barrels next to their head while they're roughly pinned to the floor and cuffed with zero warning thanks to their call justifying it as an emergency that mandates no-knock entry - which has nothing to do with how things are dealt with in warrants and everything to do with departmental policy. If all indications are that there is a life threatening emergency they're not going to worry about waking up a judge to have him sign a piece of paper, they're going to go in ready to deal with anything.
Back in 1971, Esquire magazine published an article called, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." It's a bit lengthy but it's a very good text on this culture. Because the 'underground' (for lack of a better name) is now a very solidly rooted subculture, I think it's important for people to learn where the people before them came from. Read this!! http://www.brainmist.com/phone/blue_box.htm
What makes this so horrible is the fact that SWAT teams fuck up far too often. It wouldn't be nearly so bad if all these cases of mistaken take-downs were done by true professionals, rather than beefy gung ho mercenary wannabes with shrunken balls, shit for brains, itchy trigger fingers and a system that looks the other way when there are unfortunate results from this combination. Had these mistaken take-downs been conducted more professionally then people wouldn't fear them as much as they do now. Also, doesn't it seem like SWAT teams are used far too often for stuff regular cops should be doing? It's so prevalent now that it's almost redefining police work.
See I never saw any claim from the phone companies that any of their number identification schemes were "hack proof" or "100% accurate." In fact as far as I've seen they specifically note that it doesn't work in all cases, and so on.
/. crowd just assumes that virtual security should be perfect, and that it is the fault of the people who implemented it if it isn't.
What seems to be happening is that some of the
That's my point here. Perfect security is essentially impossible. You can have better and worse in both the physical and virtual worlds but this idea that you can have an unbreakable system is just false. So I question the idea that somehow it is ok for people to break virtual security systems, and in those cases the blame lies with the people implementing them, but if someone breaks physical security, then the problem is with them.
I'm sorry, but that is a hypocritical position.
Why choose a name like that?
I guess Whistler was taken.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
A lot of comments here say "Oh no! This kid could get someone killed with his pranks." That seems to suggest that if a cop shoots someone delivering an non existant warrant, the cop would have no culpability. Are you fucking stupid? If a cop kills someone it's no one's fault but the cop's. Hold the kid accountable for making prank phonecalls. Hold the cop accountable for murder.
You do realize that the only reason you guys are freaking out about this kid sending a bunch of cops to some poor guy's house is because COPS ARE FUCKING DANGEROUS? If the police acted responsibly there wouldn't be any danger.
Do you realize how backwards that is? The problem isn't "swatting". The problem is violent police.
bee> do you want to increase your connection speed?
fng> yea!
bee> turn on your modem's T117 multiplexing
fng> how?
bee> try "atm0d9t117*,,,;z" for an modem init string
fng> brb.
fng has logged off
fng has logged on
bee> is it faster?
fng> it seems to be
a few minutes go by
fng> you asshole!!!!!
If you know your Hayes "AT" commands, that command silently dials 911, hangs up, and then allows another call to take place.
It was no great hack. It was cruel and sophomoric and I regret it now. But there's a demented cleverness to it that still gets a chuckle. And it's a far cry away from "swatting" of the article.
but .. we aren't blind!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
There are 3 kinds of people, people that can count and people that can't ...
moral of this post: there are people that just don't know better how hard you try,
or worse, they don't learn from their mistakes; wasn't there a slashdot post about that before even?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If I were a fireman, I'd hope that all of the calls I went out on were pranks. Because that would mean that there weren't any actual fires. Of course, if there's a prank AND a fire, that's a problem. But if I'm going to get 10 calls, I'd rather have 9 pranks and one fire than ten fires.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather have 0 prank calls and 1 fire. The numbers are never exchangable.. but more calls together = more work.
Well, yeah, but once you get a call, you've already passed the "getting a call" hurdle. You're going to go out for it. Of course you'd rather not get any crank calls. But, I'm hoping you'd rather not get any real fires, either (might be rewarding for you to put them out, but for you to do that, someone's house or business has to catch on fire).
Therefore, if you get a call, I know you're not hoping it turns out to be a real fire, right?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You almost missed the point - Yes, indeed, I would much rather there be no fires and no car accidents...
However, when we (emergency personnel) go out on calls we put ourselves in danger by simply going on the call. That ladder truck isn't the easiest thing to drive, especially in the snow with tirechains on it... That was the point - if I go out and get hurt or someone I am in charge of goes out and gets hurt... I'd hate to think it was for a prank call - or really, I'd hate to think of how bad the kid making the call would feel. Should feel.
>Fine examples of people whose guns have bought them high levels of freedom.
The ability to control your destiny does not mean you will always make the right choices concerning your destiny.
This does not mean we should not have the ability to control our destinies.
Firearms are a tool. They provide the means to resist perceived threats. Guns won't help you decide what to do once the perceived threat is gone.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Some things are funny, others are criminal
If the law continues to mollycoddle little wankers like this then society will continue to suffer as those who can send a message drag their feet for fear of being seen as heavy handed.
No problems with being heavy handed, me, if i found the kid, i would beat ten shades of shit out of him, blind or not. The law doesnt know if youre blind or not....so anyone using his blindness to dull the impact of what he has done should stop being a bleeding heart and take a reality pill....