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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
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.
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.
Equally retarded is trusting caller ID for a 911 call.
ANI exists for a reason.
I suspect this kid was spoofing ANI (which is possible if you have the right kind of PSTN termination; it's not a hack, christ). If he was spoofing CID and actually managed to send the SWAT team to some peoples' houses, some E911 centers really need to review their policies.
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 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?"
I see this as less of a caller ID issue and more of a classic 911-prank issue.
If the caller ID were not available, or were from a cellphone, or didn't make sense, or whatever else, the 911 responder would still have been obliged to send emergency personnel. If a call sounds legit (and often even if it doesn't), the police will respond, regardless of what caller ID says. Ultimately this was a dangerous prank and should be treated as such.
The caller ID spoofing merely means that it took a bit longer to track down the prankster. You might argue that the insecurity of caller ID gave the prankster the guts to make a fake call in the first place. But then again, pranksters can use pay phones if they want anonymity. In any case the police will respond to the call.
Totally. Like this one time I haxored in my neighbors wireless router and then threatened someones life using their network. When the SWAT team showed up and cuffed my neighbor it was TEH AWESOME! Oh, wait, that never happened because I'm not a monster.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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.
I don't think that would be a useful legal trend. First of all, every security device (from software to padlocks to alarm systems) is imperfect. They will all fail at a certain point. They are marketed as providing a level of security: not infinite security.
Secondly, laws like that would only discourage companies from even trying. In the physical world, no company would be willing to undertake the legal liability for selling padlocks. In software, no company would be willing to sell security software (or any software at all if the law applied broadly). Alternately, software would cost a fortune (the liability insurance would be built-in). This would also kill free/open-source software, since they would have no way to pay for the liability insurance and legal bills that would result from a compromised vulnerability.
Ultimately the people in charge of data/computers must be the ones held responsible. If you store top secret files in a cheap file cabinet, it's not the fault of the file-cabinet maker when someone breaks the lock and steals the files. Similarly if a company poorly implements security software, that is their fault... not the software vendor's.
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?
You are missing the point. This has nothing to do with cops power, even if I agree that it might be excessive. This has everything to do with a person finding a way to direct that power in an illegal and dangerous manner. It'd be like finding a way to send powerful surges of electricity to your house and damaging your electronics -- you wouldn't blame the electric company for the problem, even if they were responsible for a system in which such a surge was possible.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Someone points out that cops are human and make mistakes and gets modded a troll. Aww, I guess a cop's feelings got hurt. Maybe instead of modding people down they should ask themselves what they could be doing to earn back the respect that they cry about nobody giving them for free anymore.
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."
The grandmother? She shot at the cops after they broke into her house. The cops were returning fire.
Um, slow down there buddy. If someone breaks into your house, its totally reasonable to shoot at them to defend yourself. How is she to know if they are cops or not?
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.
Yes. You act as if you're not causing harm. If your house is broken into, the only reasonable thing to do is assume your life is in danger. What legitimate reason does someone have to break into your house? You act in a threatening way you should expect harm to come to you.
What do you think should happen? Ask them politely to leave? Do you think they break in to throw you a suprise birthday party?
Please, wake up. You're only as safe as YOU make yourself.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2007/12/02/2007-12-02_grandma_killed_and_grandson_stabbed_in_l.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2007/12/02/2007-12-02_grandma_killed_and_grandson_stabbed_in_l.html
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02042007/news/regionalnews/l_i__home_invasion_slaying_regionalnews_frank_ryan______and_c_j__sullivan.htm
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/cops-arrest-suspect-in-attempted-home-invasion/3555644578
>(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.
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.
Yes, there needs to be accountability.
Unfortunately the police thing they are the military, and they are not. There not trained nearly as well, their situation is different, there job is different and they are not in the military.
You hand cuff and and secure someone, you don't keep pointing guns at them, you have no reason to scream obscenities at them(this under NO circumstance can help anyways, it only confuses the situation by adding noise that gets in the way of actual informative communication.
When you are wearing no clear identifing marks, storm into someones home and get killed, that's YOUR fault, not the person who thought they were being robbed.
So you need accountability, and in the case where procedure was violated, or a procedure is deemed unreasonably, the law enforcement officer should go to court, and the dept. should be held liable of monetary damages.
make them think, and make the dept. think. Before being allowed to go, perhaps there should be someone whose job it is to review the information?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on