Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Hacker 'Mafiaboy' Eight Years On
An anonymous reader writes "Eight years ago Mafiaboy (Michael Calce) knocked Yahoo offline. Today he he works as a legitimate security consultant and has just published a book documenting his criminal career and offering advice on how people can protect themselves from people like him on the Internet."
...that federal law precludes an ex-con from profiting off of their crimes by doing things like writing books, and making movies? I see no issue with him writing a book on computer security, but how is him writing an account of his criminal actions that got him arrested not a breach of this law? Am I missing something? Not trying to be an armchair lawyer, just interested in why.
I bought this book, but it intentionally contained too many pages and overflowed my bookcase. It fell off the end, and gave my cat a fatal error. While I was in the back garden burying Muffins, he sneaked into my house and stole all my stuff!
"Today he he works". It happens from time to time
Headline at the moment is "Yahooo Hacker 'Mafiaboy' Eight Years On Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Oct 13, '08 09:15 PM"
Sounds like he paid for his crime...
Oh wait. He is being paid for his crime?
WTF
You guys really need to bury this one, put away your 9/11 record.
Not like its gone on for hundreds of years. One incident and its all over.
Sure. But.. what does that have to do with anything?
When you put it in perspective, Mafiaboy's exploits are pretty minor compared to the damage wrought by the reaction to the terrorism of 9/11.
Is there a something similar to Godwin's law for 9/11? I don't really see the connection to this article here.
Eschew Obfuscation
Oh lord.
Chapter two, "I installed the win32 exe called 'zombie', next I clicked on the Dee DOS button and took out CNN"
Proof that crime really *does* pay.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Every time I fly, I am reminded just how much we lost in the years following that day.
Do people here feel comfortable buying books by crooks?
Phil McKerracher
I don't see what makes him any more insightful in this area, aside from some ancient history. Looking at the domain mafiaboy.com I wouldn't expect much of anything from this book.
As for advising the masses in how to stay safe, the rules are so basic for everyday users that I doubt a security consultant could offer anything considerably insightful:
1) Don't run files whose source you don't trust
2) Read prompts before clicking yes, default answer should be no unless you specifically understand what it's talking about
3) Don't provide personal/financial information to anyone but highly reputable vendors/establishments
4) Avoid going to domains you aren't familiar with, as they could contain exploits which can bot your machine without any interaction - stick to reputable sources of information
5) Keep your AV and Firewall up to date
6) Ask your techie friend/relative about switching to Linux, and you can almost completely cross 1, 4, and 5 off this list
Overclockers
What's "Osama" hiding underneath that beard, anyway?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
The excerpt reads like a pre-teen love story.
I downloaded and then I pressed enter
I installed and then I was online
And thats chapter 5, what the hell does he write about (being all of 9 years old) for the first 4 chapters?
This won't qualify as proper fish wrapping.
Well, there's no literal connection...
I belive its called Giuliani's rule
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I always want to ask one of these reformed hackers what, if anything, would have deterred them when they were first getting started. Does anyone know if this book attempts to answer that sort of question?
"I had heard you could download versions of even the most popular games for free. This was a type of "warez"--pirated software."
"I realized it was a common occurrence and that it was called punting. Someone knocked me offline by hitting me with so much data that my connection was severed. These punters seemed to have a huge amount of power over others on AOL."
"I wanted to punt someone. Badly. That's when my real hunt for AOL hacking tools started."
"I slowly learned how things worked. I eventually began to modify the applications to meet my needs. This is how kiddies become hackers."
Jesus H Christ! People buy this crap?
/., though I predict we will all get a good laugh off it.
One thing is for certain, the target audience is not to be found on
Frankly, I'm not surprised that a script kiddie (which is all Mafia boy was) could take Yahoo! down back in 2000. I worked there in 1999 for four or five months, and left in disgust at how poor their engineering was. On my first day I fixed a bug where user input was being used as a format string. This in C code that was written by a "veteran" coder, who clearly couldn't write anything maintainable. There was no documentation (I'm not exaggerating), designs were communicate verbally, hacked together and then forgotten. There was not project management as such, and no middle management - seniority was based simply on who had been there the longest. While this "hacker ethos", of which Yahoo! employees were inordinately proud, may have worked when it was two guys working from a trailer but it was disastrous in a large, international development team.
...and he's still an ego jerk :p
It should be noted by those of us who still vividly remember, that Mafiaboy and YTcracker were relatively skill-less script kiddies, not hackers. Back then, at least.
There is almost nothing you could have done to deter me from those actions.
What if the month before a vigilante group of Yahoo fanpunks had made Michael Calce swallow his own testicles and released the video on You Tube?
would you still have been as willing to phreak then?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
> What's "Osama" hiding underneath that beard, anyway?
A little square moustache! The secret is out!
You should remember the people you kill in Irak and middle-east. They're much more than 3,000 US citizens... Not trolling, just saying the truth.
While the rest of us were going to college, this guy had the formula to quick success.
Hack into large company web sites
Get a slap on the wrist
Become a reformed hacker/security expert
Write book on exploits
$PROFIT!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I wonder how many 15 yr olds see high-profile hacking felonies as their golden ticket into the "legitimate security consultant," career path? Is this the best way to get street cred as a consultant?
Does this now make him, Mafiaman?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I've been on the wrong end of Mafiaboy's DDoS tantrums. It sickens me that he's employable as a 'security consultant'.
Posted anonymously because I don't want to be targeted again by him.
MAfiaBoy, the epitome of the "script kiddie" cashing in on his notoriety.
How many people have I killed in Iraq? I wasn't aware I had ever been there. Figured I'd remember something like that... must have been the martinis...
How exactly does the transformation from a script kiddie to a security EXPERT happen?
A book on that, I'd pay to read. I'm a sucker for case sturies on business mistakes.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
The key word being reaction. All the actual event did was take out a tower and kill people equivalent to less than a week of cancer.
Wasn't he just a script kiddy that got caught doing what script kiddies do best? Or has my memory failed me?
And if my fist statement is correct, how the hell would that make an interesting read lol!
He was a script kiddy, not a hacker. That's about it. And no, he's not any better today.
It seems like that is the way to have a good career in IT security - either get arrested for "cyber crime" or carry out famous (or infamous) exploits in your younger years and then reform or be released and get paid to do exactly the same thing on behalf of corporations.
It makes sense. You can't learn this stuff by reading books, you need real world situations to hone your skills.
It is interesting that illegal acts committed in your teens can lead to a good "legitimate" job in the same area. If it worked that way for all teenage unlawful behavior I'd probably be head of Sandoz Pharmaceuticals instead of an IT director.
I actually know where Mafiaboy lives in Montreal and seen him a few times. Judging from the house he's living in (along with the neighbourhood) he's loaded. This is 2-3 years after his DDOS stunt. His father drives a Porsche if I'm not mistaken, and is a well-connected business-man who knows some top lawyers.
He's a fucking script kiddie, not a hacker.
I was always a nice guy, and used my intellectual superpowers for the greater good.
What a sucker I was. I should have turned to crime, taken my lumps, and then profited from tales of my crimes.
Remember, boys and girls, everything your parents and teachers tell you about good behavior is wrong.
The good guys watch their retirement investments get raped bloody.
The bullies and bad guys get pardoned and bailed out with golden parachutes.
Welcome to the steaming mountain of rat shit we call civilization, kiddo.
I belive its called Giuliani's rule
Wow. I can say I was there when a new major meme was minted.
Seriously, let's get this one spread.
Wasn't there another 'hacker' who went by Coolio who was arrested around the time MafiaBoy did his thing? I remember reading an article where he was pictured in a Pokemon shirt being led in for questioning. It was full of win.
Do people here feel comfortable buying books by crooks?
It does seem less risky than electing them.
paintball
here's an interview of mafiaboy on a Canadian tv programme called The Hour.
cheers
check out my comic: Essential Tremors
guy fucken loser and wannabe hax0r.
Who else here remembers Bill Landreth's book?
Not that I don't believe this should be written about... quite the opposite, actually, as the technology and surrounding social and technological environment had changed quite a bit in the intervening decades.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/logs.html He'll be on tomorrow 8:45 AM EST. If you can't get CBC on the radio or XM, the show will be podcast at the link above.
Alas, it's worse than you assumed: I am an Ironic Maniac (or perhaps a Manic Ironyman... Mwa-ha-ha-ha!)
Sometimes I run through the streets with a hot Branding Irony, marking miscreant posters with a scarlet letter.
No ones dies. And no websites are shut down. But they do gain new respect for irony!
.
- aqk
F U