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."

Comments

Words of Wisdom from a Script Kiddie

[tecopa03]

Oh lord.

Chapter two, "I installed the win32 exe called 'zombie', next I clicked on the Dee DOS button and took out CNN"

Re:Why?

[onion2k]

6) Ask your techie friend/relative about switching to Linux, and you can almost completely cross 1, 4, and 5 off this list

Err... no. Assuming you're running Linux (or OSX, BSD, whatever) 1, 4 and 5 still apply just as much as they do on Windows.

1) Don't run files whose source you don't trust

Binaries can be dangerous on Linux, especially if you're a newbie user who runs things as root (and we are talking about newbies here remember). Even compiling your own apps can be dangerous if the source of the source isn't trustworthy.

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

You're not going to be running into self-installing ActiveX malware, but you're in just as much danger from phishing, XSS or browser exploit hacks.

5) Keep your AV and Firewall up to date

The firewall issue is obvious. You need one even on a Linux PC. Maybe moreso even because Linux often comes with a raft of server and daemon stuff that Windows doesn't. AV is more contentious - but if you're using the computer for anything important, eg work related, and you don't want to pass viruses on to clients then AV is still a useful tool. I'm certain that me passing on a virus to a client would do more damage to my business than actually having my computer affected by one itself.

Your operating system is never enough for you to take a liaise faire attitude to security regardless of what you're running.

What I always wanted to ask...

[information_retrieva]

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?

Re:What I always wanted to ask...

[YttriumOxide]

Well, assuming you posed the question to me (I was convicted of telephone fraud (phreaking) once, and discharged without conviction on charges of breaches of the telecommunications act (unlawful entry to a computer system that wasn't my own (a bank))), I would have to answer as follows:

There is almost nothing you could have done to deter me from those actions. I felt as if I was a part of a "wild frontier", and had control and abilities that very few others possessed (and, I was probably right). The feeling was that of real power - something that most people in their very early teens (when I was arrested for the crimes mentioned) don't often get a lot of... especially as the "geeky kid" at school who got picked on all the time (this was the early 90s in small town New Zealand - not the best place for a geek). Trying to convince anyone to willingly give up that sense of "worth" without getting something equal in return is pretty much impossible.
It's also worth noting that I was caught twice, for what was hundreds, if not thousands, of criminal activities. I still felt pretty bulletproof (especially after the "discharge without conviction" for the bank crack)

I made my mistakes, but honestly, I don't regret it even to this day - my current work has nothing to do with security, although I still keep up in those circles and like to hone my skills against my own systems. But, I've also never had any negative consequences other than the court imposed penalty for the phreaking (which was surprisingly minor - especially in relation to the police recommendation). If a kid were to come to me today and ask if he/she should do it, my answer would be that they should do what they feel is right and accept the consequences if they do something illegal and get caught at it. I'm not 100% sure that even means I would try to discourage them...

Of course, I was a cracker and a phreaker... not a script kiddie. "Mafiaboy" may be a little different.

Re:But i thought...

[pegr]

Even as a teenager, I had a strong self-preservation instinct. I knew the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor.

Script kiddie

[LizardKing]

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.

Why did I go to college?

[penguin_dance]

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!