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!
Sounds like he paid for his crime...
Oh wait. He is being paid for his crime?
WTF
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"
Every time I fly, I am reminded just how much we lost in the years following that day.
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, it does have a nice rhyme to it..
I belive its called Giuliani's rule
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Actually, crime does pay... until you get caught. And according to the US justice and political system, if you have made the right friends and spent some of your money in the right places (campaigns) then even if you do get caught, crime continues to pay. Just remember to forget how many houses you have.
Yeah, go ahead, mark this troll, but it's true.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
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.
Aware the author is a crook?
I would not buy this cracker's sham,
I do not like it, Sam I Am!
(apologies to the great Dr Seuss :P)
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
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!