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Feds Bust Cable Modem Hacker
Several readers noted the indictment of hardware hacker Ryan Harris, known as DerEngel. Harris wrote the 2006 book Hacking the Cable Modem, explaining how to get upgraded speed or even free Internet service by bypassing the firmware locks on Motorola Surfboard modems. He has run a profitable business at tcniso.net since 2003, selling unlocked cable modems. (The site is now offline.) Harris has been charged with conspiracy, aiding and abetting computer intrusion, and wire fraud. Wired quotes Harris's reaction: "I read the indictment — it's complete bull****. I'll tell you right now I'm not going to plead guilty."
This information is really useful. He should have known better to post that everything he is doing is for "education purposes only" sadly.
Be careful, you could be charged with "conspiracy, aiding and abetting computer intrusion, and wire fraud."
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Now when are they going to get around to catching Osama?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I didn't RTFA. If I read the summary right, ya may be he can be charged with DMCA, Copyright violation or those stuff .But "conspiracy, aiding and abetting computer intrusion, and wire fraud"? WTF is that!
It's like charging gunmaker with murder.
Welcome to the DMCA, the same nonsense that blocks you from selling mod chips. Did you really expect to "circumvent" the locks that cable companies put in place and nothing was going to happen?
This is why we've been complaining about the DMCA since '98, and why Alan Cox won't set foot in this country. Heck, I'm suprised it's legal to hook up our own equipment to the cable networks at all. Did you get that PC from comcast? No?
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
After reading the article (yeah, I'm new here), he was selling modems and it appears he wasn't moderating the forums properly. People were discussing how to steal other people's connections on their forums.
Probably as soon as he tries to steal broadband lol. That or if he changes his name to Osama Bin Hackin.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Gun sellers have powerful lobbyists on their payroll guaranteeing that the government will not interfere with their profits.
"They’re filling in their own blanks."
Is this a way to haggle up the punishment? Make the defense spend valuable time worrying about completely bogus prosecution claims, and it might neglect other more legitimate claims.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
"I'll tell you right now I'm not going to plead guilty."
Guilty plea in 3...2...1...
(shouldn't take long after the prosecution makes suggestions about the average casualty rate of white collar criminals in serious prisons, and suggests a guilty plea in exchange for an easier prison)
This is one time the law and its application are way out of line. That's equipment you pay for and service you pay for. It's not even in the same category as stealing cable or utilities. I understand the arguments from cable company and device makers but if their system is so primitive it can borked at the point of contact with the customer, then where's their accountability?
If we had completely eliminated any other crime and this is what we were down to enforcing, I'd still think it was bull****. As it is, when we have thieves in suits on Wall Street bleeding us dry like giant money-sucking leaches, contractors in war zones raping their employees and getting our soldiers killed, terrorists trying to infiltrate our borders and THIS is what federal prosecutors are doing with their time? Some joker modifying cable modems. You gotta be f'ing kidding me.
That takes it out of the realm of mere bull**** and puts in the realm of critical mass galactic mega-bull****.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Who cares? The powers our government have assumed for themselves in the name of "fighting the War on Terrorism" won't be given up even if they catch "Terrorist #1" Osama.
Osama is more useful to power-hungry US politicians when he is free to roam than dead or captured.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
i buy it its mine if your going to put me in jail remember thats 40-60K a year to incarcerate and i guarantee you ill do this again and again.
AND i'll teach every damn criminal i can while in there MUHAHAHAHAHA
might just teach em more too
might as well everyone join the gangs after all WERE ALL CRIMINALS NOW
imagine if this shit were applied to cars trucks and lets say i dunno
harley davidsons OMG REVOLUTION
Is it sad that I thought he wrote Obama? Is it sadder that I didn't think he was being sarcastic?
There are so many laws on the books, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who is not a criminal.
Not to be paranoid, but that's the way the man wants it. You are all guilty of something, so you can be rounded up, if they deem it necessary.
It sure would be a lot simpler if you just categorized crimes into various logical levels (rather than political levels) and meted out justice accordingly.
This case doesn't seem like much of a "real crime", more of a civil annoyance. Here is a first hack at the scale of "crimes":
Victimless crimes. (e.g. Drugs - if you have a problem, let's offer help, not expensive law enforcement and jail.)
civil annoyance - pay a fine (parking violations, let your dog crap on the sidewalk, etc.)
small, medium, large screw ups - crimes of opportunity, stupidity, and passion. Typically one-off crimes. Fines and jail sentences of varying lengths. Some hope of offenders seeing the error of their ways.
Bad People - this person needs to be put down, like a rabid animal. Purposeful injury of another. I don't care about the motive. If you fuck up someone else on purpose, we don't need you.
There should be no thought crimes. If you harm someone, let's put you down. I don't care if it was a "hate" crime or robbery for profit. If you are capable of that crime, I don't care why. If you have a sawed off shotgun that is 1" too short to be legal, what do I care? Not a crime. Use it on an innocent person, off with your head, just as if you had used a legal baseball bat.
I looked over the article, and now I'm curious. The Slashdot crowd usually sides with the techie on incidents like this, but is it really justified here? The popular analogy here is that it's akin to charging gun manufacturers with murder. Guns have legitimate uses, such as hunting, or protection. What legitimate use does a modem hacked/modified to access an ISP's services without permission have? A better analogy here would be a gun manufacturer who sells a gun, a kit to turn the gun into an automatic weapon, and detailed instructions on how to get past the security of a specific bank. You can argue that the gun wasn't sold with the intent to facilitate a robbery, but you can't do it with a straight face.
Of course, I'm open-minded, so someone prove me wrong - tell me what legitimate uses these modified modems have. (Caveat: the use Harris suggested in the article won't fly, unless you can give some very good reasons as to why an ISP wouldn't simply use their own diagnostic gear.)
Did you really expect to "circumvent" the locks that cable companies put in place and nothing was going to happen?
Did you expect your cable TV and Internet service to be free before the DMCA?
165.15 Theft of services.
A person is guilty of theft of services when:
4. With intent to avoid payment by himself or another person of the lawful charge for any telecommunications service, including, without
limitation, cable television service,
of such service,----
New York Penal Law Section 165.15 - Theft Of Services.
Last revised July 30, 2006.
Selling descramblers will take you into Class E felony territory. Three or four years hard time.
Theft of Services in New York state has a much broader reach than I can suggest here.
I've been reading his book a little bit at a time, very interesting and informative. I don't really see how this is illegal unless you pull a DMCA on it since he is not defrauding anyone. The people he sells these to might be defrauding their ISP. Truth be told I'm more inclined to agree with the position that the real fraud here is the completely artificial pricing schemes and complete scam that is provisioning [not remotely based on the real (physical) limitations of the connection technology] enabled by regional monopolies and a virtual lack of competition in the ISP market.
If you look back to the old David LaMacchia case, the FBI tried to convict someone running a secretive FSP site on school computers of conspiracy and software theft. It was obvious he was guilty as sin at running a pirate software site, but because he received no money for it (merely stole school resources of bandwidth and computer time), they failed miserably to convict him.
This idiot, according to the FBI, asked on a bulletin board for the necessary MAC addresses for the Phoenix Arizona area. That was inviting illegal behavior. This is why I don't even make _jokes_ like that about pirating software or computer cracking: because I've explained to people how easy it is to do, I have to keep my nose clean lest someone testify against me.
Emmanuel Goldstein would agree
that make American prisons hell holes that would shame a 3rd world country.
I wouldn't be surprised if following your advice is a quick way to get killed, and deserve it too. You don't know who has friends when you walk in, do you? Or who is badder than they look.
Why is this in the "your rights online" section? It has nothing to do with rights.
Diagnostic cable modems? what happen with some use one? Say they got it a garage sale, dumpster, some one gave it them, cable guy ended up with on his truck after some in a warehouse messed up.
are you risking jail by useing it?
also what you build a box to get all the channels you pay for one tv and used to get them on all the other tv in your house that is not selling that is getting what you payed for on each tv and is ok under the law as by law cable co all not able to force you to use there hardware what if that box talked to the network in the same as any other cable box and all you are doing is useing your own hardware vs renting the cable box.
How about cell phones that are unlocked to run on any network?
He's obviously running one of those hacked, uncapped cable modems!
It's Moterola's fault for making such a crappy device that the firmware can be bypassed like that. And once it's possible, it has to be done, right?
Huh? If they can keep their survalance and other scary powers after he's captured, then why would his freedom be useful to them?
Because they can fearmonger alongside claiming these powers.
Do you hear fearmongering about Saddam anymore? Nope, because he's dead. Saddam's execution was used for a short term goal... the elections which took place just days after his death.
The OP asked why they haven't caught Osama, and I'm just asserting that perhaps it is not in the government's interest to do so.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Bad analogy.
Better analogy would be: Someone sells lockpicks online that will only work with their own car. Instead of using OnStar to unlock their car when they inevitably lock their keys in their car (for a fee, of course) they unstrap the lockpick kit from the bottom of their car and open the door. Of course this violates the DMCA because the lock required an RFID chip to operate normally, but since you circumvented it, you're now on the hook for DMCA violations.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
the angel in German.
Osama is more useful to power-hungry US politicians when he is free to roam than dead or captured.
I agree and I would add that they are probably even more cynical than you give them credit for. There have been no sightings and only a handful of highly dubious videos (in some of which he looks younger?!) and recordings of him since 2001. In all probability Bin Laden was killed at Tora Bora. But as you said, he's much more useful (both to the US govt and Al Qaida) not being "dead."
I love poetry!
He will plead guilty. I would bet money on it. The feds throw the book at you and scare you with massive jail time/fines. Follow this story, and mark my words.
Wealthy corporations can stomp these people out of existence at their whim. I can't believe someone actually thought that in today's post 9/11, ever increasingly fascist era, thought they were going to have the upper hand against corporate America. Corporate America own Congress and can practically have the Constitution thrown out of the courtroom if it suites them. Lot's of luck buddy, too bad you were a little too naive.
Emmanuel Goldstein would agree
The character in the book, or the editor of the magazine?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Me too, will you tell me when some turns up?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're talking like someone who just came from Mars with a head full of theory about how humans can live, but with no actual experience of human behavior. Your ideas are unworkable in any real human civilization.
P.S. Quotes without reasoned discussion of those quotes just make you look like you're Gene Ray jabbering about Time Cube, slapping together quotes to make you look smart.
All of these 'hacked' firmwares are based off of shelled diagnostic modems rented from major manufacturers, namely Motorola. These are the exact same tools DOCSIS engineers use on the field or when initially deploying networks, so there is very much a case for legitimate usage of diagnostic modems. What derengel and others have done is highlight the specific features that aid theft of service in a simple web interface for end users. While it's definitely a grey area, it's sole purpose cannot be entirely considered malicious.
Of course, we don't even know if Osama is still alive.
OH! Heaven forbid that someone actually makes use of all that 'unlimited bandwidth' sitting locked up on your cell phone network plan that they keep paying for, to like actually do some useful work? Just imagine if everyone were reading and writing email from a laptop teathered to their cell phone as a modem. Complete anarchy I tell you! But Osama could be doing that too, so we had better make that illegal for everybody while we are at it!
</sarcasm>
The geek with computers or the gun with guns?
Eventually it might become more dangerous to go after the geeks, until then they are free check mark in the win column
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Saw this exact scenario play out when a college student was busted stealing a $20 CD."...
I say we send the kid back to school if he agrees not to press charges on the guy selling $20 CD's...now THAT should be a felony...
the griff
What if I told you, they were one and the same?
Probably as soon as he tries to steal broadband lol. That or if he changes his name to Osama Bin Hackin.
:)
Will that be before or after his name is changed to "Emmanuel Bin Laden" or "Osama Goldstein"
Ok for one, the FBI is not the agency that would be going after Osama. The FBI is the federal government's primary police force. As a police force, they are concerned with domestic matters. They deal with things inside the US. They do not chase people in other countries, they don't have any jurisdiction there. To the extent they operate at all in foreign countries, it is as legal attaches and such to give advice and support to local law enforcement.
Second, while this may be an alien concept to single-minded geeks, people and most especially organizations/agencies can and do work on more than one thing at one. Just because a group is working on X does not mean they cannot also be working on Y. You want this, particularly in the case of law enforcement. I mean my local police force has unsolved murders, a couple quite old. However I do not want them devoting 100% of their assets to that. I am glad they also spend time looking at current burglaries, assaults, and even simple things like directing traffic when a traffic light breaks. Just because there's an open murder case doesn't mean I want them ignoring all their other duties.
Finally, it may amaze you to learn this, but there are plenty of places hostile to America that someone might hide. When the people there don't like the US, and when it is completely and totally outside of the US's jurisdiction, it makes it real hard to do anything there. It isn't as though Bin Laden (if he's even still alive, guy may well have died of kidney failure) is sitting in a house in New York. He's hiding in a Muslim area in a country that doesn't much care for the US, and probably who's central government doesn't have good control of things. Can't just walk over there with an arrest warrant.
There's an agency that deals just with guns, alcohol and tobacco. A large part of what they deal with these days, is guns. There are laws upon laws as to what is and isn't legal with guns, and they are zealously enforced. Is selling a gun legal? Sure. However there are plenty of kinds of guns that aren't, except to special people, and modifications that aren't. Like try selling modifications that convert semi-automatic carbines in to fully automatic ones. It is just a modified trigger/firing pin assembly. You sell that and your ass is going to prison for a long time. Or how about dealers that can sell automatic weapons? Well first off they have to have a special class of license to be allowed to do that (class 3 FFL if you are wondering) which is a pain to get. Once the have it though doesn't mean they can just sell them. Nope, only certain people can buy them like police. Sell them to random civilians, again off to prison with you. Heck you sell a shotgun with a barrel less than 18" to a civilian and you are in trouble.
So it seems to me that there is no difference, other than that guns have far more rules and restrictions. They are not saying you can't sell cable modems. Cable modems are for sale everywhere. Best Buy has hundreds from all different makers. Cable companies give them out for free with new accounts often. You can get a cable modem any time you like with no background check (something required to buy a gun) for very cheap from any number of stores, none of which need to be licensed to sell them to you. All they are saying is that you can't sell cable modems designed to commit theft of service by taking service you have not paid for.
But please, don't let facts get in the way of your manufactured rage and gun rant.
He was helped by the powers that be, just to allow us to become enslaved and monitored 24 7.
Im sure they were just looking for a good candidate to start a war on TERROR. To be honest im more scared of the US military and the UK incompitent goverment. I mean they are the ones that have taken over countries, sponsored terrorism, generated more terrorism and generally F@$ck'd things up. Democracy in Afganistan (what a joke with 1 candidate).
Gun stores need to be careful about who they sell to. While they aren't liable provided they take necessary precautions, they can well face criminal charges if they don't. A simple example is background checks. Gun stores have to run a background check on all customers through the NCIC. This works basically by them getting your info and then calling the police, who enter it in to their NCIC computer. This either says yes, no, or you are going to have to wait because there's not enough info. IF the answer is no, the gun store can't sell the weapon, and will get in trouble if they do.
Likewise they can't sell you a weapon if you indicate you intend to use it for an illegal purpose. As a practical matter, most gun stores will tell you to get lost if you are acting sketchy about why you are buying the gun at all. They tend to be very careful about such things.
In general what it comes down to is if you know someone is going to commit a crime, and you provide them with support in that regard, you can be charged. You can't take the "Well *I* didn't actually commit the theft, I just told him the building to hit, how to get past the alarm, where the goods were, and who to fence them to," approach. If you provided them with aid to commit the crime, you yourself can be charged.
Emmanuel Goldstein would agree
I love you so much right now.
Crawl out from under your rock and I'll give you the Texas Bird treatment - you sick puppy. Stick your head in a bucket of water and drown!
My cable provider rents modems, but I like to have my own around at least as a spare. I bought a used one, same model as the cable company. Can't use it because they want their MAC address, so my spare is not usable. They won't allow any other MAC than theirs and I prefer to just solve the problem technically rather than continue to deal with their bureaucrats who seem to think the modem cannot possibly have been sold legally (they are available on many places on the net, used mostly but some new). Using the book to reset the MAC to match theirs will mean that if theirs fails, I have a hot spare that can be swapped in. BTW I already pay for their fastest service, have no motivation to try to get more. (Doubt the upstream system could give more than I pay for anyway...we are somewhat in boondocks.)
Yes, you're a sad case.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Or /usr/bin/ladin
so would eric blair
You wouldn't be too thrilled if some other freeloader decided to hog all the bandwidth on "your" circuit would you? Its only okay when you do it. Nobody else okay?
“It’s like arresting every firearms dealer, because handguns can be used to commit murder.” This is an AWFUL analogy.
It's more like selling home power tools (drills, saws, etc), then arresting him because those tools can be used to break into houses. Nobody is going to die because he sold some hacked cable modems. If we continue to let people use terms like pirates, murder, and compare hacking to gun crimes, we do everyone a disservice.
funny irony is funny . . . .
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Precisely! This is _corruption_ : prosecutors abusing their powers to make their lives easier and get look better (higher conviction rates). If this is really "to reduce costs", then the voters are corrupt. Plea bargains should be outlawed.
Sometimes interesting varients play, like overcharging the cops with attempted murder in the Rodney King beating so they get off scott-free (intent unproveable).
Advanced corruption does not use bags of cash or anything tangible.
Nothing to do with anything but money and making an example of people able to think outside the box. Instead of learning and fixing their flaws they have found a scapegoat and are now trying to skin him.
When he comes into their jurisdiction they will catch him. FBI Domestic, CIA foreign.
Also they have THOUSANDS of open cases. Also they have THOUSANDS of agents. So yes the FBI should have dropped everything they are doing for the guy holed up in some cave in another country.
Just from the summary I would say the guy was ripping off the cable company, then setup a business to do the same. Uh crime...
While your snarky remark is just that snarky it shows a good deal of thinking of the government as 1 person. It is thousands of people making thousands of decisions a day.
While I too would like them to find him. Life goes on and people still commit crimes. They still need to be doing these things.
Hacked hardware is nothing without a user. Charging him for selling hacked hardware is like charging a handgun manufacturer with murder or assuming all P2P traffic is pirated, or even worse, assuming all copyrighted stuff being shared isn't being shared legitimately (and we all know the law is designed for assuming traditional notions of copyright and not GPL-style copyright).
>Each time a man affirms to belong to a superior race, a >chosen people, humanity is in danger."
Chosen people you say?
You mean like the ones who claim that they are some mythical bogeymans favorites?
Yes, it would be annoying to have such racist morons around. Imagine such a groups gaining power and how they could misuse it.
That being said, they're not fearmongering his name. At least, no reputable political figure uses it much any more. These days most of the discussion seems rather eggheaded, to me. Which is good.
Because the bogeyman is a lot less scary when he's behind bars or dead. Right now, if the politicians want MORE powers, they can still point to the fact that he's running around out there plotting against us. If they caught or killed him, they could still do that to some extent (by pointing to other lesser-known terrorists) but the fear-mongering wouldn't be as effective.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Last time I signed up for Comcast (a long while ago, I admit) they gave me three options for a cable modem: Rent one of theirs, buy one of theirs, or provide my own. That last option is the key here. If I was allowed to provide my own modem, why wouldn't I be allowed to use a modified one? The way I figure, if Comcast (or any other company) relies on the user's hardware to impose limitations, and they then provide their own hardware that doesn't include the ability to impose such limitations, the user hasn't broken any laws, nor has the provider of the modified modem. The exception to this would be if the agreement with the internet provider states you can't use modified hardware or hardware that can't impose the limitations the require, but even in this case the hardware provider shouldn't be charged only the end user who agreed not to use the hardware. As near as I can figure, this is just another case of America, Inc. using the legal system to support big companies. I'm not a lawyer, or expert in any way shape or form, but it seems to me that two things should happen here: this man should be allowed to walk, and internet providers should start capping bandwidth from their own routers and not the users' hardware. Sure, they might not have the hardware in place to already do this, weren't internet providers supposed to be trying to upgrade our national network infrastructure anyway?
And that's a great example of why you should never talk to the cops. EVER.
It's not their job to be fair. It's their job to get you to say something incriminating. Functionally, it's the cops' job to "aid and abet" the prosecutors' office in getting innocent people convicted.
Anyone who says different, is a clueless idealistic moron. You have the 5th amendment right to keep your mouth shut for a reason: NEVER say anything to the cops.
Just last week, I had my trial before a judge for a very borderline DWI where I had blown a .08. To describe the background, after being arrested and being brought to the station, over one year ago, the officers asked if I would agree to answer questions. I told them I would not do so without an attorney present. They asked two more times, and made it sound as if I was about to get in huge trouble if I had the audacity to invoke my rights. I denied to answer questions each of those times. What is interesting is that the fact I was alert enough to both understand my rights, and to practice them, was the final straw and indicator to the judge that I was not both physically and mentally impaired. I was found not guilty.
Reply to That ||
Asking for a MAC address for a specific network or region does not indicate criminal behavior. I can think of several valid technical support reasons to be asking for MAC addresses like that, and I am sure an IT competent defense lawyer would be happy to use them in court too.
As much as I hate linking to blogs SecurityFocus seems to have the most detailed story on the DirecTV lawsuits against anyone and everyone who ever bought a smart card writer. Their reasoning seems to be "People use smart card writers to pirate our service therefore everyone who purchases a smart card writer is doing so to pirate our services."
Good luck with that.
Never - Our goal was never to catch him but to gain control over the war and debt.He is merely a scapegoat in the face of the media world. In fact, he will never be caught, because he is almost a part of our country as any affiliate to the US government. I wish people would wash the tainted soap from their brains and see whats really going on here.
"if you control the debt, you control the world"
- unknown
Asking for a MAC address for use by a third party who wishes to remain anonymous IS a smoking gun. That's what he did on his own forum. And that will hang him.
We're all waiting for your "several valid technical support reasons" - but remember, they have to be credible enough that, to use your words, "an IT competent defense lawyer would be happy to use them in court."
Wired quotes Harris's reaction: "I read the indictment — it's complete bull****. I'll tell you right now I'm not going to plead guilty."
You know what else is bullshit? Wired can publish the word "bullshit" but apparently Slashdot needs to censor it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Bad analogy.
Better analogy would be: Someone sells lockpicks online that will only work with their own car. Instead of using OnStar to unlock their car when they inevitably lock their keys in their car (for a fee, of course) they unstrap the lockpick kit from the bottom of their car and open the door. Of course this violates the DMCA because the lock required an RFID chip to operate normally, but since you circumvented it, you're now on the hook for DMCA violations.
That's a bad analogy.
It's more like you buy a bottle of beer at a bar, and the bartender wants to charge you extra to pop the cap off. Instead of paying his bottle opening fee, you smash the bottle over his head and drink straight from the keg tap as he's unconscious, then start serving other patrons free beer.
'Round about the same time when O.J. will manage to catch the real killers... right after they perfect their golf swing.
Twinstiq, game news
It's also illegal to tint your car windows too darkly as someone could have a gun and the police wouldn't be able to see it.
If the police can't see in - you can't see out. That can become a problem, particularly at night.
+5 Funny? I thought this was Slashdot.
i buy it its mine if your going to put me in jail remember thats 40-60K a year to incarcerate and i guarantee you ill do this again and again.
When a federal judge says "ten years" you serve ten years.
That makes your first felony conviction something to be avoided.
The second will be even costlier.
Tech changes. Skills erode. The geek in prison is a declining asset.
There is no way for a someone to mistake a "Diagnostic Cable Modem" for a normal one, they are so blatantly different visually (color) everyone in a cable system knows they don't go out to customers, and a ISP or Cable system using cable modems knows that the Motorola has specific diagnostic modems available and will provide them if a system is having an issue.
The sole purpose of the information provided on his site was to uncap service and defraud the provider of revenue associated with a different service tier.
Doesn't it seem that one should place the bandwidth controls at the central office, and not at the customers site?
You have less control of the uplink (from someones home to the Internet) by placing bandwidth restrictions it at the central office, however you would also have tighter control of the bandwidth from the Internet to the customer. You also remove the issue where the customer an circumvent your controls because the hardware is in their hands.
Seems this would also help assist in the problem previously mentioned here about allowing Torrents to use more local bandwidth by allowing more bandwidth between an ISP's customers.
As soon as he starts downloadin'
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Osama Bin Laden shaved his beard and now happily lives somewhere, maybe even in your neighborhood.
Heck, I could put on a fake beard, add some bushy eyebrows, talk aha be daha a salami rectum on a cheap home video camcorder, and the CIA would think it was Bin Laden.
I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA are, in fact, the ones that make those terrorist videos.
You can use your own modem, the issue is supporting it on the plant, different modems support different parts of the DOCSIS protocol, and providers use specific portions for different things (like voice QOS or bonding for other BW tiers or redundancy) and they need to set a modem to support them.
What you are actually paying for in that rental is not just the hardware but the maintenance behind it, if your modem dies they will replace it at no cost to you. If you Bring Your Own you are responsible for it once the warranty from the manufacturer expires (if it dies you need to buy a new one)
Motorola, Cisco and others sell Cable Gateways you can go buy at your local big box store and those are supported by the cable companies but give you more features than your average dumb modem.
the FBI? probably when they have reason to believe he's in the US.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Federal Prosecutors, with up to 250 assistant Attorneys.
"Not tens of thousands"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
yes
...perhaps it is not in the government's interest to do so.
or perhaps it is not in their best interests to admit having already done so. i get the feeling that when it becomes convenient for those in power, Osama will be conveniently caught
A typical cable modem block services around 100 end users. They all share the pipe. In order for the pipe to work at all the end user hardware must cooperatively multitask on the uplink channel. In such a shared environment it would be very difficult to design a protocol that makes it impossible to build a cheating node -- and a DOS attack against your neighbors is always possible.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
NATO rounds are 124gr FMJ with a crimped-in hard-cup "miltary primers".
C.I.P rates 9mm Luger ammo at 34,080 PSI, the 9mm NATO rounds are pressured at 36,500 PSI. Similar to a 9mm +P round but only available with 124gr FMJ projectiles.
I wouldn't call them enhanced; just standardized.
That is like saying white hats have no use. Of course his studies have a use. I know TONS about the cmts on I'm because of his studies and have been able to trouble shoot my own network issues because of it instead of running through the crappy tech support, 'Did you pull out the power and put it back in?' Instead I could be like, 'so you know. Channel 3 is down in the area right now. Could be a bad wire out on the road. You guys might want to check for power outages or issues out here. Maybe the cmts is down? And BAM I've saved myself hours of a potentially annoying and stressful phone conversation.
While there is probably something to conspiracy theories, I disagree with that. Osama's capture would probably be in the public relations interests of the current administration. Here's a conspiracy theory for you. Maybe Osama is actually kdawson!
if he is a hacker, then anyone who changes thier OS is a hacker. or writes a script. or knows anything bout IRC or telnet.
they should get the meaning of the word so it doesnt include everyone on earth....
Typo: misdemeanor - "a criminal offense less serious than a felony". For those following along, sorry. wish we could edit posts on /.
I believe that modified cable modems, just like any other tool, are just that; tools. The modified firmware that ships on modified modems is based off of a diagnostic firmware used by DOCSIS engineers and supplied by Motorola. It is neither inherently good nor evil. Freedom grants us the opportunity for choice and ultimately the choice is that of the recipient and is not predetermined by the supplier.
My question is, is the fact that his modified web interface highlights features used for theft of service enough to convict?