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'Iceman' Gets 13 Years For 2nd Hacking Offense
Hugh Pickens writes "Computerworld reports that Max Ray Butler, who used the hacker pseudonym Iceman, has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for hacking into financial institutions and stealing credit card account numbers, the longest known sentence ever handed down for hacking charges. This isn't Butler's first time facing a federal hacking sentence. After a promising start as a security consultant who did volunteer work for the FBI, Butler was arrested for writing malicious software that installed a back-door program on computers — including some on federal government networks — that were susceptible to a security hole. Butler served an 18-month prison term for the crime and fell on hard times after his 2002 release. In desperation, he turned again to cybercrime and by the time of his arrest in September 2007, he had built the largest marketplace for stolen credit and debit card information in the world."
And lesson we've all learned today, class? Don't crap in your own backyard.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I hope that he has to serve the full sentence, and doesn't get out on parole. Credit card fraud is not fun. I can only hope that more people convicted of credit card fraud receive sentences like this.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
"It is a shame that someone with so much ability chose to use it in a manner that hurt many people," Dembosky said in an e-mail message."
That in light of
"Butler served an 18-month prison term for the crime and fell on hard times after his 2002 release, he said in a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday. "I was homeless, staying on a friends couch. I couldn't get work," he wrote. In desperation, he turned again to cybercrime."
I'm not saying he's right, but it does highlight something interesting about finding work as an ex-con.
This isn't about a 13 year sentence for "Hacking."
This is a 13 year sentence for credit fraud, credit card theft, and oh yeah, he also stored the credit card numbers on a computer where other people could get to them.
There's no cleverness here that needs awarding. Back doors are easy to install when the FBI has already allowed you to contract there.
I'm not saying he's right, but it does highlight something interesting about finding work as an ex-con.
His first conviction was for criminally violating the trust of his employer and working in direct contravention to his employer's interests and mission. His skills are such that to be employed effectively he must be trusted.
Oops!
He did it to himself. No employment for him. (He'd have been lucky to find burgers to flip.)
So then he starts a business. High corporate positions may have been barred to him by his first conviction, but a lot of smaller stuff still was open. Yet what does he chose? Cybercrime.
Oops!
When he finally gets out from THIS one he'll be watched so closely that even organized crime is unlikely to work with him.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Some things deserve a permanent stigma: in this case how can you seriously expect he would continue to act in a role that requires significant trust when he's proven he can't be trusted?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Usually when people say they can't find work, they mean work they are willing to do. He might be able to get a job at McDonalds or 7-eleven, but they probably weren't up to his standards.
I have a lot of friends who say they can't find a job because of the job market. When I ask them if they've tried at applying for a job at a fast food place with a help-wanted sign on the door they universally respond with something like "I won't work fast food" or "I'm looking for more money than that". It's hard to earn my sympathy, if that's all the harder you'll try. I've worked fast-food, I've been a janitor, I've worked a cash register. If I were to lose my job today, I wouldn't consider myself above such things. It's all work that needs to get done.
No sympathy from me. Why should I feel any more sorry for him than someone that snatches purses, or robs liquor stores?
Disregarding the many other ways in which this is impractical, draconian, etc...
Since those most skilled in the areas necessary to test our security infrastructure are liable to be executed in this manner for simply working to *acquire* said skills, let's just leave it up to some hostile foreign entity to find the security holes. We'll clearly be much better off in the long run.
In an ideal world, identification (username) and authentication (password) would be separate. But that's not the case in the financial world. Every time you use a credit card or cheque, you're leaving behind a trail that contains either your credit card number and security code (if online), or your bank's routing number and your account number. Your one-time authorization for withdrawal has given away the keys to the kingdom! It's like social security numbers in that respect. Only a few services (Discover bank?) allow you to setup single-use identifiers that work around this problem without rebuilding the whole system from scratch. More should. If you need to setup recurring payments, you should be able to tell your bank who's going to be doing it, how often, for (about) how much, and get a number that a hacker could not reuse for some other purpose. (And while you're at it, you make it transportable, so you can redirect that number to your new bank account when you get tired of your old bank screwing up, without having to remember to notify everyone that your bank account number's changed.)
and someone takes it
fact: the security guard is responsible
fact: the asshole who took it is responsible
the security guard is responsible for neglecting his duty, NOT FOR THE MONEY
the asshole who took it is guilty of taking something that isn't his, they are on the line for the money
two different responsibilities
but even beyond that, the fact that we NEED security guards is because so many people, such as yourself, don't understand simple fucking morality in this world
there are moral people, who would not take something that is not theres. and there are roaming monkeys with no moral compass who take whatever they can get. such people are the problem with this world. there's no defense for such being such an asshole. if it's not yours, don't fucking take it. it's really that fucking simple. learn it
just because security is lax doesn't entitle you to a damn thing or entitle anyone for any excuse for committing a crime. if you take something that isn't yours, you are guilty, no matter if it is fort knox or a bag of money behind an open door: same level of guilt
try to understand basic morality at some point in your life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He starts by doing legitimate penetration testing; he leaves backdoors for himself, but doesn't do anything nasty with them. Then he starts hacking into government computers, and does the same thing; leaves a door open but doesn't do anything else nasty. The FBI catches him for it... but rather than bust him, they attempt to enslave him. He helps them bust another computer criminal ring. But after a while he refuses to serve them and they do bust him. They lie and claim he was of no help, and throw him in jail for a year and a half. When he gets out, his skills are now useful for nothing but crime; no legitimate company will touch him. So, naturally, he does turn to crime. This time actually doing some damage. Well, what did you expect?
Actually, 3-year recidivism is something like 50% in the UK and US.
And the prison system is not a failure. It has been a wild success. At least 1% of our population is in prison, many for non-violent and victimless crimes. The prison lobby has been so successful that you never hear anyone talk about Big Prison the way you hear Big Oil or Big Pharma or Big Farma.
The reason you think the prison system is a failure is because you are under the mistaken impression that it's primary purpose is to rehabilitate criminals. The system is designed to generate a profit; imprisoning and/or rehabilitating criminals is an accidental side effect.
If you don't believe me, then imagine if we had under-used prisons. In order to protect their business model, the prison lobby would pay for a whole new set of laws, preferably ones that many people already violate, so we can keep imprisoning Americans...much like the War on Drugs has made sure to keep prisons in business despite the continuous drop in violent crime over the past two decades.
:(){
I still believe it is ridiculous that murderers get shorter sentences than this.
At first, I thought they were referring to whom I consider to be the real Iceman.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment