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Symantec Finds Server Containing 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials
A Symantec blog post reports that the company recently stumbled upon a server hosting the stolen credentials for 44 million game accounts. It goes on to explain how the owners of the server made use of a botnet to process that mountain of data:
"Now it's time to turn those gaming credentials into hard cash. But how do you find out which credentials are valid and thus worth some money? Three options come to mind: 1) Log on to gaming websites 44 million times! 2) Write a program to log in to the websites and check for you (this would take months). 3) Write a program that checks the login details and then distribute the program to multiple computers. Option one naturally seems next to impossible. Option two is also not very feasible, since websites typically block IP addresses after multiple failed login attempts. By taking advantage of the distributed processing that the third option offers, you can complete the task more quickly and help mitigate the multiple-login failure problems by spreading the task over more IP addresses. This is what Trojan.Loginck's creators have done."
Oh for the love of humanity the things people will do in the name of wasting time.
One man's wasted time is another man's Sistine Chapel, or pornography collection, or fictitious language for a fantasy book series.
From the moment you open your eyes in the morning until you close them at night you're passing time. Whether or not it is wasted depends entirely on whether or not you regret how you spent it.
And the penalty if I did that is, what, 5 years in federal PMITA prison?
There is something wrong in this world.
You're quite wrong. This is an example of one of the few somethings that is right in this world. Selective enforcement is designed into the system, along with jury nullification, to help the laws achieve ends that keep the public they support happy. Any "completely fair" application of the law would make it unworkable in very short order.
Could you imagine a robot issuing you indecency citations every time you pass gas in public? Could you imagine a police officer doing the same if you passed gas into a megaphone-amplified-sound-system aimed at, say, an Inaugural speech? Context is key, and thankfully so.