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Brian Krebs Gets SWATted
RedLeg writes "ArsTechnica reports that Brian Krebs, of KrebsOnSecurity.com, formerly of the Washington Post, recently got SWATted. For those not familiar with the term, SWATting is the practice of spoofing a call to emergency responders (911 in the U.S.) to induce an overwhelming and potentially devastating response from law enforcement and/or other first responders to the home or residence of the victim. Brian's first-person account of the incident and what he believes to be related events are chronicled here.
Krebs has been prominent in the takedown of several cyber-criminal groups in the past, and has been subject to retaliation. I guess this time he poked the wrong bear."
This wouldn't be nearly as dangerous if we didn't live in a society where a significant portion of our law-enforcement feel like above-the-law gung-ho cowboys looking to shoot now and ask questions later that respond to "large black ex-military man in a green truck" by shooting asian women in a blue van. Cops are trained to approach every incident as a potentially dangerous or life-threatening one and it's pretty much to the point where citizens need to treat every encounter with the police as a potentially deadly one.
I've noticed Ars being incredibly slow today, are they under attack?
Does reporting about criminal groups really count as poking the wrong bear? Or do you think he deserves everything he gets?
SWATting is the practice of spoofing a call to emergency responders (911 in the U.S.) to induce an overwhelming and potentially devastating response from law enforcement and/or other first responders to the home or residence of the victim.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people? I'm not sure what is worse; that someone came up with doing this, the fact that this happens enough that there's a term for it, or the caviler way the summary reports it. "I guess this time he poked the wrong bear."
it's pretty much to the point where citizens need to treat every encounter with the police as a potentially deadly one.
Well, you're dealing with mere civilians, often carrying not military-style but actual military-grade weaponry, whose training is comparatively pathetic compared to your average NRA card-holdin' gun nut.
Woe unto any fool who doesn't act with extreme caution when dealing with law enforcement.
Standard statement of the obvious: Yes, there are quality LEOs out there. There are also a great many power-mad thugs in blue. If the former don't want people acting all paranoid around them, maybe they should do something about the latter.
For those that say "anonymity on the Internet is not important", look no further than this story for proof that you're wrong.
Sometimes good guys should be both permitted and encouraged to guard their anonymity and privacy online. It is not just for those doing wrong.
I want to know how people can call 911 and report something like this without being discovered. Every 911 call is traced immediately, and mobile calls automatically get GPS fixed. Are they using a stolen mobile from a car or something like that?
When a cell phone calls 9-1-1, it should be possible (and required) for the phone company to provide unspoofable location information to the dispatcher.
Props to Krebs for appropriately calling the events kinds of a "deadly prank". When Law enforcement deploys assets to faux crimes they lose resources to deal with actual crimes, and that is the threat implied here. Ethical choice for Krebs is clear, if this happens again, he needs to stop chucking rocks at that bee hive unless he can immediately contain it, because otherwise he becomes responsible for the potentially deadly circumstances created by those pranks.
Yay guns! They make us safe.
The most prominent cases of SWATing I'm aware of have been carried out against conservative bloggers:
Several cases seen to involve people criticizing convicted Speedway Bomber felon (and left-wing activist) Brett Kimberlin.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I don't know about you, but being white means exactly dick.
... if you are a white, you must be a pussy
Spoof call says "Lindsay Lohan has people in the yard" and they roll the SWAT team. Real call from South Central says "there's a guy shooting outside my house in Jordan Downs" and they say "thank you for the call, we'll update the statistics"
If evidence isn't an example of the event, then what IS evidence?
"Someone stole my watch. He has it in his pocked there!"
you: That isn't evidence.
If they are going to be so danager-shy they will shoot first rather than engage in a tiny amount of risk to life and limb, then they should have pay commensurate with a safe job with the low level of education required.
Hell, construction workers have a higher death rate than police.
Random idiot police officer faces gardening leave for your murder.
That is NOT legal and is, instead, assault with a deadly weapon, even for the police.
Minimum necessary force.
9mm in the forehead to stop someone stabbing you when you have a FRIGGING BULLET PROOF VEST ON is NOT minimum necessary force.
It might make cops more cautious about doing 'no knocks' &/or blasting away
The rules weren't the problem! They had lots of guns available. You should note that the island in question, Utøya, is in a sparsely-populated, rural area. It's about an 40 minutes or so away by car from the capital... It's in a different county.
It was also during the summer holiday season in Norway, when all of Norway simultaneously takes their summer holidays. Very nearly the whole country is on holiday for that month. The city is almost empty, you'll just find tourists and foreign hospitality workers.
The [Oslo] police helicopter pilots were all on holiday, which makes sense because the chopper wasn't used for SWAT purposes just monitoring. It wasn't even capable of transporting heavily armed forces, the army had that capability but they estimated that would take too much time by comparison. The quickest option was to drive to the island themselves.
In a perfect world, you'd be right. But even the best have their limits. While a horrible movie overall, I just watched "Firewall" and it involved a kidnap team impersonating the house owner to the alarm company, just going to show that supposed security has some real limits.
So if someone targetted the SWAT crew enough times to thoroughly exhaust them, eventually it *would* affect their performance and that could cause problems. If every situation is real, they can get in the zone and do it. If they have to "guess" if it's fake then the cognitive dissonance might rip them apart.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
These times are becoming really difficult to deal with. I sorta imagine a few old-timer cops are upset at this, maybe 5 years away from retirement, and they watched their job go from "stop the drug dealer, the mugger, the pickpocket, and even the fake lawyer", to 911-spoofing fake SWAT calls.
P.s. you made me want to go hunt the net to see if anyone stuck an IQ number on the Joker (RIP Heath Ledger!) He had a couple of gloriously scary tricks up his sleeve in that movie.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine