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Krebs Hacker Unmasked, Hit Ars and Wired's Honan
altjira writes "Brian Krebs, hot on the tail of the hacker who DDOS his site and SWATted his home, followed up on a tip, found the dox, called and then outed his hacker. Turns out it may have been the same guy who hit Wired's Mat Honan and Ars Technica."
The attacker is ... a 20 year old guy who apparently has too much time on his hands, and was surprisingly careless with his personal information for someone exploiting the personal information of others.
Given the propensity of the American police responding to that sort of call to shoot first and possibly get round to asking questions a bit later on, SWATting somebody should be charged as attempted murder
Most crimes are solved because the criminal is careless or stupid or both.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
. . . and offer him a job.
Pentagon: "Do you also do SCADA stuff . . . ?"
Pentagon: "And windows? Good help is hard to find these days. And would you mind driving Miss Daisy . . . ?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This story is still in progress, but it's clear that this "Phobia" punk is intelligent enough in ways that really don't matter much and too stupid in ways that actually do matter. His father should have figured out what the son was doing a while ago, as his son is in the crime scene, stealing or helping to steal and use credit cards, SSNs, etc., breaking into private people's accounts and messing with them, paying for DDOS attacks against websites and sending SWAT teams to people's homes, so that somebody could actually get shot. This is all a punk move, what this idiot needs is about 3 years of labour camp, so that he'd at least repay some of the damage and 10 minutes of flogging on monthly basis, so that what could not be peacefully inserted into his brain would be painfully inserted into his back.
You can't handle the truth.
The dumbest thing was to talk but also to involve cops with the SWAT thing. If he just kept to online stealing and harassment this wouldn't be as bad as the SWAT thing, now the cops have a personal issue as well with him. The way he just blurted everything out showed how really 'smart' he is.
You can't handle the truth.
I have regrets about mean stuff I did as a young man, but I'm glad I can say I never did anything like erase someone's photos of their daughter being born or get SWAT called on someone else. Not because I wasn't a spoiled, spiteful little chode would have done something like that, simply because I was too impatient and stupid to figure out how to cause much trouble online. I guess that's something.
The scary part is I don't know what my parents could have done to prevent that. I have no idea how to keep my son from doing stupid shit like this.
This is all a punk move, what this idiot needs is about 3 years of labour camp, so that he'd at least repay some of the damage and 10 minutes of flogging on monthly basis, so that what could not be peacefully inserted into his brain would be painfully inserted into his back.
What he actually needs is an education and a job.
"One of these days an innocent person is going to end up dead"? Clearly, sir, you have paid no attention to Libertarian media in the past decade or two. Go hop over to reason.com, ignore their tax policy proposals for a moment if they annoy you, and just do a search for all the fun articles about how a SWAT team prevented paramedics from going to work for hour and fourteen minutes after shooting a veteran as part of a drug raid on the neighbors.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The scary part is I don't know what my parents could have done to prevent that. I have no idea how to keep my son from doing stupid shit like this.
- but I think I know what can be done (I don't know that it will guarantee success, but I think it would limit the probability of this type of behaviour).
Something to do. Something to do that is rewarding, something to do that is useful in some way, that teaches the kid, that gives him the satisfaction of seeing the results of his work.
Something productive to do that would channel the kid's energy.
I think the society went in the wrong direction in many ways, from the way the kids are treated with 'kid gloves' (really, everybody should be allowed to take a chance and dive into the Hudson river and swim in raw sewage, or maybe something less extreme but productive, like working at an earlier age) to the way the education system seems to inspire confidence instead of knowledge.
Basically I think you have to help the kid to find a productive way to occupy himself, maybe learning about tech stuff, building computers and robots from scratch, maybe it is sports, after all that's what Americans value most it seems. Maybe it is starting his or her own little business from early on and learning about the real world that way.
The "Phobia" guy could have been using his 'mad skills' for something productive, maybe building tools and websites for some small amounts of money for people who'd pay or audit security, etc., instead he does this. Of-course he was probably never really properly taught a lesson* in his life, but that's about to change.
(* - what can you tell a guy with 2 black eyes? Nothing. He's been told twice already.)
You can't handle the truth.
The practice of SWATting needs to stop immediately. SWAT raids are very tense for all parties involved and they can go wrong in a hurry. One of these days an innocent person is going to end up dead because of this practice. The prosecutors need to go after this guy, get him the maximum sentence for all of his many crimes, and broadcast his prison rapes so that no one ever thinks of doing something like this again.
What makes you think that being raped in prison makes you a better person who will not behave like an anti-social idiot anymore? Or that seeing this happen makes others better?
This kind of response really is as part of the problem as what this guy was doing. The US is turning more and more into a failed state it seems.
I doubt this was the first thing he did wrong. I bet it escalated from somewhere.
In order to keep him from getting to this point, you employ the same simple rules of parenting employed on everyone else who isn't a constant fuck-up:
1. Scold him harshly.
2. If that doesn't work, or if the infraction is grave enough, beat the shit out of him.
3. Repeat as needed.
Worked for me. I had wooden spoons snapped over my ass and got to taste the belt buckle once or twice. There's a reason why the old-school punishments lasted so long.
He stole NO money.
- wrong, he did, read TFA. He is part of the network that steals and deals credit cards.
He steals money, why would anybody want to hire him unless they are a government propped bank? Maybe he has a future in current version of government propped banking or politics, but normal people will look at him and his approach and won't want to have anything to do with him.
He also stole private information of people, so how can he be even trusted to deal with customers, with anything?
He endangered lives of people by calling SWAT teams on them, I don't know how difficult it is to understand - this is not a fucking game, he could have caused real damage this way, to actual health and lives of people. I don't see any redeeming qualities in him yet, for me to see it he has to be punished and he has to learn something as well, and punishment is part of that learning process. As I said: actions ... consequences.
You can't handle the truth.