UK Arrest Over Xbox Live and Playstation Network Outages

An anonymous reader writes Neowin.net is reporting the arrest of one Vincent Omari, a UK citizen [see also this Daily Mail story from a few days ago mentioning Omari], in the Christmas Day DDoS attacks on Sony's PSN and Microsoft's XBL systems: "In documents sent to Neowin, Vinnie Omari has been accused of 'hacking of the Playstation Network and Xbox Live systems over the Christmas Period'... While this is the first arrest related to the recent service disruptions, it may not be the last... In further conversations with those who are familiar with the investigation and the arrest, Omari believes that the police will not find anything of substance on his computers. His alleged crime is that he helped coordinate the DDOS attack on the service."

Comments

Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[damn_registrars]

I'm not an expert on British law, but it seems to me that by arresting this person the UK government has taken a police action to protect corporate profit and corporate interests. Was there destruction of property somewhere that we haven't heard of? If I protest outside a McDonald's to stop customers from entering the store, would I be made such a spectacle out of by the state?

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you did so by parking a thousand stolen cars (Botnet) in front of the entrance, then probably yes.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[beelsebob]

No, missuse of a computer system is a criminal offence. And yes, there was effectively destruction of property, and you heard of it.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[UnifiedTechs]

You can protest outside of a business, but if you are physically stopping people from entering the building the answer is yes you can be arrested. Protesting is making your feelings known, not forcing your will on them.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[uberbrainchild8437]

Not an expert but I believe he has committed a computer crime (hacking). I'm sure it could also potentially be a civil case but that is a separate issue. I think a good example is the O.J. Simpson trial and then the Civil trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[QuasiSteve]

I'm not an expert on British law

Well there's your problem.

Britain - and many other countries - have laws that say you can't DDoS.

The U.S. has similar laws;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

As for the hypothetical McDonald's case - they can most certainly call the cops on you and have the cops escort you away from the premises if you're actually stopping them from entering the store, and not just trying to persuade them not to. This also applies in the U.S. You can picket - but you can't block the entry. UK law is a bit more strict and you can probably easily slip into the "disturbing the peace" clause. It is the UK after all.

Whether or not you feel that you'd be made a spectacle out of is probably dependent on whether or not this would make the headlines around the world; because the arrest of this guy wasn't exactly with a pre-planned media circus to get a bunch of paparazzi try and take pictures while they shot gas grenades through the windows, busted down the doors with semi-automatics and then triumphantly led him outside with a bag over his head proclaiming "ladies and gentlemen, we got him".
Instead, they got a warrant for his arrest, they arrested him, reported on that arrest as they would any other, and oh hey look at that - he's already released on bail. Yawn.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[JWSmythe]

When you blocked McDonalds by flooding all the highways with a 12" deep layer of molasses, it would probably be considered equally damaging.

There is a discernible monetary loss. How much was lost in revenue where customers could not pay for services? How much was lost from cancellation of services because of the outage? How much was spent for network and systems administrators to work on it, beyond their normal workload?

And then ... How much was lost by other companies impacted by degraded network capacity due to the network traffic?

I'm sure those numbers were easily in the millions. Those won't be the all inclusive questions either. I'm afraid to even ponder how big the final figure will become. It could involve seemingly unrelated companies, who lost sales because their VoIP traffic was on one of the over-utilized circuits.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Computershack]

They committed fraud on Paypal, they carried out a bomb scare on a flight a Sony exec was on and they committed offences under the Computer Misuse Act.
Get your head out of your arse and try acting like a grownup if that's at all possible.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[p.g.king]

Many DDOS rely on using "infected" computers of the masses, it appears to me that the targets as big corporates are only one aspect of this case. Misuse of many individuals equipment (and who knows what else these infections do), use of excessive bandwidth which could be costing someone somewhere (for the potential zombies being used , individuals on non-unlimited plans could be paying for excess bandwidth personally).

So to paint this as helping Sony/MS rather than the general social ill it is, is disingenuous.

Not to mention, computer misuse laws have existed for years, and the government haven't made any sort of spectacle of this, I don't believe they've commented on this in any significant way.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[laurencetux]

and doing a DDOS on one of the highest traffic days of the year??

In the real world if you DDOS the wrong store on Black Friday you might get SHOT (and the LEOs might let them do it!).

If i was this guy i would be very very careful as to what im doing before and during the trial.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[tysonedwards]

How much was lost from cancellation of services because of the outage?

Microsoft and Sony explicitly exempts refunds for their services. Someone *could* return their hardware purchases of course to their retailers. Xbox Live and Playstation Plus Subscriptions or games that were opened may very well not be accepted for return though.

How much was spent for network and systems administrators to work on it, beyond their normal workload?

Somewhere between $0 and $0. The benefit of having salaried employees in technical fields who are thereby exempt from overtime.

Your other points certainly have discernible monetary impacts though that could be inferred from previous and later dates sales records and expenses.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[damn_registrars]

No, missuse of a computer system is a criminal offence

Generally, misusing your own computer system is not a criminal offense unless you really go to extremes. If I set my router to ping flood Sony or Microsoft all day long that generally is not a criminal offense. Previously it was said that this "Lizard Squad" attack was done by a group of people, until we have an idea of how many people were in said "squad" it will be really hard to say whether or not any one person had a meaningful role individually.

And yes, there was effectively destruction of property, and you heard of it.

Either we have heard of different outcomes of the DDoS, or we disagree in the meaning of "effectively". There was business lost, but I am not aware of any property that was destroyed which belonged to Microsoft or Sony.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I'd label a DDOS attack as vandalism + opportunity cost loss, and only criminal if someone's safety is / was at risk.

Owning or controlling a botnet should be more serious than spamming game servers. Trespassing and theft.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

You expect rabbid XBox Fanbois to kill someone just because they were denied service for a few hours?
Sorry, i expect that myself, it just.. sounded so fucked up :(

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[JWSmythe]

Ya, I doubt it would really cause too many cancellations, but it's still within the realm of possibilities. I've seen people cancel service over a couple hours of downtime, for things that cost pennies a day. Like one hour down, on a $25/yr subscription to a porn site.

On the network/systems part, I really meant to say it as the department, not as the individual. It's not unheard of to call in contractors, especially where it was an ongoing thing. Not all network and systems people are salary either. Some don't have any. I have had contract gigs to try to figure out why a network was misbehaving. Even when it turns out to be the upstream provider, they still have to pay me for showing up.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Stan92057]

So, in your thinking, a shoplifter being arrested is an action to protect the corporation that 1 makes the item, and 2 the corporation selling the item. Not one of enforcing the law? lol com on man......and if you block customers from entering any place of business you will get arrested. And if you decide to play superman and say nope your not arresting me,they will use whatever force necessary to arrest you.So you had better be in shape and be able to hold your breath for longer then 10 seconds. what makes you think otherwise?

And Sony, MS might have a civil case as well as the criminal but like you im no lawyer so time will tell.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Stan92057]

Comon man what do you expect people to say to you? You live a sheltered life? are you 10 years old? Why would you not know its against the law to do network attacks? Or its ok because its a corporation you don't like? Hell they could be using YOUR or one of your family members PC to help in the attack.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[beelsebob]

Generally, misusing your own computer system is not a criminal offense unless you really go to extremes.

Yes, but they weren't, were they - they were misusing millions of 3rd party's computers to create a DDoS
They were misusing the network (yes, that's a computer system)
They were misusing Sony's computer (by feeding it bogus data until it became unresponsive).

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Ash Vince]

No, missuse of a computer system is a criminal offence

Generally, misusing your own computer system is not a criminal offense unless you really go to extremes. If I set my router to ping flood Sony or Microsoft all day long that generally is not a criminal offense. Previously it was said that this "Lizard Squad" attack was done by a group of people, until we have an idea of how many people were in said "squad" it will be really hard to say whether or not any one person had a meaningful role individually.

Here in the UK it probably doesn't really matter what you were actually doing, if your INTENT was to stop or prevent people engaging in a lawful activity then that is most likely a criminal offence. This is generally how our laws are written then we just let juries sort it out.

In this case we passed a law in 2006 called the Police And Justice Act. Here is an old register article about it: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Our legal system generally has intent woven into its fabric at a far deeper level than in the US so that if the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) feel there is a reasonable likelihood of them being able to convince a jury that an individuals intent was malicious then they can drag you through the courts. In this case whether this retard is charged will probably depend on how clean his PC's were when they raided him.

You might note that I have zero sympathy for him, being susceptible to getting DDOS'd is not really a security issue worth exposing. If you throw enough traffic from a bot-net at an awful lot of sites they will go down. The simple truth is that when companies provision any sort of on-line infrastructure or offering you look and how much load it is expected to be under during normal operation then plan from there by adding a certain safety margin. In this case it sounds like this service was only going to be called each time a game was started so creating far more load then this by lots of bots pretending to start games over and over again thousands of times a minute was miles away from the intended traffic volumes.

I know some people say this vulnerability never should have existed as this phoning home is a form of DRM and this should not happen but the probably is that without it there are an awful lot of people out there who just freeload and play stuff without paying. Of course companies are going to try an make this difficult in order to stay in business, that is what capitalism dictates they must do in order to maximise shareholder returns.

I hope this guy also realises that he has utterly screwed over any chance he had in life of actually becoming a real paid security researcher with this stupid stunt. With a prior arrest on public record like this he is just not worth the risk, especially as he has not really showed any special technical skills. He will be lucky to get any sort of computer work for the next 10 years.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they ment trying to stop entering a real store on Black Friday.
Though probably more trampled then shot.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Hognoxious]

Your earlier post was right, up to the seventh word. From there it's gone downhill rather rapidly.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason for Sony to require every game phone home. Microsoft only requires a check if you are playing on an Xbox that isn't yours. a game is tied to your account and the serial # of your "home" Xbox so if the serial matches it doesn't check.

Sony on the other hand designed a system that ties it to the account and requires a check every time even If its the home ps4. This means the game you own might not work which is stupid.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[FlyHelicopters]

Do you not consider vandalism to be criminal?

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] this phoning home is a form of DRM and this should not happen [...] Of course companies are going to try an make this difficult in order to stay in business, that is what capitalism dictates they must do in order to maximise shareholder returns.

Then a free market capitalist consumer would be behooved to make it increasingly difficult for such unwanted additional DRM systems to exist in their market by any peaceful means neccesary, such as using that system as frequently as possible to make its operating cost higher, right?

The fact of the matter is that information is not scarce in the Information Age. Copies are in near infinite supply, Mr. Economist, so what does ECON101 say the price should be? Nearly Zero. Copyright laws and DRM create artificial scarcity. Burger joints and mechanic shops don't need DRM because they don't deal in scarcity. That food or automotive fix has an unbounded usefulness to you, but it is the work and materials that are monetized, not unbounded benefits of use. Since information may also have unbounded benefit to culture we should optimally pay only once for the work to create the information. This is how governments build roads.

The moment you start saying things like: "You can't drive your car on self built dirt roads", or "You can't remove the coin-slot from your car's ignition column", or "You can't send certain information over the open network", etc. then you have thrown the concept of economics out the fucking window, mate.

I'm just pointing out how literally retarding your appeal to capitalistic economics is given a post-scarcity market.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft and Sony explicitly exempts refunds for their services

Really? i would be interested to see that as a "no refunds" policy of any kind is illegal in the UK (and a criminal offence)

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[CronoCloud]

There is no reason for Sony to require every game phone home.

They don't. What people were complaining about was not being able to play games online components. For example Destiny (an MMO-shooter), or GTA's online mode.

Sony on the other hand designed a system that ties it to the account and requires a check every time even If its the home ps4.

No it doesn't. not on the PS4 you have set as your "primary" PS4. Unless you have multiple PS4's, or try to play one of your games one someone elses PS4. In that case, it does check.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

He mad cuz his mom wouldn't buy him a ps4 for christmas

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Ash Vince]

Then a free market capitalist consumer would be behooved to make it increasingly difficult for such unwanted additional DRM systems to exist in their market by any peaceful means neccesary, such as using that system as frequently as possible to make its operating cost higher, right?

Quite right, I would actually consider that a perfectly legitimate form of protest providing the requests were coming from actual consumers who had paid for said product. You have to actually buy something in order to be a legitimate consumer.

I bet this is not what this retard was doing though, he was most likely triggering off thousands of illegitimate calls from PC's emulating the DRM system not from consoles owned by people who had bought a game.

Also, it is worth bearing in mind that some consumers out there who buy games (like me) actually like things like DRM because I do not see why some other free loading little shit should get free access to something that I pay my hard earned wages for. If you can't afford something like a game or DVD, you should go without it as they are luxury items anyway.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[AK Marc]

And why is the UK government arresting North Korean nationals in Thailand? After all, that's who we've been told did it.

If not, Sony and the US government committed a conspiracy to start a war. The tinfoil hat crowd didn't go far enough.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how Sony or capitalism is somehow justified in its actions any more or less then this kid is. Neither is the implementation of DRM. Both the people who are supporting Sony and the government are doing something unethical. Both are selfish thoughtless acts/concepts/entities/etc. Neither Sony, capitalism, or the government have any high ground over this kid.

Not to mention if your connected to the internet you have to accept whatever your sent. That's just how it works. If you don't get that concept your a buffoon who should just stay off the net and let the rest of us who respect its benefits and flaws use it as designed.

Also- you clearly don't understand how the internet works. There is no single law that governs everybody on the internet. Trying to regulate it as such is a futile effort.

The Internet won a long time ago regardless of what happens to this particular kid or group.

While I'd agree there wasn't much logic to this attack and the attack appears to harm a lot of people for that of a small group of self-interested people its not like these kids weren't just looking up to the world around them as an example. I therefore wish the kid(s) the best of luck in any future endeavours (similar or otherwise).

And yea... they apparently attacked the Tor network too... or attempted to. And I do support that. However I'm not getting my panties in a bunch over it either. It's called the Internet.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[AK Marc]

Personally, I find the meatspace equivelent of a DDoS as everyone who walks up to McDonalds, you punch them in the nose. You are acting to deliberately cause them harm, in both cases.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems to me that by arresting this person the UK government has taken a police action to protect corporate profit and corporate interests

Considering consumers were harmed as well, no.

Was there destruction of property somewhere that we haven't heard of?

Theft of time and resources for a lot of people.

If I protest outside a McDonald's to stop customers from entering the store, would I be made such a spectacle out of by the state?

If you prevent people from entering, then hopefully so.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like you've been drinking a bit too much grain alcohol there, General Ripper.

You're confusing the Sony Pictures hack with the Christmas Day DDoS attacks on PSN/XBox Live. Two completely different events perpetrated by different people.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[JWSmythe]

I thought that was in the in-game trolls. :)

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[donaldm]

Not an expert but I believe he has committed a computer crime (hacking). I'm sure it could also potentially be a civil case but that is a separate issue. I think a good example is the O.J. Simpson trial and then the Civil trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Sigh! when will people learn that Hacking is not a crime. If you are breaking into a computer system or network then you are a "Cracker" and this type of activity is considered a crime.

Yes it is possible to use Hacking skills to produce software that can be used to break into computer systems, however that in itself is not a crime but using that software to break into computing systems is called Cracking and that is a criminal offence. In fact if the law is stupid enough to criminalise Hacking then you would be locking up millions of people and the entire software industry would collapse.

It really isn't hard to distinguish between a Hacker and a Cracker (think "safe-cracker") however it seems most IT reporters continue to get it wrong which in turn confuses non technical people who in turn get it wrong. As for technical people (professional or sub-professional) who confuse the two please hand in your technical credentials :-)

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[bloodhawk]

Many of these companies have a mix of salaried and CONTRACT employees, or they also pay overtime rates so $0 is likely far from the truth. Also their online component isn't just about letting you play games, they also sell a lot of content through the online capabilities, how much was lost in sales due to that? don't know myself but it would likely be in the millions. Many countries also have laws that state you CAN'T exempt refunds for services in the case where the service was not supplied.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an expert but I believe he has committed a computer crime (hacking). I'm sure it could also potentially be a civil case but that is a separate issue. I think a good example is the O.J. Simpson trial and then the Civil trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Sigh! when will people learn that Hacking is not a crime. If you are breaking into a computer system or network then you are a "Cracker" and this type of activity is considered a crime.

Yes it is possible to use Hacking skills to produce software that can be used to break into computer systems, however that in itself is not a crime but using that software to break into computing systems is called Cracking and that is a criminal offence. In fact if the law is stupid enough to criminalise Hacking then you would be locking up millions of people and the entire software industry would collapse.

It really isn't hard to distinguish between a Hacker and a Cracker (think "safe-cracker") however it seems most IT reporters continue to get it wrong which in turn confuses non technical people who in turn get it wrong. As for technical people (professional or sub-professional) who confuse the two please hand in your technical credentials :-)

Because no one gives a shit about your 1970s distinction between a hacker and a cracker. Language evolves and in terms of technology the time between cracker and hacker being coined and today is the equivalent of about 10,000 years.

Grow up and get over yourself.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a prior arrest on public record like this he is just not worth the risk, especially as he has not really showed any special technical skills. He will be lucky to get any sort of computer work for the next 10 years.

This highlights another problem society seems to shrug and accept. Arrests should not impede job opportunities, only convictions should have that effect, no matter what.

Re:Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a cracker is someone who breaks copy protection on software. A hacker is someone who breaks into systems. These are definitions that have been in place for decades, probably before you were even born.

Re: Shouldn't this be a civil case?

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to use the word retard, if someone is unfortunate enough to have Down Syndrome for life why use that as an epiphet to describe the offender who is in effect a "common criminal"?

It's unesscessarily offensive against someone who cannot help the way they were born into this World.

Forethought is a wonderful thing, hindsight is better.

Deportation

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect that if this individual is found guilty of causing these DDoS attacks, he'll be deported to the US to serve his sentence, due to the "Special Relationship" we have with them.

And once in prison over there, he'll begin receiving DDoS attacks on his rectum.

And what I mean by that is that there will be so many penises being forced up his bottom, he won't be able to poo.

Re:Deportation

[Anonymous Coward]

Packets can route both ways you know.

Re:Deportation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, i expect someone to poo quite well after having "so many penises up his bottom".
In fact, didnt one of the detainees at guantanamo allso poo very good after similar event(s)?

Re:Deportation

[CronoCloud]

Nah they'll try him and he'll serve time in the UK.....THEN they'll send him over here where he will serve more time in the classic "Pound You In The Ass" Federal prison.

+1 Disgusting Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

No Text

as far as I know hacking is not a crime

[P3r53ph0N3]

as well as surgery is certainly not a crime for itself, surgeons in the black market for human organs are criminals. The way we use words and definitions really matter especially when media tend too often to depict hackers as criminals.

British

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't look british

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

I assure you, he left his bowler hat at home

Or are you being a racist cunt?

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to re-read the meaning of racism.

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

"This guy isn't white so he can't be this nationality"

Seems racist to me

Re:British

[Anonymous Coward]

Packy or wop?

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

At what point did I suggest one race is superior to another? At what point did I use a prejudice or generalization / stereotype to discriminate? Do other people explain things for you over and over again?

Do you, then, suggest UK is white? You must, since your statement is predicated on one's necessity to be white in order to be of UK nationality. By that logic, then, if one were white while living in, say, Egypt, would one be Egyptian? If not, under what cercumstaces does it take to be considered Egyptian, or any other nationality for that matter, while simultaneously being white, or any other skin tone? Are you, instead, suggesting nationality is interchangeable and indistiguishable from physical appearance?

If, you suggest that generalizing UK to be white is in itself a stereotype and thus worthy of discrimination and exclusion of other people from being considered from UK, I'm not sure what to tell you. I suppose I'll just swap my hat and declare myself American, Russian, or Chinese at the flick of a wand, and everyone will have to accept that, right? People do generalize nationality based on what you look like, but that isn't sufficient for racism.

Don't bother answering, I pretty much know exactly what you're going to say -- throwing around the racism label at people like some sort of argumentative arm-bar. You overuse that word, and mis-apply it. I'm sure evertyhing, by now, is racist to you; including my line of questioning.

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

What attributes does someone need to have to "look" British? In a country that has been a cultural melting pot for a long, long time with a very large British Asian community, I'm not sure what to tell you.

I'm sorry you made a throwaway, offensive comment then got butthurt when someone called you out on it. Kindly crawl back to whatever racist hole you come from

Re: British

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious as to why in an article about someone being arrested for hacking, you decided to focus on his racial background

Funny

[lapm]

Since when its hacking if you ddos someone? your not penetrating system, just sending it massive amounts of traffic to make it choke...

Re:Funny

[Psychotria]

Do you really think the prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and lawyers are going to have a squabble about semantics?

Re:Funny

[jader3rd]

Do you really think the prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and lawyers are going to have a squabble about semantics?

Semantics are generally the only thing that prosecutors, law enforcement and lawyers squabble about.

Re:Funny

[webmistressrachel]

So if I breathe hot choking cigar fumes in your face, from my fat, dirty cigarillo, that's not assault? After all, all I'm doing is sending massive amounts of particulates (traffic) to make you choke...

Re:Funny

[Dahamma]

Since it's defined in many national laws as "intentionally causing damages to a computer system". And it's going to be hard to argue it wasn't intentional after they bragged about it so much on Twitter already...

My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Stan92057]

My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

Identify as many infected computers as they can and block each and every one of the PCs,cellphone,servers whatever at the ISP level. We all cry we want an open internet but that is impossible if people are allowed to run infected PCs for theses scum criminals to use at will. No more blame game no more OS wars. PC owners have to be more responsible, no PC should be connected to the internet without a firewall and antivirus/malware software period end of story. I sure as hell would want to know if my PC is being used without my knowledge and im betting a few billion of my internet friends think the same as i do. Funny they don't bat an eye to spy on us, to collect all the data they can dig up to make mint for advertising. they know damn well whose PCs are infected and being used as bots.

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP's will never do it because it puts the cost burden of support on them

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

no PC should be connected to the internet without a firewall and antivirus/malware software period end of story.

Already one step to far. Such a law does not make sense if you cannot enforce it. In order to enforce it you need to give someone the authority to enforce it. That is obviously the government. I do not want the government to have even more privacy trampling rights than they already have, so that's a nono.

What we need is properly functioning abuse departments at ISP's that actually cut the internet connection for infected customers networks. That should be legislated.
Step 2 is then the blackholing of complete ISP's, if they do not comply.

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you volunteer to deal with the tidal wave of clueless users who demand to know why the Internet button isn't working?

Because ISPs aren't going to. They deal with enough id-10-t errors as it is.

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Twinbee]

If your antivirus software is as bloated McAfee or Norton, then I'll politely decline your offer. Nothing would have me massively slow down my PC for something approaching a placebo.

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[bloodhawk]

Ah yes the old "lets throw responsibility on the ISP's story". while I agree ISP's need to do more and should be playing an Active role in shutting down some of the more obvious crap (some are), it really is unreasonable to expect them to bear the cost of becoming the internet police unless perhaps you are proposing every internet user should pay a compulsory extra 10% for their ISP to cover this cost?

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Anonymous Coward]

when the add companies, that also happen to have security and computer guys working for them, get hacked and they serve malware to people thats no problem, no company has ever had to pay for that, ever, but a dude without antivirus is a terrible person that does not deserve the interwebz

FUCK OFF

also, an antivirus or a firewall dont prevent shit from happening brah

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[coofercat]

Most of the big internet companies do something this (try doing some Google searches over Tor for an example). Things get more complicated when you use a CDN because whilst you can block the IP yourself, the CDN keeps sending their traffic to you. You need to either get the CDN to block as well, or inspect the request that came via the CDN to see if it was actually from a blocked IP (which is more expensive to you than an ordinary block).

The tricky thing about ddos attacks is they they are usually very distributed (vddos?). That means a given IP may only hit you up a few times in an hour, so won't trip your thresholds for abuse. Trying to figure out who's running an infected computer and who isn't is an exercise in futility though (who's to say it's infected?). Getting ISPs to do anything about anything in vaguely close to real time is also futile (even if you see a specific IP abusing you constantly for hours and think it's an 'open and shut case', you'll struggle to get any ISP to do anything about it - whomever it is will probably give up and stop before the ISP even starts to look at the problem).

Re:My Ideas to help stop this kinda attack.

[Stan92057]

I say ISP because they have the technology, the tools, the money, the time, as apposed to say me who don't have the knowledge,money, time. They will save billions if they clean up the abusers and unsuspecting victims. 200,000,00 drone PCs use alot of bandwidth that's will be a direct savings to all ISPs so ya don't have to worry your stock will remain high as well as your profits. Everyone will win.

Disturbing the Peace

[Etherwalk]

As for the hypothetical McDonald's case - they can most certainly call the cops on you and have the cops escort you away from the premises if you're actually stopping them from entering the store, and not just trying to persuade them not to. This also applies in the U.S. You can picket - but you can't block the entry. UK law is a bit more strict and you can probably easily slip into the "disturbing the peace" clause. It is the UK after all.

Actually, you can't picket unless the state lets you, even in the United States. Governments including state governments are allowed to impose "content-neutral time, place, or manner restrictions" on free speech provided that there are sufficient "alternative channels of communication" and the regulation served a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation. Hence the state can restrict speech severely with relatively little pretext, even in the abortion context. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

In most states it is also a crime to fail to obey a lawful police order, which is the favored charge for arresting protestors or pretty much anybody a cop doesn't like.

Re:Disturbing the Peace

[AK Marc]

Actually, you can't picket unless the state lets you, even in the United States. Governments including state governments are allowed to impose "content-neutral time, place, or manner restrictions" on free speech provided that there are sufficient "alternative channels of communication" and the regulation served a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.

You are confusing what can be done with what has been done. *I* can still picket without government permission. That you claim *nobody* can proves you are ignorant (or lying). That you think *you* can't indicates you should move. Yes, the government could stop me from picketing, with a law change.

They could also make guns illegal.

think of the children

[Anonymous Coward]

The attack - said to be carried out by a group called Lizard Squad, among others - left 160 million users unable to use their consoles,********* including children who had just received them as Christmas presents.********

hahaha, they had to wang the children angle into this like anyone gives a fuck. if anything, he probably did the fucking mongs a favour by keeping them off the TV for the only hour of their fucking boring ass lives

cunts

Cyberbogeyman named

[Anonymous Coward]

Can he still be a proper cyberbogeyman?

A funny ddos but expect to be caught

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this attack was pretty funny because of how mad people got over such a small matter.. "im mad because i cant play my games online for a little bit". It shows how addicted some people are to video games.. But if your the one

Re:A funny ddos but expect to be caught

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this attack was pretty funny because of how mad people got over such a small matter.. "im mad because i cant play my games online for a little bit". It shows how addicted some people are to video games.. But if your the one

Get over yourself you silly cunt.

Having odd service problems the last few days

[Maxo-Texas]

Google is painfully slow over comcast landline but StartPage is fine. Google on my smartphone over the Tmobile network is okay.
Spigotmc is painfully slow but Slashdot is fine.

It's like about 10% of the sites are taking over 30 seconds to respond.
Haven't seen any news about an ongoing DDOS attack on Google or any backbones.

Re:Having odd service problems the last few days

[Kaenneth]

Google used to take 30+ seconds to load for me, switched to Century Link, and now it loads effectively instantly...

Comcast sucks.

what the hell?

[slashmydots]

How stupid are these people that they keep getting caught? This didn't even sound like the type of braggy, immature morons that usually hack things. It was allegedly a DDOS for hire demonstration from a professional business group style thing.

North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

This can't be, the FBI and State Dept said it was NK - and still stand by that conclusion (http://time.com/3651171/sony-hack-north-korea-fbi/). Somebody should either eat their hat or apologise.

Re:North Korea

[bloodhawk]

seriously is it that hard to understand more than one attack happened over the last month. For fucks sake, just read the god damn article, this relates to the DDoS attack on PSN and XBL, not the sony hack (which probably wasn't actually NK anyway).

He shouldn't be charged

[Anonymous Coward]

because he only did it for the LULZ

Tales of Tomorrow!

[tmjva]

Test Flight (Tales of tomorrow).
Season 1, episode 10.
Original air date: 26 October 1951.
An ambitious, headstrong businessman uses his huge personal fortune to construct a spaceship that will take him to Mars.
Cast: Lee J. Cobb (Wayne Crowder), Vinton Hayworth (Davis), Cameron Prud`Homme (Marty Peters) and Harry Townes (Wilkins).
From IMDB.
Very good story well developed. Great interpretation of Lee J. Cobb.

Please Delete This

[tmjva]

Commented on the wrong TAB in my browser. Was supposed to be for the Billionaires' Space Club story.

Sorry ...