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Six UK Teens Arrested For Being "Customers" of Lizard Squad's DDoS Service

Posted by samzenpus on from the book-em dept.

An anonymous reader writes: UK officials have arrested six teenagers suspected of utilizing Lizard Squad's website attack tool called "Lizzard Stresser". Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the infamous Christmas Day Xbox Live and PlayStation Network attacks. The teenagers "are suspected of maliciously deploying Lizard Stresser, having bought the tool using alternative payment services such as Bitcoin in a bid to remain anonymous," an NCA spokesperson wrote in an official statement on the case. "Organizations believed to have been targeted by the suspects include a leading national newspaper, a school, gaming companies, and a number of online retailers."

8 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. I disagree that this tool should be illegal by Karmashock · · Score: 3, Insightful

    that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.

    But to even own it? No.

    You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.

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    1. Re:I disagree that this tool should be illegal by o_ferguson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Depends how this tool works. If it simulates a botnet attack, then sure, totally legal. But if it's just a paid front-end client for an illegal zombie botnet, then I can see how it could be considered illegal.

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      - In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
    2. Re: I disagree that this tool should be illegal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unfortunately for you, the government seems to see things another way and since they have the power and a lot of mean men with guns, they're right and you're not. :)

    3. Re:I disagree that this tool should be illegal by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.

      But to even own it? No.

      You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.

      I think you missed something: considering the tool is built on hacked routers, hubs and other kinds of devices yes, it is illegal. Regular systems testing tools aren't built on hacked devices owned by others.

    4. Re:I disagree that this tool should be illegal by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, if you wish to investigate such things then build your own on hardware you own.

    5. Re:I disagree that this tool should be illegal by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it's not a 'hack tool' it's a front end website to a backend zombie army of compromised routers, where do you think all the bandwidth for the DDOS is coming from? Their wordpress hosting plan?

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    6. Re: I disagree that this tool should be illegal by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2

      Its stretching the point a little, but 1 man's performance testing tools is another's DDoS attack tool.

      I've stress tested our company's website on an internal network to see how much load it could handle with the hardware available to us before now. Everybody who does that hits it until it starts to degrade its service to make nice response graphs.

  2. bitcoin is busted. look at all the arrests lately by swschrad · · Score: 2

    just saying.

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