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Krebs: 'Men Who Sent SWAT Team, Heroin to My Home Sentenced' (krebsonsecurity.com)
An anonymous reader quotes KrebsOnSecurity:
On Thursday, a Ukrainian man who hatched a plan in 2013 to send heroin to my home and then call the cops when the drugs arrived was sentenced to 41 months in prison for unrelated cybercrime charges. Separately, a 19-year-old American who admitted to being part of a hacker group that sent a heavily-armed police force to my home in 2013 was sentenced to three years probation.
Sergey Vovnenko, a.k.a. "Fly," "Flycracker" and "MUXACC1," pleaded guilty last year to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Vovnenko operated a network of more than 13,000 hacked computers, using them to harvest credit card numbers and other sensitive information... A judge in New Jersey sentenced Vovnenko to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised released and ordered him to pay restitution of $83,368.
Separately, a judge in Washington, D.C. handed down a sentence of three year's probation to Eric Taylor, a hacker probably better known by his handle "Cosmo the God." Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department at the time about a supposed hostage situation at our Virginia home. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as "swatting"... Taylor and his co-conspirators were able to dox so many celebrities and public officials because they hacked a Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru. That service in turn relied upon compromised user accounts at data broker giant LexisNexis to pull personal and financial data on millions of Americans.
Sergey Vovnenko, a.k.a. "Fly," "Flycracker" and "MUXACC1," pleaded guilty last year to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Vovnenko operated a network of more than 13,000 hacked computers, using them to harvest credit card numbers and other sensitive information... A judge in New Jersey sentenced Vovnenko to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised released and ordered him to pay restitution of $83,368.
Separately, a judge in Washington, D.C. handed down a sentence of three year's probation to Eric Taylor, a hacker probably better known by his handle "Cosmo the God." Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department at the time about a supposed hostage situation at our Virginia home. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as "swatting"... Taylor and his co-conspirators were able to dox so many celebrities and public officials because they hacked a Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru. That service in turn relied upon compromised user accounts at data broker giant LexisNexis to pull personal and financial data on millions of Americans.
For what is essentially attempted murder?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Cosmo the Cumbucket
Seriously, this sentence seems absurd. I thought "on a computer" was supposed to add orders of a magnitude to a sentence.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
After the sentence is finished, the Ukrainian guy should be sent to Ukraine, maybe the most violent part of that war torn country. On the other hand, the Russian mafia may put him to use there. Oh, well.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
The US needs to force phone companies to update the ancient VOIP protocols with some kind of security certificate/trust system to eliminate spoofed phone numbers and crack down on SWATing. In an act where Krebs or one of his family members could have been killed, this kind of behavior needs to be treated like attempted murder, not some prank. Even under the best of circumstances, the family pet is often killed by the SWAT team to avoid injury.
With a security cert system, the phone network would refuse to route any calls without a valid certificate, and valid certificates could be traced back to a credit card/drivers license/IP address all tied to that certificate number, as well as a physical device and it's actual IP. I am sure there are still ways to circumvent it, but it would be a good starting point, and would catch most of the script kiddies, which is where 90% of this SWATing comes from.
Fly by night shady companies that refuse to collect this information or programs of the same nature simply wouldn't be able to place calls at all. For the same reason that it should be illegal to protest with a mask concealing your face, it should be illegal to obscure/spoof your identity through the phone system, and attempting to do so in and of it'self should be a federal crime with heavy penalties (I am looking at you telemarketers).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
People who are charged with uploading songs, movies, and academic journals to the internet (with no financial gain to themselves) are threatened with decades of prison time and absurd financial penalties. These people deceive SWAT teams and recklessly endanger lives and get probation? Misplaced priorities, folks. The so-called swatters should receive more severe penalties, in my opinion.
Perhaps, even if we ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who kill themselves withe drugs. Even if we ignore the the thousands who are killed accidentally by drug users. We are still talking murder, bribery, extortion, slavery, smuggling just to get those drugs to your street corner. If you bought illegal drugs, you are paying other people to murder, enslave, and commit most crimes on the books. Why should that not come with a life sentence? Just because you are white collar and can pay others to commit the crimes for you?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The article is nit about drugs but about cyber crime and SWATing ... you coukd at least 'glimpse' over the summary.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Come on AC. The editors even managed to put the answer to your question in the summary. Yeah, you had to read the entire summary and sus out the bad grammar and dodgy phrasing. But hell, we can't do everything for you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So, the only illicit aspect of the "Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru" is the fact that it used compromised LexisNexis accounts to pull personal details from their gigantic database; rather than paying for access like a decent customer...
How supremely comforting.
The guy took a plea deal from the DA. The judge can only sentence for this lesser crime.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The offender wasn't *trying* to kill Krebs. So not attempted murder.
Krebs didn't die, so not manslaughter.
The offender did act in a way to create a dangerous situation with no regard for the fact that Krebs, other people in his home, or police officers could be seriously injured. That neatly matches the definition of "reckless endangerment".
Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
No where does it say what happened to the heroin.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
And now people like this are in charge of our elections.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Every single one of the problems you cite about drugs is due to their prohibition, or at the very least exacerbated by it.
Exactly the same things happened during alcohol prohibition, but for some reason you people are too stupid to see the correlation and instead continue to think that doing more and harder of the same will get you different results.
Perhaps, even if we ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who kill themselves withe drugs.
Suicides are usually with prescription drugs, so I assume you're talking about accidental deaths. In that case, far, far more people kill themselves with cars than drugs. Are you against cars too?
We are still talking murder, bribery, extortion, slavery, smuggling just to get those drugs to your street corner.
Or some dude growing it in a back-woods pot farm. Either way it's a silly point because you could argue much the same for alcohol during prohibition. Seems a bit silly to give a life sentence for something most people think shouldn't be illegal.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
>alcohol during prohibition
I really wonder at your point here, assuming that the alcohol distillers during prohibition were as bad as the Mexican Mafia, how is this an argument? Yes, murdering people, and hiring people to murder people for you is wrong, even if it is the only way to get alcohol or heroin.
Sometime in the future we will be able to grow organs on demand in vats, that does not mean that right now, just because cheap, legal, plentiful organs do not exist that forced organ harvesting is right. Hireling someone to abduct and kill someone, to replace your ailing kidney is wrong, hiring someone to kill, smuggle, bribe, and threaten for you, to get you high, is wrong.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So what is your point? Since the world and the laws are not perfect, if you kill someone, as a necessary but unfortunate side effect of ignoring these laws, that you are a righteousness and just person?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Which is why blood diamonds are illegal, and widely considered immoral.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You underestimate their intelligence. They are the ones making money on it. See?
You just fell for more of their propaganda.
QFT. As they say, "follow the money".
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
The point is that it is probably easier and more effective to get rid of the antiquated laws that lock us in this cycle where drug makers, smugglers, and DEA all make profits off of addicts.
Decriminalize hard drug use and have the government sell/give away safe, vetted drugs to addicts (or administer doses in government run centers). Making drugs hard to get enslaves addicts to dealers and causes the situation we have now. Legalize marijuana, sell it like alcohol and tobacco, tax it, make money off of it, let a bunch of people out of prison for stupid marijuana offenses.
I agree it's an issue. The difference in penalties may be too great in many instances. There are of course a couple of reasons sentences are, and should be, different.
Keeping closest to the viewpoint you brought up, many things are dangerous. Heck, MOST things involve some risk. Consequences should fit the actual risk. Suppose I shoot off some fireworks in the middle of some soccer fields, full of short green, moist grass (which doesn't burn). Another person shoots off fireworks in their apartment complex. We've both committed the offense of shooting off fireworks within city limits. One of us was a much greater danger than the other. One method of measuring the actual danger posed is that my action did not in fact burn even a blade of grass, his action burned down an apartment building - with people in it. You can tell that his action truly could have killed people if it truly did kill people. Since my action actually did no harm, probably it wasn't really that dangerous.
If my brother has two or three drinks, you probably would never know it by having a conversation with him. Yet, his BAC is probably over 0.08%. My wife is the opposite. Three drinks and she'd probably wreck before she got out of the parking lot. The blood test doesn't measure the risk. What DOES demonstrate the degree of actual danger is if my wife actually plows through a crowd of people. Both drove over the limit - one drove without so much as running a red light, the other ran into people. Clearly, one is more of a danger to society than the other.
You mentioned murder vs attempted murder specifically. Buying a butcher knife with the intent to use it on someone is attempted murder (one can argue whether it *should* be, but it is). Someone who does that is a danger to society. Someone who actually stabs people to death, successfully, is clearly a greater danger.
Secondly, crime and punishment isn't all about the criminal, it's also about the victims (or potential victims). If somebody got plastered and ran over your child, after having been warned about the danger via a previous DWI charge, you'd probably want to kill the motherfucker who ran over your kid. As a society, we don't want parents, spouses, etc acting as judge, jury, and executioner, taking vengeance on the criminal - so we offer a better way. Victims can (hopefully) see justice done without taking justice into their own hands. If someone drives drunk and does *not* hurt anyone, you probably don't have the same urge to kill the motherfucker - society can see justice done with a lighter sentence if noone is harmed.
You might say "we shouldn't want justice, you shouldn't want to kill the motherfucker who ran over your kid." Perhaps so, perhaps not, but it's how we are. We can't "should" that away.
You ignored all my points about the locally grown stuff, which was very much a key part of the argument. You don't actually appear to want to discuss, merely sermonize.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Every single one of the problems you cite about drugs is due to their prohibition, or at the very least exacerbated by it.
Exactly the same things happened during alcohol prohibition, but for some reason you people are too stupid to see the correlation and instead continue to think that doing more and harder of the same will get you different results.
Not quite. The medical problems are still based in chemistry. physically destructive drugs like Heroin and Krokodil are still going to destroy bodies even when decriminalised.
I largely agree with your point, but you only harm your own argument by ignoring the glaring fault I pointed out above.
You're probably thinking largely of Marijuana and LSD (the least destructive of the illicit drugs) possibly up to MDMA, cocaine and amphetamines. Here I think your point remains valid. However it gets into a grey area when talking about things like Crystal Meth. I could agree with decriminalising the former drugs I mentioned, but ignoring things like Meth, Heroin and other drugs that are actually destructive is foolhardy.
The problem in the US is with who the rules are enforced against. For a long time the user has been punished whilst the producers and distributors are largely ignored. That is patently stupid. In Australia and the UK, possessing a small amount of marijuana or LSD is a misdemeanour, you'll get a fine but nothing on your record. In order to get a serious penalty, you need to be selling or supplying.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Shooting galleries (As in for shooting up on heroin in a controlled supervised environment) have reduced drug related crime in Holland substantially why not use the idea else where.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
You're right, that would probably be "mere preparation" and therefore not attempted murder. Though as someone else pointed out, if TWO people go get the knife, there's conspiracy to commit murder.
Anyway, a very weak attempt is an attempt.
"Civil servant"? Yeah right, the moment you say something like that you'll have a boot in your neck.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Break their fingers. Bat to hand style.
The thing is, the hostage is the only bargaining chip that the criminal has.
They won't automatically shoot the hostage at the slightest police apparition, that would be them losing they only hope for a way out.
They would rather *threat* to shoot, and try to see what they can leverage to try to save their asses.
But once the hostage is dead, they'd lose all mean for negociations.
So the most likely way the situation unfolds would be :
*bang* *bang* *bang* "This is the police. Open the door, we have a warrant"
*keeps door closed*
"Stay out of here! I have a hostage! If you entire I'll kill them! And find me a helicopter and enough fuel to Cuba, or I start to chop fingers!"
*police calls in reinforcement, negociators, etc. and tries to find a way out that minimizes losses*
As opposed to the SWAT approaches:
*over armed and under trained police* [Storms in]
[all starting shooting everywhere]
[high risk that the hostages get harmed during the mess]
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
By the way, a white man is several times more likely to be shot by a black man, than the other way around. It's not some 20-30% difference. It's several hundred percent more likely.
This is getting really off-topic, but that statement is ridiculously far off. Murder is quite well traced by the FBI, so let's take it as a proxy for shootings. The FBI has this nice table of 2013 statistics (other years would be broadly similar).
From the table we can see that there were 409 murders of whites by blacks. With a white population of roughly 200 million, that makes about 2 parts per million. We also see 189 murders of blacks by whites. With a black population of about 40 million, that makes just under 5 parts per million.
From this we see that a black person is about 2.5x more likely to be murdered by a white person than the other way around. That's the opposite of what you said.
Now, it is true that if you restrict to the cohort of actual crime victims, things look different. For example, given that a white person is one of the 3,000 murder victims , chances are about 14% that the murderer was black. In comparison, given that a black person was one of the 2,500 victims, chances are about 7.5% that the murderer was white.
Even viewing the statistics this way, we do not reach "several hundred percent", but rather 80%.
So he was guilty of harboring Katniss Everdeen? Then again, that's the sort of response that happened in that story as well.
While a bogus 911 is a misdemeanor in the two states I checked (California and Texas), using a false name on a police report is a felony in California. That may apply. As you suggested, that would trigger the felony-murder rule.
> Not quite. The medical problems are still based in chemistry. physically destructive drugs like Heroin and Krokodil are still going to destroy bodies even when decriminalised.
Heroin is actually one of the SAFEST drugs you can take in terms of physical destructiveness. If you can actually get pure heroin in constant supplies and known quantities.
Krokodil wouldn't even exist except for prohibition.
>. You're probably thinking largely of Marijuana and LSD (the least destructive of the illicit drugs) possibly up to MDMA, cocaine and amphetamines. Here I think your point remains valid. However it gets into a grey area when talking about things like Crystal Meth. I could agree with decriminalising the former drugs I mentioned, but ignoring things like Meth, Heroin and other drugs that are actually destructive is foolhardy.
No, it is precisely the more dangerous drugs like heroin and crystal meth where the marginal harm of prohibition is at its greatest.
No one I know of has ever died from variations in quality and purity of cannabis or LSD, prohibition is mostly killing my heroin and meth using friends.
variations in quantity* and quality
The laws are unnecessary, and the effect of these laws are the direct cause of the very deaths you talk about. The deaths are not a necessary result of drug consumption, but of the laws.
Laws cannot change people's preferences and every time society's laws attempt to ignore the more fundamental laws of supply and demand we end up with bad outcomes. Either people starving or the creation of powerful drug cartels and all the other problems.
The drug market exceeds the IT market, and is second only to the war and oil markets. Pablo Escobar was once the wealthiest man on the planet. My personal consumption is no major concern in the overall scheme.
All drugs should be fully legalised. Regulated for purity, for correct labeling, where, when and to whom they can be sold, and taxed according to their intrinsic negative externalities. Just like every other commodity in existence, because the further you drift from a free market the more the social utility loss, which is another way to say unnecessary suffering and death.
I'm certainly not in favor of prohibition, but Imperial China tried "no legislation" on opium for a while, and it didn't fare well...