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Security Researcher and Alleged Spam Operator To Square Off In Court In Ugly Lawsuit (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: River City Media, the company accused of running a huge spam operation, has filed a lawsuit against the security researcher and the journalist who exposed their activities. In a ludicrous lawsuit complaint, the company claims the security researcher didn't just stumble upon its unprotected Rsync server, but "perpetrated a coordinated, months-long cyberattack," during which it skirted firewall rules to access its server, used a VPN to disguise his identity, deleted critical files, and published his findings to make a name for himself as an elite security researcher. The company claims the researcher accessed Dropbox and HipChat logs, and even its PayPal account, from where it used funds to purchase various domains. The only evidence the company has is that the person who purchased the domains used a ProtonMail email, just like the researcher, who also uses a ProtonMail email. Remind you, this is the same security researcher, Chris Vickery, who discovered a Reuters database of supposed terrorism suspects, national voter databases for various U.S. states and Mexico, and various other companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Tim S.
Defender's lawyers send over 1 billion boxes of documents after prosecution requested related materials.
Well, some firewall rules cannot be skirted. For instance, DENY ALL TRAFFIC TO PORT 22.
We'd be up in arms if it was the FBI breaking into the systems to gather evidence of illegal activity with out a writ or warrant. Without the backing of the law the 'hacker' is and should be guilty of digital crimes, but that doesn't abrogate the guilt of the spammer, who should be relegated to a special hell for spammers and phishers. Private entities can get away with things law enforcement can't.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Then Chris Vickery not only will be able to defend himself, but may be able to countersue under New Jersey's anti-SLAPP laws (SLAPP = Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - exactly what this suit seems to be). The penalties can be quite substantial, $280K in a recent case. Not only that, but there is another New Jersey law that allows a judge to dismiss a case with prejudice within 45 days of the SLAPP filing. This is all cogent, because RCM is a New Jersey corporation.
Furthermore, there is a shareholder group engaged in a proxy battle right now, saying that they see this as a desperate attempt to distract shareholders from corporate mismanagement. So this may not even get filed, depending on how the existing shareholders see this action>
Dear law enforcement,
do your fucking job or at least don't stand in the way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It looks like a beautiful lawsuit to me. It should be much more entertaining than most of 'em.
Every time they attempt to do their job they are pilloried as jack booted Nazi's infringing on peoples god given rights to engage in criminal activities.
Ihere is nothing in the articles suggesting that Mr. Vickery did anything except find the unsecured data and publish reports, so the accusation of vigilantism and/or improper behavior is strictly a claim by RCM, as yet unproven.
davecb@spamcop.net
Yep, that goes both ways. If you have the documents, you can see and prove what was said. When you're right, that's a win.
The big bonus of having documents is that when you have them, most conflicts can be resolved at the "minor misunderstanding" stage, well before it becomes a law suit. Somebody says "I told you X". You reply "oh, I'm sorry, I thought you said 'not X' in your email on January 3rd. Did I misunderstand? Let's discuss changing that. I guess I misunderstood your email, copied below."
Then they should probably stop beating up protesters and start protecting people instead of assets and investments.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I completely agree on this one. Hacking somebody without permission is hugely unprofessional. I attribute it to a superiority complex on the side of the "security researcher". It has gotten to bad that actual IT security consultants have to assure their customers that they will of course stay strictly within their mandate and that they will of course not give any information about their findings to anybody besides the customer (much as a medical professional would and with much the same reasoning). It is quite ridiculous. In the end a security expert is somebody that helps customers with problems, it is not their task to save the world.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Naaaa, in order to do this you just need to be big on the bullshit and small on the actual facts.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Judges love criticising people for their lack of common sense, now lets see how their common sense works out.