Slashdot Mirror
Hoaxer Behind 2,400 Fake Bomb Threats Caught After Gaming Site Breach (krebsonsecurity.com)
20-year-old Timothy Dalton Vaughn from Winston-Salem, N.C now faces 80 years in federal prison, reports KrebsOnSecurity.com:
Federal authorities this week arrested a North Carolina man who allegedly ran with a group of online hooligans that attacked Web sites (including this one), took requests on Twitter to call in bomb threats to thousands of schools, and tried to frame various online gaming sites as the culprits. In an ironic twist, the accused -- who had fairly well separated his real life identity from his online personas -- appears to have been caught after a gaming Web site he frequented got hacked...
[T]he real-life identity of HDGZero remained a mystery...as there was little publicly available information at the time connecting that moniker to anyone. That is, until early January 2019, when news broke that hackers had broken into the servers of computer game maker BlankMediaGames and made off with account details of some 7.6 million people who had signed up to play "Town of Salem," the company's browser-based role playing game. That stolen information has since been posted and resold in underground forums. A review of the leaked BlankMediaGames user database shows that in late 2018, someone who selected the username "hdgzero" signed up to play Town of Salem... The data also shows this person registered at the site using a Sprint mobile device with an Internet address that traced back to the Carolinas.
This week America's Justice Department released an indictment of Vaughn and co-conspirator George Duke-Cohan for spoofed bomb threat emails to more than 2,400 schools, according to Krebs, adding that the government also alleges the two reported a fake hijacking of an airline bound for the United States. "That flight, which had almost 300 passengers on board, was later quarantined for four hours in San Francisco pending a full security check."
The two now face charges of conspiracy and eight additional felony offenses, "including making threats to injure in interstate commerce and making interstate threats involving explosives."
[T]he real-life identity of HDGZero remained a mystery...as there was little publicly available information at the time connecting that moniker to anyone. That is, until early January 2019, when news broke that hackers had broken into the servers of computer game maker BlankMediaGames and made off with account details of some 7.6 million people who had signed up to play "Town of Salem," the company's browser-based role playing game. That stolen information has since been posted and resold in underground forums. A review of the leaked BlankMediaGames user database shows that in late 2018, someone who selected the username "hdgzero" signed up to play Town of Salem... The data also shows this person registered at the site using a Sprint mobile device with an Internet address that traced back to the Carolinas.
This week America's Justice Department released an indictment of Vaughn and co-conspirator George Duke-Cohan for spoofed bomb threat emails to more than 2,400 schools, according to Krebs, adding that the government also alleges the two reported a fake hijacking of an airline bound for the United States. "That flight, which had almost 300 passengers on board, was later quarantined for four hours in San Francisco pending a full security check."
The two now face charges of conspiracy and eight additional felony offenses, "including making threats to injure in interstate commerce and making interstate threats involving explosives."
I think it shows how little the authorities care about things like this. Maybe it's just a jurisdictional mess and no one can really do anything about it at a local or state level, but this guy wasn't particularly difficult to catch from what it seems.
Hopefully now that people are getting pinched for this shit, the rest of the idiots doing it will knock it off. That's almost certainly wishful thinking, but at least maybe it will die down for a while.
Clearly a horrible person, but life in prison?
He's clearly a psychopath and a danger to society, and should be locked up in a psychiatric institution until he is no longer poses a danger.
Many twenty year olds are horrible people but they usually grow up.
Yeah, but unfortunately . . . sometimes psychopaths are very good at convincing their psychologists that they have been "cured". Some folks like this never grow up.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
News reports like to say things like "He faces 80 years...". But he hasn't been convicted of anything yet, just charged with hundreds of crimes. When he's actually sentenced it'll probably be a plea bargain for something like 6 months.
No Internet access for life.
Mandatory supervised work at a 911 center for life with no chance at advancement.
He's clearly a psychopath and a danger to society, and should be locked up in a psychiatric institution until he is no longer poses a danger.
Alas, instead of fixing those, we closed most of them. Now he'll go to prison for a while, get trained in more crime and incentivized to commit lots of it by how much harder it's going to be for him to find employment in the future, and then get released on parole long before his sentence is up.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Though it is unconstitutional, this is the sort of crime I think should be punishable by flogging. Say, one lash per human hour wasted--to be administered at medically-safe intervals over his lifetime at a lot less expense than imprisoning him.
2400 * 100 people inconvenienced for four hours a piece per incident (WAG) is almost a million man-hours wasted because of this guy. A year has just 8760 hours, so he took up 109 man-years of human activity.
This strikes me as both fair punishment and strong deterrence, but I won't be debating the point because I'm trying to finish A Clash of Kings this weekend.
Why should it be up to one person? The mandatory min/max represent the will of the people (via their elected representatives in legislature).
Aside from the usual habit of the news mentioning the maximum possible sentence allowed by the statute as if it were likely, calling in fake bomb threats is a physical assault.
Personally, I wish there were some chance he would get 80 years. Might slow down all the other psychopaths.
He's just a step away (if he hasn't already) from SWATting someone, which can lead to all sorts of bad outcomes
Ten years taking it up the ass on a nightly basis sounds just about right, IMHO
The bad outcomes are from the jacked up glorified security guards who do criminally stupid shit like shooting from across a street at a residence.
Every civilized country has SWAT yet it's only America where SWATting calls turn into civilian fatalities.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The alternative being...
Forcing someone to work is illegal. You might want to ask a Black person about it.
Or anyone from any other cultural background, since slavery has been around in every culture, forever. If you're in the US, the only black person you can ask about contemporary slavery is someone who has escaped from the spots in the world that still practice it. Regardless... your point is meaningless. Being kidnapped by slave traders and then sold into a lifetime of slavery, or being born to those who have been, is NOT the same as choosing to commit a long series of crimes and having to suffer the consequences. Why are you pretending you don't get that?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Force him to work in a bomb disposal squad, as the point man assigned to go out and collect the explosive device to put it into a steel container for transport. Once he's successfully collected and defused 2400 bombs, we can consider his debt to society repaid. And maybe by then he'll have a better inkling of the stress and anguish he caused with all his hoaxes.
Clearly a horrible person, but life in prison? Many twenty year olds are horrible people but they usually grow up.
Maybe it's time to talk limiting incarceration; perhaps five to ten years, for most offenses lacking physical assault.
Sounds harsh to me too, but on the other hand, some dickweasel just like him named Tyler Barriss got an innocent man (Andrew Finch) killed when he swatted someone. The SWAT team responded and shot Finch the moment he stepped outside. That could have been me or your or your son or father.
And yes, I most certainly DO blame the SWAT team too, but without a shitbag like Tyler Barriss starting the ball rolling, it never would have happened.
Maybe just 20 years in prison to serve as an object lesson to these little fucks who think this kind of shit is funny and no big deal.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Personally, I wish there were some chance he would get 80 years. Might slow down all the other psychopaths.
Sadly, these assholes never stop to think it through so I'm not sure how much of a deterrent it would be.
They almost never go so far as to think "So I do this, and then what happens?"
I'd be fine with him getting 20 years in prison though. Maybe 30.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Forcing someone to work is illegal.
Forcing somewhere to stay someplace is illegal also.
Oh wait, unless they have committed a crime and imprisonment is part of the sentence from the state.
Since the state defines law, they can also define exceptions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Something criminal you do every now and then makes you a bad person.
Something criminal that substantially affects other lives you do over 2000 times? That person will never change, they can no longer be trusted to be around others.
May he will be better... in 80 years or so. I feel like that's about the right amount of time to maybe institute some change, though sadly even if they got that much they would probably get out earlier.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He should just get 10 days, for each of the 2400 offenses.
No one knows how to fix a psychopath, don't kid yourself. Psychiatrists are like doctors from the 1800s who had very little understanding of how it worked (but they knew some things that didn't work, like mesmerism). At least we don't do lobotomies anymore, yuck.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yet, the penalties for a cop shooting someone seem to be as low as ever.
Start throwing cops in jail when they shoot someone without good reason, and hiding behind a car and shooting at someone on a porch without them shooting first is murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Though it is unconstitutional, this is the sort of crime I think should be punishable by flogging. Say, one lash per human hour wasted--to be administered at medically-safe intervals over his lifetime at a lot less expense than imprisoning him.
2400 * 100 people inconvenienced for four hours a piece per incident (WAG) is almost a million man-hours wasted because of this guy. A year has just 8760 hours, so he took up 109 man-years of human activity.
This strikes me as both fair punishment and strong deterrence, but I won't be debating the point because I'm trying to finish A Clash of Kings this weekend.
Yup that sounds about right, "here is my opinion stated as facts but I won't listen to proof against me"
In the US prison is claimed to be a deterrence, yet everyone placed in prison is a data point against such a claim.
In some middle eastern countries flogging is a standard and common sentence also claimed to be a deterrence, yet with the exact same problem that there are plenty of data points showing it isn't.
The person you were replying to was commenting on the extent of the sentence, not so much the type.
More specifically that the extent (80 years aka life, vs 5-10) not to change any deterrence factor but to have a non-zero chance of getting a functional human being out at the end.
I was originally going to mention that your suggestion of 8760 lashes is in essence a death sentence, something we in the US perform already for two specific crimes, so why all the fucking around with torture too?
But I looked it up, and not only has a Saudi Arabian judge sentence two men to 7000 lashes as recently as 2007 and they didn't die from it, but such insane and extended torture sentences are issued pretty commonly over there. They do 100 every week for months or years and there are thousands of such sentences each and every year.
So I guess I'll limit my response to just the deterrence factor. Let's see.
A 1500 lashing sentence didn't seem to deter a doctor from giving a princess a pain killer for an injury who happened to already be a junky drug addict.
A 200 lashing sentence didn't deter a 19 year old girl from being gang raped by 7 men.
A 7000 lashing sentence didn't deter two men from being gay either.
This is really the type of behavior and treatment you are wanting, all in the name of "it would be a good deterrence"
Why not just take the man up north a couple of states where they still refuse to criminalize burning people alive at the stake? Why not cut his feet off with a saw live on tv?
Why not an actual life sentence in prison? Not agonizing enough for your tastes? Even if you throw in the trope of prison rape?
Why not just say fuck it to any semblance of a legal system and suggest anyone should be allowed to torture and kill anyone else as they deem required?
The very fact a single sheet of paper is, as you have stated, the ONLY thing keeping you from torturing others like this is frankly far more terrifying than the abuses that the US prison system has become.
Being kidnapped by slave traders and then sold into a lifetime of slavery, or being born to those who have been, is NOT the same as choosing to commit a long series of crimes and having to suffer the consequences. Why are you pretending you don't get that?
Slavery is wrong no matter how you excuse it. It's wrong when convicts only get paid $2/day for working on fire crews, too. (used to be $1/day, they got a 100% raise! woo fucking hoo!)
Don't get me wrong, we have to stop people from committing crimes. But punishing people with slavery is a violation of their human rights. Either we believe in those and give them to everyone, or we don't, and we don't. Punishment only makes assholes feel better. What's needed is rehabilitation. Sometimes some punishment is part of that, but if punishment is the whole goal, then the system is only being a shitlord.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Aside from the usual habit of the news mentioning the maximum possible sentence allowed by the statute as if it were likely, calling in fake bomb threats is a physical assault.
No, no it is not. It is arguably assault, since it threatens physical harm and there is clear intent, but it is not actually physical. It's more like a combination of assault and denial of service. Whatever you call it, though, it can have the result of costing lives. I'm not arguing against taking it seriously.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(As an aside, why is it always "gamers"? I have deliberately excluded myself from that subculture for over a decade, but the stuff I see coming out of those pits today, indicate seriously damaged minds)
Over 50% of the American public plays video games...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some fed was smart to cross reference the stolen data with NCIS to find a hit. I wonder if that is automated.
"Maybe it's time to talk limiting incarceration"
That *is* a limit. No one could possibly serve more than 80 years for the nine crimes charged. Furthermore, federal sentencing guidelines will also take into account prior criminal history, i.e. if they are young and have the possibility of growing up to act wiser in the future. Your proposal of five to ten years comes to 45 yo 90 years total for nine charges, which is pretty much what the current maximum sentence is.
On the other hand, the nine charges cover 2,400 bomb threats as well as a faked airplane hijacking. That's a maximum of 12 days per bomb threat.
the folks responsible for the Flint, Mi water crisis did it to skim money off the top of the local water utility. They gave their friends a contract they had no business doing.
/. you might not know that.
What I'm saying is, he's not necessarily a psycho, he might just be an opportunist. i.e. this was a money making operation and he figured a relatively harmless one. Annoying as hell, but harmless. Now, we know that swat teams tend to show up to these kind of things and then shoot the place up. But if you haven't been reading
In other words, he's not necessarily a complete psycho, just an asshole out for a quick buck. Add a bad economy to the mix and you could see where a guy might not have a lot of sympathy for society at large.
That said, I'd rather leave it to a professional to determine if he's an actual, clinical psychopath and whether he could be cured or not. And either way I am _not_ a psychopath and so would prefer we find a way to make him harmless with the minimal amount of harm. Naive? Maybe. But then again I'm a humanist.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
We've got the pain ray now. Google it. We could keep him in unending agony for years, stopping only to make sure his heart doesn't give out.
Torture isn't a slippery slope, It's the God damn K5. Once you start down that path you've devalued human life on such a fundamental level that anything is possible. Don't let rage blind you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
stolen by hackers and posted on underground forums - that's one hell of a chain of custody.Presumably the authorities went back to the source and confirmed it.
Nullius in verba
My GOT references was a lighthearted reference to the brutality of my modest proposal. More brutal than you comprehended since I was suggesting something like a million lashes over the guy's lifetime.
But leaving aside your poor reading comprehension and AC sanctimony, I'm not sure what your point was: Your observation that crimes are committed despite threatened punishment does not prove that punishment does not deter crime. And your parade of horribles doesn't address whether flogging would be more humane than 80 years in prison (which I think we agree would be a waste of a life).
If you feel that the Constitution is correct in preventing the government from imposing cruel and unusual punishments then we agree on that too. But while I'm glad to live in a country without a Lord High Executioner, I'm forced to lament that because of this, the punishment cannot always fit the crime.
PS: Please post which state has refused to outlaw burning at the stake, and note that the Constitution is more than a slip of paper (more than several, even!). TIA.
> Start throwing cops in jail when they shoot someone...
Or maybe try training them before making them cops. Like they do in other countries.
21 weeks vs 2-3 years. What could possibly be wrong with that...
There's also Presidential pardon.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Yep! No wonder the kid's such a sociopath...
It's a miracle the kid hasn't killed and dismembered (and not necessarily in that order) his parents yet.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yes training, and in particular the right type of training is a big part though I'll note that here, the RCMP does 26 weeks and doesn't have the problems of America and city police, possibly due to less training, seem worse.
Really it is culture thing, America has always had this culture that included shooting, just look at their frontier justice.
Currently, it seems that in the States, well to quote the Wiki article on murder,
So the problem is at the heart of their criminal system, being legal to kill on the believe of a threat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The kangaroo courts, having long since abandoned any pretense of fairness or proportionality, now resort to power-drunk cruelty to terrorize the plebs into compliance. As each new dramatic overreach errodes what little legitimacy the kourts still enjoy, the next outrage of justice must be even more brutal. Such is the regrettable state of the Law in our once great republic.
When your victims are locked in an airplane for several hours against their will, it is a physical assault. By proxy, perhaps, but physical nonetheless.
In grownupland, actions have consequences.
So hilarious watching you reply to yourself. That multiple personality disorder is getting worse.
Seek Professional Help.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Yup. This story positively reeks of parallel construction. Most likely Twatter and his ISP handed over his surveillance records, then law enforcers made up an imaginative story about "teh haxors!!" to protect their collaborators.
Your proposal of five to ten years comes to 45 yo 90 years total for nine charges
Only if you run them consecutively instead of concurrently. What sort of backwards shithole of a nation would impose criminal sentences consecutively?
Having to support a criminal by being forced to spend some of YOUR working day to buy him food is slavery. Except you're the slave. Having the criminal work to offset the cost of feeding himself isn't slavery, it's him working to feed himself just like YOU have to.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In grownupland, actions have consequences.
It's not necessary to make things up for there to be consequences. Assault is a crime. Also, those who are inconvenienced can sue for damages.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh come on bomb threat just means everyone gets some time off from the crap they were stuck doing. I mean if you're really going to blow somebody up you don't fucking tell them. But it is a great way to give somebody and their whole building the day off. The key is to cover Your Tracks. Nobody actually gets hurt from a fake bomb threat. And the ones I get scared need to be desensitized anyway, so that if they're ever in real danger they stay calm think critically and do whatever they need to do. Instead of becoming cognitively crippled.
Having no direct control over the SWAT team's policies and decisions you can't hold him accountable for the reactions of law enforcement as those are all people capable of making their own choices independent of what they're told to do. he is the one responsible for what he did law enforcement is responsible for what they do. Unless you created a policy you can hardly be responsible for it. Creations on a responsibility of their creators.
Having no direct control over the SWAT team's policies and decisions you can't hold him accountable
What a load of bullshit.
Hey, if I poison your water supply and you drink it, you can't blame me! After all, YOU made the decision to drink it. I can't be held responsible for the water company not filtering out the poison!
And if I drive drunk and end up killing you or your wife, don't blame me! YOU made the decision to get on the road, you should have known that there are drunks out there.
And if I SWAT you and the SWAT team blows your head off, too bad! I have "no direct control over the SWAT team's policies and decisions", right?
he is the one responsible for what he did law enforcement is responsible for what they do
Yes, and he'll go to prison, as should the trigger-happy fucktard that shot the innocent guy who answered his door. Don't give me your fuzzy-headed blather about "responsibility", you haven't a clue as to what the word means. The SWAT team wouldn't have been there if not for that asshole Tyler Barris.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You're not responsible for other people react they are responsible for how they react. Law enforcement are still people . they don't get a for the consequences of their actions just because someone's paying them. Or just because an institution tell them they can. Raleigh law enforcement are the most irresponsible because they follow orders, stead of making personal decisions. It's not about responsibility to others or to society it's about responsibility for your own actions regardless who told you to do it and what rule says anything's okay. Most of the damages from the reaction of others not from the act itself. Those officers are perfectly capable of saying no to their boss. I they just choose not to because it's not worth it to them to do so.
A better analog would be I tell you that there are people next door plotting your death, and you foolishly believe me without evidence, preemptively go in and kill the people next door, then blame me cuz you were stupid enough to listen to some dumb-ass talking nonsense, without verifying the situation before rolling in guns blazing, and then blaming me for your poor decisions.. when it comes to responsible observation, you don't make assumptions due to the tendency to cause more damage than you hope to prevent by not having patience and verifying things instead of just believing what you're told.
This guy regularly seriously abused a system designed to protect people, in a way he knew was hurting large groups of people every time he did it, and to top it off, he was doing it for personal gain.
That's not a bad childhood, that's just plain being an evil person. Sure, a person's circumstances and upbringing influences a person's development, but if they're still left with the ability to tell right from wrong (as the community they are a part of defines it), and they choose to be evil, that's just the person they are.
If hurting people is all you've ever known, then you didn't have a choice, but that does't sound like the case here. He's not a victim of bad upbringing, he's the result of his own bad decisions. Society will be better off with him not continuing to harm it, and hopefully he can serve as an example to others that are considering making the same bad decisions.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.