I don't think his point was that technology is the culprit here. I think he was trying to say that they aren't doing all of this investigating and they aren't having such a hard time tracking these guys down because they're GOOD; the suspects simply have access to programs/scripts (written by someone else) that make it difficult to track them.
He was just pointing out that they're not dealing with super-sleuths, just kids with access to "technology."
I don't think it's terribly hard at all, but what makes you think this machine is used only for the web site? Maybe they do e-mail on it too? All it takes is one exposed vulnerable service.
Even if they did split the tasks between servers, all it'd take is one exposed vulnerable service on one exposed system to make everything else behind that firewall exposed.
If you run some vulnerability scan against an entire subnet, find a system you can get into, it doesn't take much more work to proceed again to a system that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to reach. In many cases, those "firewalled" systems tend NOT to have the latest patches and fixes installed, simply because the admins don't feel that there's much of a risk, since the firewall will protect them.
There needs to be a web site / message forum like Slashdot but dealing entirely with local/regional political matters. Something your state and federal representatives wouldn't be afraid to visit and contribute to. Organize the board by geographical area (or whatever political boundaries) and organize threads by issues, complete with informal polls.
Even without a congressperson's presence, it could be a great place to learn about your congressmen, about potential candidates in your area (all we ever hear about is what's on TV -- and that's usually at a national level). WITH a congressperson's presence, it could be an invaluable tool for communication/virtual *conversation* between your representatives and constituents.
hello i am a script kiddie (i even got in my jr high school newspaper!!!) and i would like to tell you how to crack into a system in these 8 simple steps
1. spend lots of time on IRC! cuz its fun and l33t! i talk to all of my k00L hacker friends all the time in our password-protected IRC channel. sure i get bad grades in school but thats ok cuz i will just find a job doing tech support where i can IRC from work too! 2. download all of the exploits people mention on IRC 3. download all of the volnurability scannerZ people mention on IRC 5. pick a bunch of systems (or just pick IP's randomly!) and run all of your scanner softwares on it. if everything just times out then their probably behind a firewall cuz they are LAME#!! just move on and use another IP.. or if you want to hit a government sites just download this file GOVT.TXT that lists a tonZ of hi profile government web server IP's and plug it into your scanners 6. when u find a system that has a hole, run the exploits on them! they will give u a root shell!!!!! then u can uze your other l33t scripts to set up trojins and back doors but if u dont know how to do that then just find the web space and mess up they're web page!!! 7. dont worry about getting caught or anything cause everyone running systems is just DUM like they dont know how to fix there security holes so they surly wont be able to track you!!!
----
And you honestly think it takes skill to do this sort of thing? It's nearly impossible for any system administrator to be 100% up to date on all vulnerabilities and patches. Frequently exploits are discovered and released a little while before it's been made aware to the security community. There ARE windows of opportunity there, and they don't necessarily arise out of negligence on the part of the administrator.
For those that invariably keep repeating that punishments for computer crimes seem excessive compared to other violent crimes, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN.
If you folks would spend HALF the time actually writing letters as you do whining on Slashdot, I'm tempted to say we'd see a difference in the behaviors of some of our congressmen and thus, our nation.
I bring this up every once in a great while, and every time I get somebody responding that says I'm naive, that our government isn't OUR government at all, but acts in its own best interests (which, "obviously," aren't our own). Do you have any idea how many letters your congressmen get? I know my state representatives somehow find time to individually read and respond to my letters in just a few days. My national representatives usually have somebody else going through the mail first, but each of my letters have been hand-signed and written *by* the person I wrote (and yes, I can tell the difference between an aide-written letter and one written by The Man himself). If these guys can find the time to do this sort of thing in addition to their duties as our state and nation's lawmakers, perhaps they aren't hearing enough from their constituents? Hell, most (all?) of them now have e-mail addresses that are given just as much priority as postal messages.
I wish you doomsayers would stop sulking under this dark cloud of opression and figure out that this is YOUR government. These are YOUR elected leaders. Do you guys honestly believe that each of your elected leaders just somehow automatically get inducted into some secret club hell-bent on destroying the lives of the citizens that elected them in the first place?
I didn't realized he'd already been found guilty and sentenced yet.
In the future, wait until the guy's actually been SENTENCED before you go comparing his sentence to that of other types of criminals, and remember: Just because the law provides a MAXIMUM penalty of "..." rarely means the offender will actually get that sentence.
"It is not that these are super whiz kids; it is the technology that gives them the ability to cover their tracks enough that you can have a hard time making a criminal case against them," said a senior federal investigator.
It's about time the media started relaying this crucial bit of information. These gimps are nothing more than IRC script/packet kiddies that were shown how to use a few of those l33t exploits that appear every week or two.
They're not smart (obviously in this case); they aren't "skilled members of the hacker community." They're CHILDREN that aren't supervised enough by their parents.
The kids deserve what they get, and their parents deserve to be held accountable for the monetary damages.
I mean how stupid can you be? If you're going to break into a government system, don't do it straight from your dialup account! Again, he deserved it. I have no sympathy. In fact, I just wish the number of arrests for this type of thing (including more of the DoS-type of attacks) increased by an order of magnitude.
I'm not "applauding" it because "it's the law". I'm applauding the law because it seems quite fair.
Just because a company has money means it shouldn't defend its rights and property? I hope like hell that such a law is in place if I ever copyright something I create and some stupid kid starts pirating it.
So what if this kid lives in his parent's basement or whatever crappy apartment. He's still breaking the law and distributing hundreds of megabytes of data illegally.
And who ever said his sentence rivals that of murderers and rapists. The law simply puts a cap on the maximum amount of punishment allowed for the crime. Nobody ever said his actual sentence would even be REMOTELY near that cap. As I said earlier, he'll probably be fined modestly and put on probation for a while.
If you have a problem with a law, WRITE A FUCKING LETTER. Stop whining on slashdot about how us "mindless sheep" (ha!) go praising laws because they are laws. Get a clue. Think for yourself, and more importantly, ACT.
I mean really -- most everyone uses some other form of comment sorting. Yet I still keep seeing some AC comments right smack in the middle (well, usually towards the bottom) of the comment list that still insist on being the first post.
I would certainly support some legislation that made police liable for excessive damage (assuming there isn't something along those lines already). Tearing cabinet doors from their mounts is something I would consider excessive. Scattering papers or dumping some things out of drawers probably isn't.
The legislation would need to protect the property of the searched from damage without hindering the abilities of the police to conduct a thorough search.
Well I agree that in some circumstances the things people are saying in this thread seem pretty bad, but as far as confiscating *everything* remotely relevant to a case that's in an apartment/house (even if it's in another person's bedroom), that really can't be helped. How do the cops know that the other computers weren't shared between the two brothers? Evidence could just as easily be on either PC for all they know. They have to be thorough. I don't really see any other way that doesn't compromise the investigation.
Though a lot of these other stories about the cops keeping the equipment *after* the resolution of the case (either for better or for worse), THOSE are the types of things that I really object to. Those are the things we should be writing letters about.
Well that's kinda the point of a search warrant.. to determine if items are relevant to the potential infraction they're investigating. You're still innocent, certainly, but in order to gather all of the facts, the search warrant allows them to take what they need to do a thorough investigation.
Re:That picture gives the wrong impression
on
911 Calls Linux
·
· Score: 2
Looking at the actual error message, exception 0E is a failure to retrieve swapped/paged memory from disk. The failure, it says, occurs in the VXD VMM (virtual memory windows driver) at the OS-level. I suppose it could have been a poorly written application that triggered the message, but in my experience when Windows has to bump out to text mode to give me an error message (indicating to me that the problem is above the application level, so much to the point that Windows doesn't trust the stability of the GDI to render a friendly error message graphically), a reboot/lockup is not too far behind.
Re:A suggestion to prevent this kind of nonsense
on
911 Calls Linux
·
· Score: 4
Or even something relatively minor like a credibility/validity index or something as part of the article's summary.. A few static/standard values such as:
1. Validated first-hand (by "author") 2. Validated by submitter 3. Validated by submitter (with author's doubts) 4. As posted elsewhere 5. Validated by web presence (thus with doubts) 6. Unverified 7. N/A (for things like funnies)
I'm not "bashing" OpenSource. I simply feel that there are certain times when keeping your source code closed and proprietary is perfectly justifiable. This is one such case.
And yes, performance will be *drastically* reduced. Perhaps not halved, but at least on the order of 20% or more.
All of these calculations have been optimized to an obscene degree. It's all done down to the assembly code level. Taking and storing mid-calculation data and performing a checksum/cryptographic hash/whatever on it will be an *enormous* performance hit, relative to the highly optimized calculation loop that's being performed on the data.
Now I have no actual numbers to base this on, but I believe the D.net crew said almost as much (with a number in the same range) on their web site, or in some message someplace. Check out their FAQ or something for details. They explain why they remain OpenSource, and I think their explanation is perfectly adequate.
If you were never presented with a search warrant, and you didn't *voluntarily* let the cops in to do their work, then that information should have come out during the trial (or the appeal). If your lawyer didn't think that bit of information was important, perhaps he understood/knew something you didn't...
The only way these kinds of things are going to change is if people start writing letters. Send a letter to your congressmen explaining what happened. Write your local district attourney or the judge in the case. Write the FBI (or whoever it was that did this). Tell them what happened and ask them to change this practice. Tell them all that it's been 2 years (or however long) and that you'd like your stuff back. You shouldn't need a receipt. If your stuff was confiscated in a legal manner, all sorts of documentation was written about what was taken, where, when, from whom, etc. I'm sure your name is in there somewhere.
IMHO, law enforcement should be forced to pony up the missing $1800.
If the cops can justify the seizure, explain why they charged you with a crime, etc., there's nothing you can do. If you can prove that they were out of line to begin with ("wrongful arrest"), you may be able to sue them and get something out of it, but usually that only happens if there's some major breach of protocol on their part.
Remember: if they're coming into your house and seizing your equipment, they've been able to convince a *judge* that this search and seizure is necessary. Cops/FBI don't normally do this sort of thing on a whim. There are checks and balances at work.
Also (and I'm playing devil's advocate here), if you did have things your way and the cops were required to reimburse you for the depreciation of your equipment, would you/we really be better off? It would simply make their job significantly harder. The whole point of a search warrant (thus confiscation) is to determine if you've done something wrong. Cops don't hire a cleaning service to come clean up your place after they tear it apart as part of a search warrant. If it takes years to examine your computer equipment for signs of incriminating data, then you need to write some letters to your legislature and the FBI saying, "use more of my tax dollars to streamline and make efficient this process," not, "use more of my tax dollars for reimbursing the innocent."
The original AC never mentioned his age, so I'm going under the perhaps false assumption that, since he's living with his brother, they're both minors. If this is the case, neither of you own those computers. Your parents do. The search warrant was probably served against them, which means everything on the premises is fair game.
If you two were adults, and just, say, roommates, the search warrant probably still covers the entire place. Since you both live there, the entire place can be considered his property (as well as yours), which again makes your computer equipment subject to the warrant just as much as anything else in the place.
You're totally right. All closed source software is inherently EVIL, and all companies who release closed-source software are themselves spawns of satan.
Who cares if we have to make all of our software cryptographically secure if we want to be able to trust their output? Who cares if this security HALVES the performance of CPU-critical tasks like D.net? OpenSource is always good, and if making programs cryptographically secure is the only way for OpenSource programs to give us trustable, reliable results, then by golly that's the way it must be done, because OpenSource is the True Path. OpenSource is the Light. Programming to pay bills is the path of the Dark. Fear the Dark. Oppress the Dark. Closed-source programming is the path of Evil. All evil must be destroyed.
It seems to me that this would be an ENORMOUS performance impact on the clients as they are. People keep shouting for them to code it "right", and do it only in the True Method of All Things Coded: OpenSource, but what they don't realize is that in order to beef it up cryptographically to ensure that results are indeed calculated and not forged, you'd have to take an incredible performance hit.
Now would you honestly prefer that D.net progress be *halved* as a result of them turning to the Good Side of the Force? C'mon..
I completely agree with D.net's reasoning and their decision to remain closed for now.
By "campus ethernet" I mean like a resnet program.. dorm room PC's linked to the Internet via high-speed links. It's fairly commonplace in big universities nowadays.
You might be surprised. Poor college kids with campus ethernet connections can be surprisingly resourceful. Without this class of Internet user, I really doubt MP3 would have been as popular as it is today, and I doubt VCD's online would even exist.
And/or let's set up a 24-hour judiciary board that can expedite the process of granting permission to get that information. I'd suggest an agreement between ISP's that would provide reciprocal assurances that said ISP would provide contact information and assist in tracing spoofed packets (esp. in the case of backbone providers) should an attack be shown to be occurring, but that might be prone to a bit of abuse ("Uhh yah, um I'm with Joe's ISP and we're seeing one of your users attacking us and stuff.. umm.. can we have his phone number?") unless the agreement explicitely spelled out what was considered valid proof of the attack (though I guess if you're calling the source ISP, they should be able to quickly do a packet analysis from that customer and determine if they're performing some sort of attack or not..).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think his point was that technology is the culprit here. I think he was trying to say that they aren't doing all of this investigating and they aren't having such a hard time tracking these guys down because they're GOOD; the suspects simply have access to programs/scripts (written by someone else) that make it difficult to track them.
He was just pointing out that they're not dealing with super-sleuths, just kids with access to "technology."
I don't think it's terribly hard at all, but what makes you think this machine is used only for the web site? Maybe they do e-mail on it too? All it takes is one exposed vulnerable service.
Even if they did split the tasks between servers, all it'd take is one exposed vulnerable service on one exposed system to make everything else behind that firewall exposed.
If you run some vulnerability scan against an entire subnet, find a system you can get into, it doesn't take much more work to proceed again to a system that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to reach. In many cases, those "firewalled" systems tend NOT to have the latest patches and fixes installed, simply because the admins don't feel that there's much of a risk, since the firewall will protect them.
There needs to be a web site / message forum like Slashdot but dealing entirely with local/regional political matters. Something your state and federal representatives wouldn't be afraid to visit and contribute to. Organize the board by geographical area (or whatever political boundaries) and organize threads by issues, complete with informal polls.
Even without a congressperson's presence, it could be a great place to learn about your congressmen, about potential candidates in your area (all we ever hear about is what's on TV -- and that's usually at a national level). WITH a congressperson's presence, it could be an invaluable tool for communication/virtual *conversation* between your representatives and constituents.
Does anything like this exist?
hello i am a script kiddie (i even got in my jr high school newspaper!!!) and i would like to tell you how to crack into a system in these 8 simple steps
1. spend lots of time on IRC! cuz its fun and l33t! i talk to all of my k00L hacker friends all the time in our password-protected IRC channel. sure i get bad grades in school but thats ok cuz i will just find a job doing tech support where i can IRC from work too!
2. download all of the exploits people mention on IRC
3. download all of the volnurability scannerZ people mention on IRC
5. pick a bunch of systems (or just pick IP's randomly!) and run all of your scanner softwares on it. if everything just times out then their probably behind a firewall cuz they are LAME#!! just move on and use another IP.. or if you want to hit a government sites just download this file GOVT.TXT that lists a tonZ of hi profile government web server IP's and plug it into your scanners
6. when u find a system that has a hole, run the exploits on them! they will give u a root shell!!!!! then u can uze your other l33t scripts to set up trojins and back doors but if u dont know how to do that then just find the web space and mess up they're web page!!!
7. dont worry about getting caught or anything cause everyone running systems is just DUM like they dont know how to fix there security holes so they surly wont be able to track you!!!
----
And you honestly think it takes skill to do this sort of thing? It's nearly impossible for any system administrator to be 100% up to date on all vulnerabilities and patches. Frequently exploits are discovered and released a little while before it's been made aware to the security community. There ARE windows of opportunity there, and they don't necessarily arise out of negligence on the part of the administrator.
For those that invariably keep repeating that punishments for computer crimes seem excessive compared to other violent crimes, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN.
If you folks would spend HALF the time actually writing letters as you do whining on Slashdot, I'm tempted to say we'd see a difference in the behaviors of some of our congressmen and thus, our nation.
I bring this up every once in a great while, and every time I get somebody responding that says I'm naive, that our government isn't OUR government at all, but acts in its own best interests (which, "obviously," aren't our own). Do you have any idea how many letters your congressmen get? I know my state representatives somehow find time to individually read and respond to my letters in just a few days. My national representatives usually have somebody else going through the mail first, but each of my letters have been hand-signed and written *by* the person I wrote (and yes, I can tell the difference between an aide-written letter and one written by The Man himself). If these guys can find the time to do this sort of thing in addition to their duties as our state and nation's lawmakers, perhaps they aren't hearing enough from their constituents? Hell, most (all?) of them now have e-mail addresses that are given just as much priority as postal messages.
I wish you doomsayers would stop sulking under this dark cloud of opression and figure out that this is YOUR government. These are YOUR elected leaders. Do you guys honestly believe that each of your elected leaders just somehow automatically get inducted into some secret club hell-bent on destroying the lives of the citizens that elected them in the first place?
I didn't realized he'd already been found guilty and sentenced yet.
In the future, wait until the guy's actually been SENTENCED before you go comparing his sentence to that of other types of criminals, and remember: Just because the law provides a MAXIMUM penalty of "..." rarely means the offender will actually get that sentence.
"It is not that these are super whiz kids; it is the technology that gives them the ability to cover their tracks enough that you can have a hard time making a criminal case against them," said a senior federal investigator.
It's about time the media started relaying this crucial bit of information. These gimps are nothing more than IRC script/packet kiddies that were shown how to use a few of those l33t exploits that appear every week or two.
They're not smart (obviously in this case); they aren't "skilled members of the hacker community." They're CHILDREN that aren't supervised enough by their parents.
The kids deserve what they get, and their parents deserve to be held accountable for the monetary damages.
I mean how stupid can you be? If you're going to break into a government system, don't do it straight from your dialup account! Again, he deserved it. I have no sympathy. In fact, I just wish the number of arrests for this type of thing (including more of the DoS-type of attacks) increased by an order of magnitude.
I'm not "applauding" it because "it's the law". I'm applauding the law because it seems quite fair.
Just because a company has money means it shouldn't defend its rights and property? I hope like hell that such a law is in place if I ever copyright something I create and some stupid kid starts pirating it.
So what if this kid lives in his parent's basement or whatever crappy apartment. He's still breaking the law and distributing hundreds of megabytes of data illegally.
And who ever said his sentence rivals that of murderers and rapists. The law simply puts a cap on the maximum amount of punishment allowed for the crime. Nobody ever said his actual sentence would even be REMOTELY near that cap. As I said earlier, he'll probably be fined modestly and put on probation for a while.
If you have a problem with a law, WRITE A FUCKING LETTER. Stop whining on slashdot about how us "mindless sheep" (ha!) go praising laws because they are laws. Get a clue. Think for yourself, and more importantly, ACT.
The only way this is going to be solved is through legislation. Make it happen.
I mean really -- most everyone uses some other form of comment sorting. Yet I still keep seeing some AC comments right smack in the middle (well, usually towards the bottom) of the comment list that still insist on being the first post.
Are these people just stupid or what?
I would certainly support some legislation that made police liable for excessive damage (assuming there isn't something along those lines already). Tearing cabinet doors from their mounts is something I would consider excessive. Scattering papers or dumping some things out of drawers probably isn't.
The legislation would need to protect the property of the searched from damage without hindering the abilities of the police to conduct a thorough search.
Write a letter to your state's congress.
Well I agree that in some circumstances the things people are saying in this thread seem pretty bad, but as far as confiscating *everything* remotely relevant to a case that's in an apartment/house (even if it's in another person's bedroom), that really can't be helped. How do the cops know that the other computers weren't shared between the two brothers? Evidence could just as easily be on either PC for all they know. They have to be thorough. I don't really see any other way that doesn't compromise the investigation.
Though a lot of these other stories about the cops keeping the equipment *after* the resolution of the case (either for better or for worse), THOSE are the types of things that I really object to. Those are the things we should be writing letters about.
Well that's kinda the point of a search warrant.. to determine if items are relevant to the potential infraction they're investigating. You're still innocent, certainly, but in order to gather all of the facts, the search warrant allows them to take what they need to do a thorough investigation.
Looking at the actual error message, exception 0E is a failure to retrieve swapped/paged memory from disk. The failure, it says, occurs in the VXD VMM (virtual memory windows driver) at the OS-level. I suppose it could have been a poorly written application that triggered the message, but in my experience when Windows has to bump out to text mode to give me an error message (indicating to me that the problem is above the application level, so much to the point that Windows doesn't trust the stability of the GDI to render a friendly error message graphically), a reboot/lockup is not too far behind.
Or even something relatively minor like a credibility/validity index or something as part of the article's summary.. A few static/standard values such as:
1. Validated first-hand (by "author")
2. Validated by submitter
3. Validated by submitter (with author's doubts)
4. As posted elsewhere
5. Validated by web presence (thus with doubts)
6. Unverified
7. N/A (for things like funnies)
etc.
I'm not "bashing" OpenSource. I simply feel that there are certain times when keeping your source code closed and proprietary is perfectly justifiable. This is one such case.
And yes, performance will be *drastically* reduced. Perhaps not halved, but at least on the order of 20% or more.
All of these calculations have been optimized to an obscene degree. It's all done down to the assembly code level. Taking and storing mid-calculation data and performing a checksum/cryptographic hash/whatever on it will be an *enormous* performance hit, relative to the highly optimized calculation loop that's being performed on the data.
Now I have no actual numbers to base this on, but I believe the D.net crew said almost as much (with a number in the same range) on their web site, or in some message someplace. Check out their FAQ or something for details. They explain why they remain OpenSource, and I think their explanation is perfectly adequate.
If you were never presented with a search warrant, and you didn't *voluntarily* let the cops in to do their work, then that information should have come out during the trial (or the appeal). If your lawyer didn't think that bit of information was important, perhaps he understood/knew something you didn't...
The only way these kinds of things are going to change is if people start writing letters. Send a letter to your congressmen explaining what happened. Write your local district attourney or the judge in the case. Write the FBI (or whoever it was that did this). Tell them what happened and ask them to change this practice. Tell them all that it's been 2 years (or however long) and that you'd like your stuff back. You shouldn't need a receipt. If your stuff was confiscated in a legal manner, all sorts of documentation was written about what was taken, where, when, from whom, etc. I'm sure your name is in there somewhere.
And sure, contact an attourney.
IMHO, law enforcement should be forced to pony up the missing $1800.
If the cops can justify the seizure, explain why they charged you with a crime, etc., there's nothing you can do. If you can prove that they were out of line to begin with ("wrongful arrest"), you may be able to sue them and get something out of it, but usually that only happens if there's some major breach of protocol on their part.
Remember: if they're coming into your house and seizing your equipment, they've been able to convince a *judge* that this search and seizure is necessary. Cops/FBI don't normally do this sort of thing on a whim. There are checks and balances at work.
Also (and I'm playing devil's advocate here), if you did have things your way and the cops were required to reimburse you for the depreciation of your equipment, would you/we really be better off? It would simply make their job significantly harder. The whole point of a search warrant (thus confiscation) is to determine if you've done something wrong. Cops don't hire a cleaning service to come clean up your place after they tear it apart as part of a search warrant. If it takes years to examine your computer equipment for signs of incriminating data, then you need to write some letters to your legislature and the FBI saying, "use more of my tax dollars to streamline and make efficient this process," not, "use more of my tax dollars for reimbursing the innocent."
The original AC never mentioned his age, so I'm going under the perhaps false assumption that, since he's living with his brother, they're both minors. If this is the case, neither of you own those computers. Your parents do. The search warrant was probably served against them, which means everything on the premises is fair game.
If you two were adults, and just, say, roommates, the search warrant probably still covers the entire place. Since you both live there, the entire place can be considered his property (as well as yours), which again makes your computer equipment subject to the warrant just as much as anything else in the place.
You're totally right. All closed source software is inherently EVIL, and all companies who release closed-source software are themselves spawns of satan.
Who cares if we have to make all of our software cryptographically secure if we want to be able to trust their output? Who cares if this security HALVES the performance of CPU-critical tasks like D.net? OpenSource is always good, and if making programs cryptographically secure is the only way for OpenSource programs to give us trustable, reliable results, then by golly that's the way it must be done, because OpenSource is the True Path. OpenSource is the Light. Programming to pay bills is the path of the Dark. Fear the Dark. Oppress the Dark. Closed-source programming is the path of Evil. All evil must be destroyed.
It seems to me that this would be an ENORMOUS performance impact on the clients as they are. People keep shouting for them to code it "right", and do it only in the True Method of All Things Coded: OpenSource, but what they don't realize is that in order to beef it up cryptographically to ensure that results are indeed calculated and not forged, you'd have to take an incredible performance hit.
Now would you honestly prefer that D.net progress be *halved* as a result of them turning to the Good Side of the Force? C'mon..
I completely agree with D.net's reasoning and their decision to remain closed for now.
Yep. It mentions that on the site along with the fact that you can experiment with their OS code using the copilot Pilot emulator.
By "campus ethernet" I mean like a resnet program.. dorm room PC's linked to the Internet via high-speed links. It's fairly commonplace in big universities nowadays.
You might be surprised. Poor college kids with campus ethernet connections can be surprisingly resourceful. Without this class of Internet user, I really doubt MP3 would have been as popular as it is today, and I doubt VCD's online would even exist.
And/or let's set up a 24-hour judiciary board that can expedite the process of granting permission to get that information. I'd suggest an agreement between ISP's that would provide reciprocal assurances that said ISP would provide contact information and assist in tracing spoofed packets (esp. in the case of backbone providers) should an attack be shown to be occurring, but that might be prone to a bit of abuse ("Uhh yah, um I'm with Joe's ISP and we're seeing one of your users attacking us and stuff.. umm.. can we have his phone number?") unless the agreement explicitely spelled out what was considered valid proof of the attack (though I guess if you're calling the source ISP, they should be able to quickly do a packet analysis from that customer and determine if they're performing some sort of attack or not..).