Virus author caught

[DavRedf]

The author of the MSBlaster worm has been caught and brought to court.

https://msn-cnet.com.com/MSBlast+su...n-cnet&tag=feed_2501&subj=ns_5305948&GT1=4583

Your ideas for suitable punishment and keep it clean please.

David

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by DavRedf
The author of the MSBlaster worm has been caught and brought to court.

https://msn-cnet.com.com/MSBlast+su...n-cnet&tag=feed_2501&subj=ns_5305948&GT1=4583

Your ideas for suitable punishment and keep it clean please.

David

Turn about is fair play.

Volunteer him as permanent guinea pig for testing Ebola vaccines.

 

[JStarStar]

One of these days, we're gonna read a story about one of these hacker virus creators being found sleeping with the fishes.

A lot of people do business on the Internet, including a lot of people who aren't exactly very nice guys, who are going to become VERY un-nice guys if their profits are messed up. Viruses cost people millions of bucks and these people are definitely among them.

They have computer geeks on their payroll too, and they know how to find people just like the government does, but they're a lot less worried about "bringing people to trial" than the government is. They'll just hunt these guys down and plant 'em in the garden.

So if I were one of these hackerboys, I wouldn't sleep very easy at night. Sooner or later, somebody's gonna be coming down your chimney, and it ain't gonna be Santa Claus.

 

[jerryb]

very simple... 4 tent stakes and the worlds largest fireant mound.

....or how bout... to keep it on topic....

a body orifice... and an M motor?


virii cause about 90% of my headaches at work...

later
Jerryb

 

[jflis]

I've maintained from the start that suitable punishment for First Offense should be full restitution.

For Melissa, for example, world wide that was estimated at nearly $100 Billion. Don't have that kind of cash? no problem. Take all their money, all their posessions, everything, then lock 'em up untill they can come up with the rest.

Bet you there won't be a *second* offense

The WORST is when one of these looser gets hired, earning big bucks, as an IT security person while I get laid off.

They are criminals and they cause far, FAR more damage than any other financial impact type of crime.

 

[illini]

I've long had the idea (semi-seriously) of restoring the concept of the penal colony. Star Wars technology via space-based lasers makes it possible. There's a particular state I once lived in and don't have much use for (won't mention which one in order to protect the innocent). The current residents of this state probably wouldn't even notice. You could erect a large fence around it with sensors so that if anyone tries to escape...ZAP...MMMM...toasted! Violent criminals or those that are particularly malicious get tossed over the fence and told to fend for themselves. Liberals will be happy because you don't need a death penalty. Conservatives will be happy because they don't have to foot the bill to feed and clothe prisoners - and you have a good use for Star Wars!

 

[Justy]

Originally posted by JStarStar
A lot of people do business on the Internet, including a lot of people who aren't exactly very nice guys, who are going to become VERY un-nice guys if their profits are messed up. Viruses cost people millions of bucks and these people are definitely among them.

I'm certainly not trying to defend the criminals here, but I hate hearing "people do business on the internet and lose profits when there are problems". No kidding! Okay kids, it's storytime.

So one day, Bob walks out into the middle of a fairly quiet rural highway, and sets up a lemonade stand on the yellow line, on one side of a small hill. People driving the speed limit crest the hill, see the lemonade stand, and since he's out in the middle of desert nowhere, he's making quite the profit selling cold lemonade. The people think it's a little odd that he's right in the middle of the road, but it sure is convenient.

Bob comes to work one morning in time to see a Mustang doing 110 or so come over the hill. Once he sees the lemonade stand, he doesn't have time to stop, because he's going too fast. He swerves but still manages to take out several boards of Bob's stand.

Bob gets really mad, swears bloody vengeance against speeders, pushes the remains of his lemonade stand three feet further away from the hill -- but still on the yellow line -- and starts fixing the corner boards.

The moral of this story: When you set up a business some place that isn't safe, you shouldn't be surprised when you get whacked. The internet is not, and was never meant to be, a safe place to conduct business

 

[illini]

Originally posted by Justy
The moral of this story: When you set up a business some place that isn't safe, you shouldn't be surprised when you get whacked. The internet is not, and was never meant to be, a safe place to conduct business

There's a big difference between accidentally getting whacked by carelessness and being maliciously attacked. Regardless of the internet's original intent (as envisioned by Al Gore), it is without question a major tool for commerce, and without question commerce is one of the most valuable uses for the internet. That said, there are no guarantees of security or safety on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter. But a malicious attacker in cyberspace is just as bad as a malicious attacker in physical space.

 

[WiK]

Wouldn't it be best to use their skills to our advantage? Like make them work to program usefull stuff?
Obviously they would still be imprisoned, and wouldnt be paid for the work they were doing...
Phil

 

[powderburner]

Let him spend five years doing penance in a town somewhere providing free computer help service, like to the very people with computers that his virus hosed.

That way, he gets to spend 'an eternity' dealing with just-plain-folks (the kind of people that own 90% of the computers) and seeing firsthand the kind of damage that he has done. He could even be required to pay for whatever anti-virus software additions or updates are necessary to accomplish the fixes.

And if he fails to complete even one single call for help, *then* he goes to prison for five years.

 

[illini]

Originally posted by WiK
Wouldn't it be best to use their skills to our advantage? Like make them work to program usefull stuff?
Obviously they would still be imprisoned, and wouldnt be paid for the work they were doing...
Phil

The problem is that it would be very difficult to determine whether what they coded was really benign or not unless it was tightly supervised. Even when I have a "non-malicious" programmer whack some code for me I tightly scrutinize everything they're doing before it becomes part of my code base. Not because I suspect foul play, but rather because even a seemingly "good" piece of code can often have disastrous effects that aren't discovered until implemented in a slightly different way later. So, bottom line is that it would take more effort to supervise a programmer like that than to just write the code without them.

Nope. Ship 'im to a penal colony.

 

[nomopbo]

Originally posted by illini868891
Liberals will be happy because you don't need a death penalty. Conservatives will be happy because they don't have to foot the bill to feed and clothe prisoners - and you have a good use for Star Wars!

LOL! I'm with you man! You have given this some thought I see. (I love it)
Sounds like a good idea for all criminals. If there is one thing I have no use for it's criminals.

 

[Austin]

Let him play btchboy for his new cellmate Buba...

He will either be cured or have to type standing up for the rest of his life.

Nuf said...

 

[illini]

Originally posted by CTulanko
Let him play btchboy for his new cellmate Buba...

Oooo. Not quite as elegant a solution as I was thinking, but certainly effective!

 

[WiK]

How about you turn one of his computer viruses into the human equievelant, and force it into him?


Phil

 

[sandman]

The MSBlaster worm was the downfall of all the plans and drawings for my Trans Global Intercector.

Rermember that?

This is why I stopped making that kit....everything pretty much...is gone or corrupted.

I even wound up buying a new computer.

I may eventually be able to recreate it but I'm very discouraged.

I like Carl's idea the best.

sandman

 

[JStarStar]

Originally posted by Justy
I'm certainly not trying to defend the criminals here, but I hate hearing "people do business on the internet and lose profits when there are problems". No kidding! Okay kids, it's storytime.

So one day, Bob walks out into the middle of a fairly quiet rural highway, and sets up a lemonade stand on the yellow line, on one side of a small hill. People driving the speed limit crest the hill, see the lemonade stand, and since he's out in the middle of desert nowhere, he's making quite the profit selling cold lemonade. The people think it's a little odd that he's right in the middle of the road, but it sure is convenient.

Bob comes to work one morning in time to see a Mustang doing 110 or so come over the hill. Once he sees the lemonade stand, he doesn't have time to stop, because he's going too fast. He swerves but still manages to take out several boards of Bob's stand.

Bob gets really mad, swears bloody vengeance against speeders, pushes the remains of his lemonade stand three feet further away from the hill -- but still on the yellow line -- and starts fixing the corner boards.

The moral of this story: When you set up a business some place that isn't safe, you shouldn't be surprised when you get whacked. The internet is not, and was never meant to be, a safe place to conduct business

OK kiddies, time for another story.

Bob sees that people might buy lemonade in the middle of the dry rural area. So he leases some land, does what he's supposed to do to conduct business there, and sets up a lemonade stand and starts selling lemonade. The dude in the Mustang comes screeching up and throws a firebomb into Bob's lemonade stand.

I guess it's just tough crap for Bob, he just should have known it wasn't a safe place to conduct business.

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Actually I'd like to simply have that jacka$$ undergo surgery. Something nececssary to his health. Or even better, to someone he loves health.

Then he can sit and suffer while medication and treatment orders are lost in the chaos he and his buddies caused.

If it sounds like the voice of experience, it is. Blaster almost completely brought our systems to their knees for over a week.

A

 

[gothique_97]

Originally posted by Hospital_Rocket
Actually I'd like to simply have that jacka$$ undergo surgery. Something nececssary to his health. Or even better, to someone he loves health.

In this kid's case, that would be gastric bypass.

They are criminals and they cause far, FAR more damage than any other financial impact type of crime.

Former Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Adelphia employees might disagree.

But let's clarify for a second here about this not so 1337 h4X0r. He is not the author of the Blaster worm, just someone who plagerized the code, added backdoor accessibility, and stuck his name on it [to bury the needle on the stupidity meter, he had the backdoor messages sent to his own domain]. Granted, this makes him almost as nettiquettely bankrupt as the original author of the Blaster virus. But, in the bigger picture, it just makes him a not-too-bright script kiddie who made a bad decision [in a profoundly stupid manner] and will have to suffer the consequences for propogating a variant of a virus which only ended up affecting less than 50,000 computers on some 1200 systems. As viruses go, this is small potatoes. The original Blaster hit around 1 million computers.

I'm certainly not going to join the 'blame the victim' crowd that says 'its the computer users fault for not updating their operating systems with the latest security patches which take hours to download on dial-up'. Which came first, the virus, or the security patch against the virus?

To get the maximum sentence, they're going to have to prove intent. What may end up happening is this kid will serve less than a year in the slammer [out early on good behavior], and will spend a good amount of time on probation where he may not be allowed near a computer [a punishment which I think should apply for the rest of his existence]. The ones who ought to go to the island penal colony [preferably one prone to hurricanes and surrounded by shark-infested waters] are the group that killed those 6 people in Florida.

One thing's for sure about the script kiddie, he'd better firewall his backdoor or he'll be getting some unauthorized uploads.

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Sorry Gothique, but I disagree

Yes those killers in Florida, and those like them should feel the full weight of the law. In their case, I'd like to recommend Ohm's law.

Hpwever, I saw first hand the havoc people like that jerk caused. His variant did join the gene pool we spent over a week stomping out. As to intent, their handiwork came close to killing a child. I don't much care what their intent was. Had the worse happened, I would have wired him up with the rest.

People need to understand that they need to be accountable. In this little twit's case, he knew what he was doing, he knew it would spread. That's why he embedded a trojan horse into the code. He gave no thought to the consequences of his action.

Mssr moderators feel free to kill this post. I just had to vent a bit.

 

[Justy]

Originally posted by Hospital_Rocket
Hpwever, I saw first hand the havoc people like that jerk caused. His variant did join the gene pool we spent over a week stomping out. As to intent, their handiwork came close to killing a child.

I'm sorry, but could you please elaborate on this? Bob's lemonade stand story aside, if a person writes a computer virus that actually manages to result in someone's death at some point, I -would- hold the author responsible.

 

[JStarStar]

Well, suppose someone is waiting for an organ transplant, and they're using Internet communications to find a match, arrange delivery, etc, and the virus funks up the system and slows that process down.

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Where I work, we make intense use of information technology to deliver patient care. Physician's orders are recorded, diagnostic images are taken and read, lab work is processed, and so on. During the storm that this jerk and people like him caused, our systems were so screwed up that a critical order was delayed. As a result a young child almost missed a necessary step in his care. The vigilance of a nurse, god bless every last one of them, caught the error.

Yes we are more and more dependent on information technology for darn near everything in our lives. And yes, in some cases our lives depend on it.

No we can't prove that this jerk's variant caused the specific incident. It would be like guessing which teaspoon of water in a swimming pool caused someone to drown.

My thesis is that these people unleash their garbage without the least consideration of the effects. They know how it will perform, so they know what it is capable of. To me that makes them directly responsible ifor any consequence of their action.

</rant>

 

[Aron Sanford]

FIND A TREE-GET THE ROPE!
Aron

 

[JStarStar]

As I said earlier, very quickly (if it hasn't happened already), these hackerboys are going to start getting DEALT with in a pretty emphatic way.

As in my earlier example, there are people who use the Internet -- let's say for instance, "VitoCorleone.Com."

Vito is making money off his website, selling some kind of stuff or pictures of naked girls or whatever he does on his website, and it starts getting screwed up by a virus created by one of these hackerboys.

Now most Web companies, legitimate or not, have a few "computer geeks" on their payroll, and some of these guys know about as much or more as the government does about how to track people down online.

So one of these days Vito Corleone starts getting fed up about the money he's losing because of the virus created by Hackerboy Joe. So he puts his own "computer geeks" to work tracking down where the virus came from, and the next thing Hackerboy Joe knows, Luca Brasi is kicking down his front door and coming in with a snub-nosed revolver.

Moral of this story: Don't create computer viruses. And if you do, you better hope that the Cops are the ones that track you down first.