Server Attack underway - Jan 3 2009 - RESOLVED

[Xue Sheng]

I'd go with both a and b here.
I personally think that anyone who kills a bulk spammer or bot horde manager deserves a reward, knighthood and a free drink at the pub of their choosing.
But that's just me.

no its not

 

[MA-Caver]

I asked a "super geek" that I know as to "WHY?" these spoor of a rabid dehydrated camel would want to and like to do these things and he stated simply...

"Because they can..."

Seems like a power trip for some of these guys who were probably fired program writers and have a vendetta and thus write malicious codes (viruses, worms, et al) and send them out.

Some folks are just plain mean and it gets them off ... we call them trolls of sorts. Like those of fantasy literature there are several types of trolls out there.

So if your kid(s) ever ask... are there such things as trolls... you can honestly answer "yes... on the net"

 

[Kacey]

Thanks for the heads-up - but why are you apologizing for the actions of *******s?

 

[MA-Caver]

Thanks for the heads-up - but why are you apologizing for the actions of *******s?

I think it's probably because Bob is really a nice guy at heart... and he knows that THEY won't apologize for themselves.

 

[Carol]

Meh. Keeps threads from being derailed with a large number of "hey, this site is slow" and "why won't this page load?" complaints

 

[tellner]

If you need someone to go talk to the perps in a productive personal manner I've got a baseball bat...

 

[Xue Sheng]

"Because they can..."

Had a guy from NSA that was doing a Computer/Network security seminar I was at say that same exact thing a few years back.

 

[Miles]

Is there any police or governmental agency which prosecutes for this sort of thing? My office received a bug/worm/virus and it kept 17 people nearly inactive for 2 days. I have no idea what the cost was in terms of lost productivity, but it grinds my gears that this sort of thing happens.

Good luck!

 

[jks9199]

Is there any police or governmental agency which prosecutes for this sort of thing? My office received a bug/worm/virus and it kept 17 people nearly inactive for 2 days. I have no idea what the cost was in terms of lost productivity, but it grinds my gears that this sort of thing happens.

Good luck!

There aren't even consistent laws on it, either at the state or federal level. I could probably make a case under Virginia's computer laws... but I'm not sure it'd be easy. And there was something with an appeal on a relatively recent anti-spam conviction too that cast some of the laws in doubt.

Virginia's Computer Trespass laws can be found at 18.2-151.1 to 18.2-151.8. VA has some pretty wide computer crime laws, no doubt in part due to AOL's headquarters having been here for so long.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Eh, spams illegal, they just moved the servers outside the US. Most of the ones trying to break in here last night were based in India and SE Asia. A lot of the will come from Russia and Africa as well.

 

[arnisador]

That doesn't mean they truly originate there, of course...just that they found servers that don't keep logs there, and so the trail effectively runs cold in those places.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet

Some have estimated that by September 2007 the Storm botnet was running on anywhere from 1 million to 50 million computer systems.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet#cite_note-NEO_090707-0Other sources have placed the size of the botnet to be around 250,000 to 1 million compromised systems. More conservatively, one network security analyst claims to have developed software that has crawled the botnet and estimates that it controls 160,000 infected computers

The botnet reportedly is powerful enough as of September 2007 to force entire countries off the Internet, and is estimated to be capable of executing more instructions per second than some of the world's top supercomputers.

That's why you need to update your system and lock it down. That SOB hits us we're toast.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Side note: Botnet attacks have come from all over, including computers inside the US Military and US Government's supposedly secure networks.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken_botnet

 

[jks9199]

Eh, spams illegal, they just moved the servers outside the US. Most of the ones trying to break in here last night were based in India and SE Asia. A lot of the will come from Russia and Africa as well.

And that's the other problem... International law (or lack thereof). :shrug: