Knock, knock on your dorm room door... it's the FBI and they're taking your computer!

[Stark]

It happened to this guy. Be afraid.

 

[snow patrol]

:Q

 

[ApacheXMD]

scary

-patchy

 

[NFS4]

Sh!t

*hides warez collection*

 

[Pretender]

Wow, I guess having too much knowlede can fsck you almost as much as not having any.

 

[Capn]

what the hell, that's my school

 

[AndrewR]

Doesn't surprise me. The FBI, I think, is through with dealing with crackers with "kid gloves" anymore, and it's just not a good idea to mess around with them. When this guy saw that the webpage was hacked, he should have just let it be -- he opened the suspicion on himself by poking around. Most people don't start port probing a site just for fun. Some do, yes, but most don't and that's exactly what a cracker does. Ergo, he's under suspicion since the site was hacked that very day.

The one part that struck me: He mentions that they were intent on seizing his computer before they talked to him. Well, duh, Sherlock -- do you think they're going to say, "Oh, he just told us he didn't do it -- let's go, fellas"?

 

[Adul]

It true that the fbi will prob keep his comp for a very long time. Might ahs well ge a new one.

 

[Buddha Bart]

are you kidding me andrew?

So everyone who looks at a scene of a crime, or car accident as they drive by, should be subject to a little interogation themselves?

The reason he got in this sh!t is that he is way ahead of the general public, and other peoples ignorance got him screwed.

bart

 

[Ranger X]

Wow that's rough. I bet you can go on just about anyone's computer and find illegal software or MP3s. Hell, they can probably bust my whole school.

 

[Pretender]

The actions he took were stupid. He knew the FBI could be watching him, and so he goes and uses some techniques, which could be used by potential hackers, to see how they did it. Not very smart if you ask me.

 

[Soybomb]

What, why were his actions stupid? From what he says he didn't do anything I would interpert as being malicious....

 

[Pretender]

His intentions weren't malicious, but anyone who thinks it's a good idea to use some hacker-like tricks to see what the security flaw was while he knows that the FBI could be watching him (the FBI doesn't just leave you alone and ignore you if they suspect you), possibly deserves a stick kick in the ass to get his brain working again.

 

[Soybomb]

But what "hacker like tricks" did he use. Most likely I wouldnt have cared enough to go to the trouble of finding out what he did, but things like requesting version numbers and such isn't really a big deal. I'd equate it to slightly more advanced than pinging....

 

[fake]

His only wrong move was posting that website ..

 

[T4NNER]

government... what else do I need to say?

 

[Pretender]

<< I first checked port 21 of www.yankees.com, noticing that it was running wu-ftpd-2.6.0; the same version that had been exploited in the aforementioned cleanup....
I checked the bind version that yankees.com's primary nameserver was running (dig @ns1.icsnet.net version.bind chaos txt), and saw that it was running the latest version (well... patch of bind. ...
and checked other ports on ns1 for banners; 21, 25, 110, 143, etc; the most commonly exploited daemons. I got no where with this (whether it was due to a firewall, I do not know), so I returned to my IRC client >>

Of cource this is only half the story, the part that system logs would show. His reasoning behind these actions could be considered as either innocent curiousity, or scouting out the server to determine how easily it could be hacked. The FBI assumed the worst for the time being.

 

[Pretender]

Doh, I just noticed, I thought the FBI came to his house twice. They only came once, and rather the author was flashing back thru time. It's still not a good idea IMHO to check the security of a rather popular site that was just hacked.

 

[SUOrangeman]

On a slightly tanget subject, I recently heard that if you ever fail the polygraph when going to a government security clearance, they take you hard drive.

While my current top secret clearance affords me many privileges, I'd hate to get to the point where I need the poly. Just the thought brings out a nervous twitch.

-SUO

 

[Dameon]

To me the action is not &quot;rubbernecking&quot;... as that is a CASUAL observance of what is in plain sight. IE - Going to www.microsoft.com after it's hacked is curiousity, and rubbernecking. Systematically pinging, tracerting, DNS'ing, etc. Is more like stopping the car and asking the cop, so it looks like someone cut the brakes. See, if I was gonna do that, I'd rig it just most of the way through, so that the pressure of braking would pop the last bit, causing them to fail. They have to get up to speed before anything bad would happen, right???!

botttom line - t's being an ego-freak, a smartass.... so the feds actually look at you seriously... must've looked pretty smart. Congratulations. Now you get to try to look dumb again.

 

[AndrewR]

So it's just a cover, Paulson?

j/k

 

[ratkil]

If your house got broken into and within a few hours some guy was walking around trying windows and investigating your security system, would you not be a little suspicious/apprehesive of that guy? This is a case where the lack of knowledge of the authority figures is probably causing him more trouble then neccassary, but he also was pretty naive/arrogant to go poking around there.......

 

[slipperyslope]

Ratkil,

There is a difference. You own your house. It is private property. A website that is open to the public is not something that people aren't allow poke around at. Your house on the other hand is your own PRIVATE property that you have the right to tell people to get the hell away from.

This guy went to a public site and just threw a few things at the server. He did nothing illegal and is getting the shaft. I would think the FBI would have more sense than this.

Jim

 

[cavingjan]

SUO: not the current policy and we'll just leave it at that.