IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

Yesterday a group consisting of major Australian ISPs – amongst them are Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, AAPT, Virgin, Hutchison 3G as well as Facebook, Google and Microsoft – announced that they prepare “a voluntary industry code to come into force this year” which could mean that “Computers infected with viruses could be “expelled” from the internet”.

The Internet Industry Association, which is made up of over 200 ISP and IT-related companies, is preparing that code in response to an ultimatum of the federal government.

A 40-year-old channel operator of a child pornography IRC channel received 8 years prison.

An investigation led by Interpol resulted in the arrest of 25 channel members worldwide spread over 10 countries. The channel operator, Brian Martin from Oregon USA, has now been sentenced to 8 years in prison. On his computer more then 5,000 images of child pornography have been found.

The channel served as a trading place where members exchanged newly found child pornography files, including video files.

Martin requested to remain free pending an appeal of his conviction, but  U.S. District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty denied that request.

The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the sentence against the first convicted spammer in the USA, saying anti-spam laws do not violate freedom of speech.

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C was one of the world top spammers in 2003. The case he was convicted in was built on a single action where he produced 53,000 emails in 3 days in July 2003. He was sentenced to 9 years in jail.

Jaynes said in his defense that his spamming actions do not fall under anti-spam legislation because of freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment.

A group of hackers, who go by the name of “Anonymous” and use IRC as their base, declared war against Scientology. The group has released texts online which Scientology members normally have to pay for. Also DDoS attacks on the 18th of January rendered the church’s website unusable.

The attacks followed after Scientology tried to censor a mockup movie picturing Tom Cruise, one of the most known members of the church. In the movie the actor laughs hysterically and makes claims Scientology members are the only people able to save life’s after car accidents.

John Bombard, a resident of Seminole, Florida, has been charged for his alleged attack on service provider Akamai two years ago. Several big companies were affected in the attack, such as Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus.

Bombard allegedly commanded the modified Gaobot botnet from an IRC server hosted his own domain f0r.org.

If found guilty, Bombard faces 2 years for each charge, and a fine of up to $400,000 USD.