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Category Archives: Hack

Sentence Spam Convicted Maintains

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.

“Unfortunately, the state that gave birth to the First Amendment has, with this ruling, diminished that freedom for all of us,” the lawyer of Jaynes, Thomas M. Wolf said. “As three justices pointed out in dissent, the majority’s decision will have far reaching consequences. The statute criminalizes sending bulk anonymous e-mail, even for the purpose of petitioning the government or promoting religion.”

State Attorney General Bob McDonnell: “This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime. Spam not only clogs e-mail inboxes and destroys productivity; it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia’s economic prosperity.”

Hackers Declare War to Scientology

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.

Scientology has since protected its website against DDoS attacks. Anonymous plans real world protest actions and have set February 10 for a wave of protest at Scientology locations worldwide.

“The so-called Church of Scientology actively misused copyright and trademark law in pursuit of its own agenda,” an Anonymous member said in a press release last week. “They attempted not only to subvert free speech, but to recklessly pervert justice to silence those who spoke out against them.”

Since then the group released a new video featuring a computerized voice saying: “Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and everywhere. You will find no recourse in attack, because for each of us that falls, ten more will take his/her place.”

At the time of writing this article, almost 2 million people watched the video.

Anonymous also released a home phone number and social security number of a couple who they believed where pro-scientology hackers. The couple received an anonymous apology over phone when the error was recognized.

Although being another organization against the Scientology church, Operation Clambake does not agree with the methods used by the Anonymous group. Webmaster Andreas Heldal-Lund explains: “People should be able to have easy access to both sides and make up their own opinions. Freedom of speech means we need to allow all to speak – including those we strongly disagree with. [...] Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card … They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy”

IRC: "Virus-like Behavior"

Something this site has always reacted against is the general publics’ conception (actually more the mainstream press I guess) that IRC is by default something nasty, a place full of crackers, a place where your credit card details are being sold for next to nothing or a way to control a drone net.

Each morning I visit a fairly long list of sites related to IRC, and one of them includes Google News to see what “IRC” bring me.

This morning another hit that made me frown. WebKnowHow.net brings an article about a new software package called Threat Expert. So far, cool cool, you probably all know as well that I am a HUGE fan of safe computing practice, and try to promote such practices here on this website (as on others I manage) as well. Despite realizing that the average IRC user that visits IRC-Junkie knows his stuff. Yes you are above average! ;)

But then it goes wrong when they quote the developers: “Threat Expert is embedded with sophisticated behavioral search technology that analyzes previously unknown threats, including rootkits. It knows the specific behavior of spyware, malware, adware, dialers, downloaders, worms, viruses, etc. It even looks for virus-like behavior that includes: mass mailing, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), exploiting Windows bugs, backdoors, and network distribution/replication.”

So there we go again: IRC must be something very nasty by default.

Funny thing is, I’m involved with IRC since ’94 or so. First to discuss 3D graphics with friends all over the world. Later as well as an oper on a fairly sized network. And I am even using this network to host a realtime chat for people interested in spaceweather. In this channel we feed realtime satellite data during severe storms that can lead to the display of northern lights well below the arctic (or above, when speaking of the southern hemisphere!). I can assure you, the people joining there vary from academics to the general public interested in the lights and are far from being trouble makers.

All in all, yes I engage trouble makers in my role as oper now and then, and have actually had my share of troubles with the type you rather would stay away form as much as possible. But does this minority make IRC virus-like behavior? If it was not for me being an oper, I would probably never have engaged them anyway. In my eyes, IRC is still a fun place to meet and chat with friends, family or mind-a-likes. It just needs common sense, just like any other type of place (virtual or not) where people meet.

Dronerunner Akamai Attack Charged

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.

Nessun Goes to Jail

In May 2004 IRC-Junkie reported about the ongoing problems for the IRCHighway network caused by DDoS. In June of this year Jason Michael Downey, known as Nessun and owner of the network Rizon, was arrested for these problems.

This PDF outlines the sentence Nessun heard on the 23rd of this month. We can read: “Jason Michael Downey, the operator of “bot network” of virus infected computers that he used to attack other computer systems, was sentenced to a year in federal prison today on his conviction for unlawful computer intrusion that caused over $20,000 in damages to other computer networks, United States Attorney Stephen J. Murphy announced today.”

After the jail sentence Nessun will have a 3 year supervised period during which he will need to ask permission before he can use a computer. He will also have to pay $21,110 in damages to the (IRC) networks the DDoS was aimed at. Finally he will have to do 150 hours of community service and pay a $100 special assessment.

During speaking out the sentence judge Edmunds explained that computer crime has a serious impact on society and that a severe punishment was in order.

United States Attorney Stephen J. Murphy said, “The so-called “bot-masters” on the Internet should realize that attacking and damaging other computer networks through a bot-net can land you in prison.  We have the capacity to investigate and prosecute these high tech crimes and we will continue to do so.  I commend the FBI for the excellent investigative work they did in this case.”