Student who hacked Bill O'Reilly gets 30 months

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/110910-student-who-hacked-bill-oreilly.html

by labboy • 16 years ago

19 19 16 years ago

hop• 16 years ago

2.5 years in jail for a DDoS attack seems disproportionately steep. He made a few websites temporarily inoperable, sounds more on the level of a bad prank than a felony with jail time on par with armed robbery.

poet3• 16 years ago

According to the charges that were filed [1], the defendant also played a role in the creation of the botnet used in the attack. In addition to the DDoS attack there is the issue of accessing machines he was not authorized to. He pled guilty [2], so I don't think 2.5 years is that surprising.

[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/ohn/news/2010/Mitchell%20Frost%2...

[2] http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/95045294.html

marcusbooster2• 16 years ago

Another shining example of our justice system that uses competition to arrive at an equilibrium. Of course most encounters match up an opponent with unlimited resources (the state) versus someone with limited means (in this case a student).

The prosecution seeks the max, in this case 15 years, to persuade the defendant to plea the case out. His options are to try and defend himself with no resources (a public defender is worth next to nothing) or make a deal. The prosecutor and judge get to look "tough on computer crime" which will help their resume when looking to advance their careers, and the kid gets to have the end of his 20's. All that is left out is "justice", and by that I mean let the punishment fit the crime. And now society must carry the debt, both economically (housing the kid) and socially - will our streets be safer over the course of his lifetime once he gets churned out of prison.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

That's not what happened, but: why? Why is that disproportionately steep? Because it's so easy to do, it doesn't seem like it should be a crime?

Talk to businesses dealing with DDoS attacks sometime. They're tearing their hair out and losing real money because of some sociopath's vanity "attack". Why, exactly, are we supposed to look the other way?

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

If I rob someone of $10k I'm going to jail. If I use a botnet to take their site offline, resulting in a loss of revenue or donations of $10k, I should also go to jail.

Just because it is easy or common doesn't make it any less of a crime.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

It's worse than that. Imagine if you robbed several thousand people's houses and stole their mp3 players. Then you started throwing the mp3 players at someone's storefront, breaking glass, breaking dishes, causing a mess, preventing patrons from entering, etc. In what crazy world would you not be harshly punished for such multiple crimes?

The reality is even worse than this, as the attacker in question also stole personal financial information (CC#s, SSNs, etc.) from his botnet victims.

mattmaroon2• 16 years ago

Go Zips!

mattmaroon2• 16 years ago

Not too many other HNers who went to Akron U I see.

da5e• 16 years ago

It's ridiculous how easy it is to go to jail in the USA. It doesn't really solve anything for lower level non-violent crimes. Surely if they can rehab for drugs, they can rehab for hacking.

privacyguru2• 16 years ago

Old news from last week.

privacyguru2• 16 years ago

The student didn't "hack" O'Reilly's site, he conducted DDoS attacks. Totally Different.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

From a botnet that he set up. It's actually worse than "hacking O'Reilly's site".

bugsy• 16 years ago

It's utterly ridiculous and a waste of resources that these sorts of things are felony criminal prosecutions at all. Putting people in state prison at a cost of $70,000 a year in housing costs, PLUS the loss of income and other tax they would have paid plus the loss of their support of family who then goes on welfare, this should only be reserved for people who are an actual imminent threat and danger to the community.

Hacking should be something that gets fines only. Let the hacker pay back the cost of his damage, but there is no reason for taxpayers to bear hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to warehouse these guys with actual hardened criminals whom they will have to make deals with in order to survive in the pen. Then, when they get out, they owe favors to actual criminal syndicates which they formerly had no relation to.

Sheesh.

tptacek3• 16 years ago

If you broke into a store, stole a raft of credit card numbers from carbons, and rigged the registers to feed you more of them in the future, common sense would inform us that you're a criminal. Similarly, if some jackass broke into a series of automobiles and drove them to a store's parking lot to inconvenience or cripple its operations, we'd have no trouble conceiving of the criminal charges that might result from that.

The only difference between those crime and the crime committed here was the ease with which the Internet allowed it to be committed.

No doubt, the person running the botnet collecting credit card numbers and launching DDoS attacks didn't feel like a criminal. He felt like a prankster. But how is that relevant? I say it isn't relevant. At all. The Internet has a knack for making reality feel unreal. But there is a reality, and it does not give a shit about your message board posts.

donspaulding• 16 years ago

Elsewhere, Bill O' Reilly was overheard saying, "F#$k it, we'll give him life!"

Student who hacked Bill O'Reilly gets 30 months

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