Merseyside DDoS daddy given eight months behind bars A UK man has been given eight and a half months in prison for launching a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks in 2013. The Liverpool court gave Ian Sullivan the 34-week sentence for conducting more than 300 denial of service attacks on various government, political and financial sites in 2013. Sullivan admitted to …
Well said, Matt, but I think eight months is excessive, *unless* he was 'wrangling' (US English expression I like) a bot net, he would not have achieved much. Others have served less time for more.
I have never participated in an 'Anonymous' campaign, but did go to Scientology's HQ here to watch 'Chanology'. Used to have 'net friends involved in the early days.
Lots of cops, *very* few protestors.
IIRC, I went into the building and had a brief chat about e-meters and Hubbard's good short fiction, of course, they tried to recruit me for a 'course'.
The demographic of 'anonymous' was mainly self-righteous teens and twenties, with a smattering of angry older men.
Reporters, always remember that it is not a monothilic org., they *did* have leaders, whoever was seen as the coolest or best troll on 4-chan boards, particularly /b, but I think those days are long gone.
When I first noticed the Anonymous protesters against Scientology, I congratulated them on their target and their V For Vendetta masks. I told them Alan Moore would be proud of them once he heard, as indeed he was.
Their response was deflating. "Alan Who? V for what? They're just cheap Guy Fawkes masks, they seemed appropriate".
And when they recommended the LOIC to all their supporters, and had to be told explicitly that it identified their IP address and there were better tools available, I realised they were all slick video, no actual threat. Actual script-kiddies at least can cut and paste scripts.
Posting anonymously - hurr hurr - but while the 98% script kiddie thing is right, I was involved in the early days of the Chanology movement, in one of the IRC channels where the protest ideas came about, I was one of a few pushing for a UK version in a city I won't mention.
Now, I'm giving you this background to say - back then, the hacking thing was low key to the point of being secondary. It was script kiddies.
Now, it's script kiddies, but there is the odd, very good white hat hacker here or there. Of course, that level of experience is not going to get caught like this bloke.
You mistake troll for hacker.
Still, I see reports that big arseholes in Syria and Iraq now use the PS4 net to communicate.
True or disinfo., I know not.
I do not disbelieve the claims of having shut hundreds of recruitment and propaganda for murder accounts on Twitter, some on Facebook. Great stuff.
Then I see some self-appointed spokesman using his real name with journalists in the mainstream media, claiming to represent Anonymous. He should grow a brain and work out what the idea means, and be utterly rejected from now.
They didn't actually find the guy who coordinated the DDOS attacks. They investigated a guy who was stupid enough to shout on the rooftops that he was coordinating the attacks, and found him to be guilty.
So, if he'd shut up about it, what's the chance he would have been found ?
That's what I wonder.
That reminds me of something I once read in a book by Janwillem van de Wetering. (Good crime/mystery books, well worth a read IMO. Also a guy with an unusual CV.)
(Paraphrasing from memory here), he said that police work is more often than not along the lines of 'cow catches hare':
A hare ran across a pasture and, for whatever reason, collided with a fence post. Badly concussed it managed to stagger along for a few paces, collided with the legs of a cow and passed out. The cow looked down to see what was the matter, and saw the hare lying between it's hoofes. So the cow mused aloud "Well, look at that - I caught a hare!" All the other cows were deeply impressed.
And good on them too, Hillsborough would have be swept under the carpet if they did not shut up. Nothing wrong with shouting from the rooftop for deserving causes, but mouthing off about your own illegal acts are more typical of morons than a specific stereotyped geographical group of people.
I am hazarding a guess that you are within that moronic group within the U.K.
A current televisual favourite of my spawn are those "Police Interceptor"-style reality Cop shows. I'd like to think they're learning a life-lesson about Right & Wrong, but the reality is more depressing:
The only thing it really teaches them is that if you want to be any good at being a criminal, you need to put a bit of effort and planning into it, just like with anything else.
For Little Mouse.
If yr. spawn love modern police procedurals, I recommend you try 'Space Precinct' on them, much the same flavour as 2000 AD side stories, loved every episode I saw. Not too many were made, aim was the USA market, it was cancelled by, I think NBC, and zero support from Brit broadcasters. Great show.
its eight months alright but mostly for being stupid.
It makes you wonder how many people being bad, are discreet & save it up for good reasons.
I certainly see too much phishing and packet floods on sensors for anything but the low hanging fruit being even investigated let alone charged.
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