Busted
by oldcrowwoman 5 Replies latest jw friends
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oldcrowwoman
Sorry puter is haywire
On the local Minneapolis, Minnesota news tonight. A 18 yr. old boy was busted for creating one of the viruses. Here in Minnesota. He's a HS senior.
If convicted 10 yrs prison term. What damage from one person.
OCW
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WildHorses
I read about that on AOL. Here is the story. I'd post the link but I don't think it would show up for non aol users.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (Aug. 29) - A Minnesota teenager known online as ''teekid'' was arrested and placed on electronic monitoring Friday for allegedly unleashing a version of the ''Blaster'' computer worm that infected thousands of computers.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Richard Nelson told Jeffrey Lee Parson not to access the Internet or any other network connection as a condition of his release. He did not enter a plea during his initial court appearance.
Parson, 18, admitted during an interview with the FBI and Secret Service agents that he had modified the original ''Blaster'' infection and created a version known by a variety of different names, including ''Blaster.B.,'' court papers said. At least 7,000 computers were affected by Parson's worm, prosecutor Paul Luehr said Friday.
Collectively, different versions of the virus-like worm, alternately called ''LovSan'' or ''Blaster,'' snarled corporate networks worldwide, inundating more than 500,000 computers, according to Symantec Corp., a leading antivirus vendor. Experts consider it one of the worst outbreaks this year.
Parson is the first person arrested in connection with the attack. Investigators would not comment on whether any other arrests were imminent.
His next hearing was scheduled for Sept. 17 in Seattle, where the case was being investigated.
He faces one federal count of intentionally causing damage to a protected computer. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
Tom Heffelfinger, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, said the case will be turned over to a grand jury to decide whether more charges will be filed.
''This kind of prosecution should be a warning shot across the bow of hackers,'' Heffelfinger said. ''We're serious about it, and we're coming after you.''
In court, the high school senior wore a T-shirt that read ''Big Daddy'' on the front and ''Big and Bad'' with a grizzly bear on the back. He sported a metal stud under his lip and his hair was dyed blond on top and shaved close around the sides and back.
Parson's public defender for the hearing, Lionel Norris, argued for putting his client on home monitoring. Parson was told he would be assigned a permanent public defender after telling the judge he had no income, no assets and only $3 in a savings account.
His mother, Rita Parson, seated in the back row of the courtroom, sighed heavily and wiped tears from her face before the hearing. Neither she nor Parson's father, Robert, would comment afterward.
Parson left the courtroom escorted by federal marshals after Nelson said threats had been made against him. He is allowed to leave his home only for doctor visits and school.
He later left the courthouse with his parents. None of the three responded to questions shouted by reporters as they arrived home.
Luehr told the judge the Blaster variants caused $5 million to $10 million worth of damage to Microsoft alone.
FBI and Secret Service agents searched Parson's home in the Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins on Aug. 19 and seized seven computers, which are still being analyzed. One remaining computer will also be removed.
Parson told the FBI he built into his version a method for reconnecting to victim computers later. Investigators said the worm allowed him to access individual computers and people's personal communications and finances. It wasn't immediately clear how he might have used that information.
Parson apparently took few steps to disguise his identity. As a byproduct of each infection, every victim's computer sent signals back to the ''t33kid.com'' Web site that Parson had registered in his own name, listing his home address. The computer bug also included an infecting file called ''teekids.exe'' that experts quickly associated with Parson's Web site: Hackers routinely substitute ''3'' for the letter ''e'' in their online aliases.
By midday Friday, hours after Parson's arrest, professional virus-hunters across the Internet were slapping their foreheads in frustration that nobody figured out the clues earlier.
''It's kind of embarrassingly simple,'' said Nick Fitzgerald of New Zealand, a widely recognized expert and contributing editor to the Virus Bulletin newsletter. ''I guess we should praise the Lord for stupid people, right?''
Parson's Web site, which was operated from computers physically in San Diego, appeared not to have any content on it Friday but previously contained software code for at least one virus and a listing of the most-damaging viruses circulating on the Internet.
In Washington state, U.S. Attorney John McKay praised the work of federal agents and Microsoft Corp., based in Redmond, saying their collaboration helped quickly track the source of the worm.
McKay would not elaborate on the case beyond the allegations outlined in the charges against Parson, but said, ''Is he dangerous? Yes, he's dangerous. ... There is serious harm to individuals, businesses, Microsoft Corp. being only one of them.''
Parson's case was being handled from Seattle because the infection affected software sold by Microsoft.
AP-NY-08-29-03 2035EDT -
Xandria
This is a picture of the Young Man who did the worm.
The 6-foot-4-inches (193-cm) tall Parson, who weighs 320 pounds (145 kg), appeared in U.S. Federal Court in St. Paul wearing a faded gray T-shirt with "Big Daddy" spelled out on the front, as well as cargo shorts and high-top sneakers.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Nelson ordered Parson to be held under house arrest, although government lawyers had argued for keeping Parson in jail, based on the "grievous and substantial" harm he had caused computer users.
Parson was banned from using the Internet, surfing the World Wide Web or using messaging services. She also told Parson there had been threats made against him and she was concerned for his safety.
The suspect had previously admitted to law enforcement officials that he created a variant of the worm, according to a complaint filed in the Western District of Washington state. Parson's next court hearing will be Sept. 17 in Seattle.
The Blaster worm exploited a flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software that was made public last month. Engineers and lawyers at Microsoft, which is headquartered in Redmond, Washington, 15 miles outside of Seattle, cooperated with authorities in the case.
MODIFIED BLASTER
As experts combed over data in the hunt for the creator of the original virus, which Microsoft said had caused it "millions of dollars of damages," authorities detailed in the complaint how Parsons created the worm variant.
Parson admitted modifying Blaster and creating a variant known by different names, including "W32/Lovesan.worm.b" and admitted he renamed the original code, dubbed "MSBlast.exe," "teekids.exe" after his online alias, the complaint said.
FBI ( news - web sites) agents interviewed Parson when they searched his home on Aug. 19 and seized seven computers.
Blaster, which appeared Aug. 11, and its variants are self-replicating Internet worms that bore through a Windows security hole, harnessing computers to launch concerted data attacks via the Internet on a Microsoft technical service Web site.
At least 7,000 "drone" computers tried to attack the Microsoft Web site, the complaint said. Microsoft thwarted the attacks by disconnecting the Web address from the Internet.
The Internet addresses of infected computers were sent to the t33kid.com Web site. That site was traced back to Parson through a third party, according to the complaint.
The t33kid.com site is registered to Parson at an address in Hopkins, Minnesota. A phone number at that address is registered to R. Parson. A woman who answered the telephone there declined to comment.
Mark Rasch, former head of the Justic Department's computer crime unit, now chief security counsel at Solutionary Inc., a managed computer security company, said he thinks Parson will serve time "because of the amount of damage resulting from the worm."
Meanwhile, anti-virus vendor Trend Micro Inc. said another worm had surfaced that takes advantage of the Windows hole Blaster used, but the new worm was rated low risk with few infections. (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in New York, Bernhard
Warner in London, Deborah Charles in Washington, D.C., Daniel Sorid in San Francisco, and Andy Stern in Chicago
Yikes.
X.
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Francois
I've not read the above posts, but elsewhere I've read that the damage done by the subject worm or virus could have been orders of magnitude more economically damaging than it was.
The payload of this particular one was a message to Bill Gates, which read," billy gates, stop making money and fix stuff like this." And as much as I despise hackers and such, they do have a point. Bill Gates and Microsoft should properly debug their flagship software before releasing it to the public as a worm-hole ridden piece of security-flawed trash costing several hundred dollars a pop.
If Gate's software was written and debugged properly, we wouldn't see stuff like this, and we wouldn't be connected to Microsoft through the Internet like some high-speed umbilical cord so that "mommy" could fix security and other problems as they are discovered by others.
What we are seeing is Microsoft attempting to keep the expectations of Wall Street satisfied. And the cost of that is constant security liabilities, as we have seen.
We should give people who write these kinds of worms and viruses awards for showing the weaknesses in Bill Gates so-called software. They really could bring the Net to its knees if they wanted to. Instead they embarass the hell out of Mr. Gates and his sloppy as hell software.
Frank Tyrrell
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Hamas
He may look like a man, but on his first night in jail, he will cry himself to sleep like a sobbing schoolboy.
It serves you right, sunshine.