Feds on trail of LulzSec raid Ohio house The international investigation into the notorious LulzSec hacking crew has moved from the UK to the US Midwest with the search of a house in Hamilton, Ohio by FBI agents. Feds searched the house without making any arrests – at least initially – according to local media reports (here and here). It is unclear whether …
'The group said the decision to disband itself had nothing to do with increased law enforcement attention.'
It's entirely possible that it is little to do with the law enforcement attention - it's due to the attention of other groups declaring war on them. They realised that they weren't half as clever or protected as they thought they were once their logs and personal information started leaking out.
Although I also wonder if they've fed one of their number to the wolves in an effort to try and escape - hopefully the law agencies won't be stupid enough to pander to the media-loved methods of grabbing one or two scapegoats and blaming them and will hunt the whole lot of them down.
Yes and no. If they aren't so mentally impaired that they can't understand that what they are doing is "wrong," then it's not going to save them from a conviction. On the other hand, if someone has a real mental disorder that predisposes them to commit crimes, and ends up in the "correctional system," then they should be offered all appropriate treatment while they are there. In that sense, it does matter.
It also matters in other ways as well, including whether or not the subject is actively trying to work with qualified professionals to treat a real condition. I would feel no sympathy towards someone who stood in court and went "I'm aggressive and easily tempered, so I couldn't help beating him up." On the other hand, someone who had struggled with seizures for years, is under the care of a neurologist, and had a single, short violent episode out of nowhere - I would feel a great deal of sympathy for, and depending on the exact details, may not be able to vote to convict if I were on the jury. Obviously, this is the extreme case to show that such things can make a difference - I don't think we have to worry about any such extremes here.
-d
Crime writer Elmore Leonard did a lot of research for his novels. He came up with some interesting observations, including that more criminals had been convicted as a result of being "grassed up" by other criminals than by any other means. It explained why known grasses are so unpopular that they were the group at highest risk of being killed in prison. From his research, Leonard decided that the worst thing a criminal could do was mix with other criminals, as the chances of getting caught seemed to go up exponentially with each association with another criminal. It seems the rule still applies to skiddy gangs too - by their very nature, they require co-operation between groups of people without much to lose from grassing each other up. If you were facing a stretch inside, how much would you worry about grassing on some guy you may never have actually met? There is no honour between thieves seems to apply just as neatly to street gangs as to skiddies.
I imagine companies will look at the current police investigation as a perfect deterrent.
No need to upgrade internal security, have to deal with encryptions or something, when all the hackers of the world are now soooo scared they'd never dare hack anyone - especially [Insert name of idiotic company].
He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,
Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken;
To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away;
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir LulzSec!
His head smashed in and his heart cut out
And his liver removed and his bowels unplugged
And his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off
And his pen--
In all the press that I've read about LulzSec's successes I've read nothing about how the various victims intend to repair their security holes to prevent future such exploits. The focus has all been on catching those bad boys/girls. The laws seem to be built that way too. It's a crime to expose an entity's security flaws, but not a crime for those entity's security groups to fail to anticipate and close those flaws.
No, no good has come of all this. The holes are still there. The poor downtrodden security staff are curled up in the foetal position sucking their thumbs. The Keystone Kops are breaking down doors. And no one seems to be thinking about the not-so-lulzish" hackers who might be stealthily exploiting such security flaws for personal gain.
If these script kiddies were doing it to benefit us, they would not be posting everyone's login and passwords for everyone to download. Anyone with any common sense can see that.
Or taking down gaming servers just for the fun of it, some that many pay money out of their own pocket to access. Or attacking a site like magnets.com for no reason... probably a little company trying to make a living. Or making extortion threats to another business owner.
Or stealing credit card numbers, or posting personal details of police officers in Arizona so that their families will be at risk from drug lords in that State.
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