back to article Xboxer SWATTED by armed cops after online spat

The family of a 15-year-old Xbox player was raided by heavily armed police after a disaffected online opponent made a hoax emergency call claiming there was a home invasion in progress. According to news reports, SWAT, or special weapons and tactics, police entered the Naples, Florida, residence of Hunter Gelinas after …

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  1. Greg J Preece

    Oh my

    “I got ur ip !!!!!!!!!!!” the unknown poster wrote. “With cain and abel ima type it in my mIRC serceveer.”

    If there's a more stereotypical script kiddie, I haven't seen one. Well done on your mad IRC skillz, sir.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Yeah, BUT...

      Apparently the IP in this case lead to major grief, luckily, considering the young-blueclad-male/testosterone-fuelled SWAT antics, not followed by a hollowpoint in a frontal lobe.

      I didn't know that "obtaining IPs" actually gets you that far.

      1. Lamont Cranston
        Joke

        Backtracing the IP and alerting the Cyber Police?

        And I thought this was a hollow threat...

    2. system

      RE: Oh my

      Check out the link to pastebin, looks like that line's a piss take.

      "i got ur ip !!!!!!!!!!! with cain and abel ima type it in my mIRC serceveer i pay monthly cuz im a skid and cant make my own and ima use peoples bot to hit kids with yeaaaaaaaah imaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bawssse"

      Given that the paste is titled "DDoS Hunter GETTING TROLLED", it seems to suggest that Gelinas was engaging in his own attacks.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    titles - meh

    So how exactly did he use the Xbox IP to track down the address and personal details?

    1. Danny 14
      Trollface

      easy

      dont you watch CSI? You use an iphone, it shows you where ALL the IPs are (and plots pins on googlemaps)

      1. system

        iPhone? No!

        Create a "gooey" interface using visual basic.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

    2. DrXym

      Probably goes like this

      1. Grab ip, e.g. from logging on firewall / dsl modem

      2. Reverse DNS lookup to get host name. Also run geolocation tool to get approximate location and a portscan.

      3. Google search IP and host to see if its turned up in other logs

      4. Lots of trawling around with more searches on IP, XBL alias to find some real life names.

      6. Try and associate names with location

      7. Look up address, phone nr

      8. Call in the cops

      Probably doesn't work all the time. The best chance would be if the person had a fixed IP, used the same handle all over the place, leaked lots of personal info around on the web (e.g. facebook) and had a surname unique enough to locate them or their family in person.

  3. Bill Neal
    Devil

    That's right!

    ...so keep your bloddy mouth shut!

  4. alwarming
    Pint

    It's a cultural epidemic really.

    .

    .

    If I am unhappy about something I will sue someone.

    If I can't sue someone. I will call cops on someone.

    I will simply keep complaining till I feel better.

    When will we teach our kids that it's OK to lose ?

    1. Elmer Phud
      Stop

      Not just the kids

      "When will we teach our kids that it's OK to lose ?"

      When thier parents stop acting just like little kids behaving in the same way?

      Many kids are told it's bad to lose, a disgrace, less than being a 'man' and all that shit.

    2. jackharbringer

      re: cultural epidermic

      "When will we teach our kids that it's OK to lose ?"

      Syntactically it's a correct sentence, but I just don't get the meaning...

      ...ooooooooooohh...

      Now that's just crazy talk!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      And

      ...... when will we teach our kids to speak to people as if they were in front of them.

      Typical teenager - badmouthing someone from behind what they thought was a screen.

      Paris - because the SWAT team wouldn't have stood a chance.

    4. Alex Walsh

      When..

      it's easier to lose than it is to set a SWAT team on someone by my reckoning.

  5. John Tserkezis

    It's verified: X-Boxers are stupid.

    "He said it was the third time his account had been commandeered."

    When the hacking technique is social engineering, this equates to him being about as smart as weel-old bait...

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
      Facepalm

      It's verified: You failed to properly read and comprehend the article

      If you go back and read it again, you'll see that the account that had been compromised three times was that of 'celebrity Xbox gamer Colin Fogel', presumably a higher profile target than Joe Random.

      The social engineering attack in question is carried out against the Microsoft support personnel, rather than the owner of the account, so you can hardly accuse him of being 'about as smart as weel-old bait', whatever that is.

    2. David Precious

      He wasn't the target of social engineering...

      The impression I get is that the social engineering techniques weren't used on *him* - they were likely used on Microsoft's XBox support people, contacting them and pretending to be him, and convincing them to reset the password / disable the account / whatever.

      If that's the case, there's not a lot he could do about it, and needs to be having words with MS.

      Of course, I suspect that there's a fair chance he's doing something to make himself a target, by pissing people off unnecessarily.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        erm...

        So since when is it OK to piss people off "necessarily"? :-)

        Courtesy and respect does not require much intelligence, and can avoid a lot of bad stuff.

        Even if they think they are anonymous, respect helps a lot to make the world a better place.

  6. whatisahandle
    FAIL

    oh noes! hes gonna ub3r haxx0r me with irc!

    "I got ur ip !!!!!!!!!!!” the unknown poster wrote. “With cain and abel ima type it in my mIRC serceveer.”

    i have no words

  7. Ray 8
    FAIL

    Sue Micro$oft

    You can sue Microsoft for not providing adequate security to protect your personal details...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    how to get someones address via ip...

    1. go to http://tools.whois.net/whoisbyip/ and run the IP to get the ISP.

    2. call to the ISP, claim to be fed tracking something (like a kidnapping) , and say you need the IP address right away.

    Unfortunantly, a lot of the line support will give an address, especially if its someone outside the US on the support end.

    1. John F***ing Stepp

      re:how to get someones address via ip...

      The last two times I wanted an address based on IP I just typed the numbers into a Google search.

      Address, name, phone numbers, number of pets and caloric value of same*.

      I would hope that anyone searching for my IP (which happens to be 127.0.0.1**) might have some small problem.

      *Actually, I couldn't get the caloric value of the pets but there are charts for that on survival sites.

      **Funny, that is the same address as I have on my luggage.

  9. David Cantrell
    WTF?

    Pointless title, which must contain letters and/or digits.

    What the heck is a "celebrity xbox gamer"?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      That's easy

      It's someone who games 27 hour per day 7/7 and writes articles about it.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    I.P's to real addresses

    its not just a case of typing in an I.P and getting the exact address (there are some tools that claim to do this but trying on known i.p/addresses i get to the nearest mile if your lucky) but when you get "l33tHal0z" i.p, and find facebook/myface/twatter/blog/profiles everywhere you have plenty of information to ring MS and pretend to be them/call the feds.

    another reason i avoid public fps games on the xbox far to many American (sorry Americans but by far the bulk of these types are American) males (not even kids) who just can't accept a loss and will trash talk from the start this is just an unfortunate extension of screen rage

    1. Rich 30

      trash talk..

      Its just a case of muting the offending people. Easily done. You can even mute everyone, but i usually find the only talk i hear tends to be friendly in game banter, which is fine, imo.

  11. Bilgepipe
    FAIL

    Leaky

    >>> Indeed, Xboxes have long been known to leak users' IP addresses...

    Who makes those things again?

    Oh yeah. never mind.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    "Leaking"?

    "Xboxes have long been known to leak users' IP addresses"

    Also known as "connecting to a network that uses peer-to-peer hosting over TCP/IP" (ok, also UDP but hey).

    Next up: "your web browser leaks your IP to webservers all over the world!!!!!"

    1. Ian Yates

      I wondered that

      What do they mean by "leak users' IP addresses"? If they didn't provide servers with their IP addresses, I think users would have a bigger problem.

      Monday apathy prevents me from actually trying to find out what they mean. (but doesn't prevent me from typing this reply)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IP to physical address?

    If it were easy to do, the RIAA wouldn't be wasting so much time and money asking the courts to order ISPs to release the data.

    1. Tomato42

      Re: IP to physical address?

      To provide proofs in court, you need to show they have been acquired legally.

      So MAFIAA can't call ISP, introduce themselves as a federal agent and demand address. "1337haxx0rz" can.

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