back to article London schoolboy cuffed for BIGGEST DDOS ATTACK IN HISTORY

A British police investigation into the massive DDoS attack against internet watchdog Spamhaus has led to the arrest of a 16-year-old London schoolboy who, it is claimed, is part of an international gang of cyber-crooks. "The suspect was found with his computer systems open and logged on to various virtual systems and forums …

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  1. mhoneywell

    24hrs later

    Why do you keep getting stories so long after everyone else. This was on the BBC last night and in every newspaper this morning. I can see you have an office in London, so its not like you're not exposed to this.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: 24hrs later

      I'm sure if we were to all chip in £145.50/year, the Reg could be a little bit faster with the stories. You don't come here for the breaking news, you come for the analysis ... and the commentary!

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: 24hrs later

        Really ? Most of us just read it for the pictures

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Coat

          Re: 24hrs later

          And the Playmobil re-creations...

          yep, that's my coat with the reach-through pockets.

    2. LarsG

      He was the stooge

      They didn't get the real attackers....

      Always leave an obvious mark...

    3. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: 24hrs later

      The Register don't just copy/paste news from agencies. They do actual analysis. I'll take that over getting it a few hours earlier any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

    4. Duffaboy

      Re: 24hrs later

      El reg were also late to report that ebay ads were virus riddled a couple of years ago to. So its obvious that they copy and paste their news.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 24hrs later @mhoneywell

      So why did you read it again?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @LarsG

    "They didn't get the real attackers...."

    Is that the usual bullshit you pull out of your own ass, or do you have a link to a reliable source?

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: @LarsG

      Oh the irony of using Anonymous Coward whillst posting that remark........ Probably hoping that someone else gets the blame.......

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ Khaptain

        LarsG is almost a pathological liar and all you care about is that the person pointing this out hasn't used his real name, like you do.

        Get your priorities straight.

  3. Andrew Moore

    A little late...

    I think he was outed on The IT Crowd last night

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DDOS

    Am I the only AC to read that as DILDOS ?

    1. This Side Up

      Re: DDOS

      "Am I the only AC to read that as DILDOS ?"

      Probably.

    2. Fatman
      Coat

      Re: DDOS

      Am I the only AC to read that as DILDOS ?

      Yep, You sure did; it is the best operating system for use in penetration efforts.

      </snark>

  5. Roo

    "Cyberbunker denied responsibility and claimed Spamhaus was acting as a internet vigilante"

    Quel surprise ! Another example of the accuser being the perpetrator as well. You don't really need spies and hacking to find out what people are up to, all you have to do is pay attention to what they are accusing others of. That said Snowden's efforts still sprung a few surprises despite the US establishment's frenzied leaking via accusation. :)

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      I reckon it's the misguided Dutch connection at it again.

      If you recall recently, some Dutch mob got shitlisted for peering a spam sewer. Unfortunately said sewer also happened to host servers for a well-known torrent site that's the darling of the dafter hacktivists and said Dutch mob promptly went apeshit in self-righteous indignation, carefully ignoring the hard evidence and going for the conspiracy.

      Spamhaus are still getting the fallout from doing their job perfectly: Identifying crapholes and blacklisting them, regardless of whoever might be on their side, be it cybercrime lords or the well-meaning idiots of "teh internets police".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @TeeCee

        I'd say that in an ideal world Spamhaus should be funded by the UN (because I wouldn't trust it if, say, the US Govt. was funding it).

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Well if you run an ISP that hosts *anything* that would including bulk spam & C&C servers

    So perhaps you might expect to be put on the "bad boys" list on a fairly regular basis?

  7. ducatis'r us

    Great name, operation Rashlike. They were all over him like a rash???? Where do they get these names from??

    I'd get me coat but I can't from the mobile app.

    1. Anonymous IV

      > Great name, Rashlike.

      Rather, it looks like one of those 8-character "off the shelf" company names (e.g. DerryWay, EuroNest, Vectoria) that you occasionally see around when the owners haven't realised that you can change them to something meaningful to their business.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        It's like Rashomon: Everyone has a different story about this, even the dead guy.

  8. midcapwarrior

    hmmm.

    "allows customers to use its services for absolutely anything "except child porn and anything related to terrorism."

    I can see how you can check for child porn, but how do you check for terrorism?

    Anything can be related to terrorism.

    Do you politely ask?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: hmmm.

      AL SHAHAB RULEZ!!111!!

      WE GONNA SET DA BOMB UP. CLICK HERE.

      [Bad quality picture of free-air morning prayer accompanied by AKM, with shopped Capitol burning in the background]

    2. Vociferous

      Re: hmmm.

      I very much doubt Kamphuis ever does anything politely. He's completely unhinged. Bona-fide nuts.

      And at least a couple of years ago Cyberbunker *did* host kiddie porn sites, if they've stopped it'll just be because they make more money from working with Russian mobsters.

    3. deadlockvictim

      Re: hmmm.

      midcapwarrior» but how do you check for terrorism?

      I think that this is a tacit admission that they are legally compelled to let GCHQ and friends look through their throughput.

  9. Grogan Silver badge

    My heart just pumps purple piss for these nazi anti-spam organizations. I hate Spam, but these blacklisting organizations are a classic example of the cure that's worse than the disease.

    Yes, they blacklist spammers, but also entire networks of innocent web servers in datacenters that want to do nothing but let people get their forum registration/notification emails and the like. I've been on the receiving end of that crap too many times with servers I have been charged with setting up and looking after.

    I've written to many an ISP mail administrator to get the IP addresses of the good netizens in my care whitelisted, but these block list organizations that are run by tribunals of power tripping idiots are a different story.

    I nearly cheered when SPEWS was DOS'ed out of existence. I certainly don't cheer for spamming and DOS attacks, but when SPEWS went away, so did my problems.

    I run my own mail from my own domain, on a server in a good datacenter. I've enjoyed trouble free mail for several years now, my domain has a good reputation, my hosting provider has a good reputation (no tolerance for spam) and I'm not on any of these blacklists. The only problem I have (recently) is fucking Microsoft. I can't send to hotmail/outlook.com/live accounts, nor any ISP mail that outsources their mail to Microsoft (e.g. Bell in Canada).because my IP network is in their own blocklists. There's no recourse, no admin contact to get whitelisted... nothing but a FAQ that I (or the "ISP" I am supposed to contact about the problem) must conform to. This isn't something the users can add to their "safe senders" lists either, because it never even gets to them.

    So tell me folks, how many times are email communications thwarted by these creeps? How does that make you feel, that email is unreliable? You send someone a message, and you have no guarantee that they will ever get it. You're waiting for a message to confirm registration to subscribe to some service, or obtain a license key for something you bought and it never comes. There's a good chance that you can thank blocklist zealots like these.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Grogan

      Seems your problem is with Microsoft not Spamhaus. Microsoft/Hotmail have a bad reputation for sending incoming email to the Microsoft equivalent of /dev/null with nary a DSN, regardless of the SPF match between envelope Mail from address and SMTP client IP. So say my SMTP logs when my users have complained about messages not getting through. But you need to bear in mind with "free" services such as Hotmail, that the users are not the customers, they are the commodity being harvested and sold to advertisers and for other ethically-challenged purposes.

      Best thing I can suggest is advise your users with Hotmail addresses not to use these for anything where delivery matters, e.g. sending out job apps. Pretty stupid to send one of these from a Hotmail address anyway regardless of the postman dumping your incoming mail in a drain, due to the lower than average IQ impression given by many Hotmail users.

      1. Grogan Silver badge

        Re: @Grogan

        Yes, I didn't mean to imply (nor did I) that it had anything to do with Spamhaus. My server's IP network is not on any known blocklists except at Microsoft. It was only related as part of the rant about this kind of blocking in general, another example of spam blocking foolishness.

        I was actually talking about my personal and business email (I provide mail services for my family too, my mother uses it for business dealings as well) I cannot reply to anyone on Hotmail. I could very easily say "fuck hotmail" (I couldn't count the number of times I have) but what's worse is, Bell provides their customers with rebranded "hotmail" accounts for their bell.net and sympatico.com email addresses (accessed through POP3 mail clients, using SSL or through webmail). I can't reply to any users (existing or potential customers) on probably the biggest "ISP" (also phone company and provider of highly annoying satellite television) in Canada because of those twats.

        I was also talking about Spamhaus and other blocklist problems I had on other servers that I looked after. These servers had forums and things using email confirmation, and email notifications etc.

    2. Alister

      @Grogan

      So you have a problem with anti-spam blacklists, and yet you say that you run your own email server - so just what anti-spam protection do you use on your server then? Or do you just let your users sort out the shit themselves?

  10. Sandtitz Silver badge
    Coat

    Mystery funds on bank account

    "That money was just resting in my account!"

  11. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    Hurr durr!

    Not a friend of spam but not a friend of Spamhaus either, having been bitten by their enthusiastic policies which are on the level of Team Amurrica and the Centre for the Propagation of Democracy in the Middle East before.

    A good read:

    Cyberbunker account of the blacklist event

    A2B account of the blacklist event

    Spamhaus account of the blacklist event

    Unrelated but at least Cyberbunker is funny:

    Cyberbunker raided by SWAT team

    I feel I'm gonna host with those guys.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Hurr durr!

      Spamhaus CIO Richard Cox removed from RIPE Anti-Abuse Working Group, 18 November 2010:

      James Blessing, concerned Internet citizen, said he noticed that Co-Chair Richard Cox tends often not to be present at RIPE Meetings or not involved, unless it is to be hostile towards RIPE itself. He asked if Richard was the correct person to be working group co-chair.

      Working Group Co-Chair Brian Nisbet said he contacted Richard and asked him to respond to comments that had been made, but Brian had not heard back from Richard in relation to this.

      Jim Reid, Internet citizen, said this was a delicate issue, and even if the co-chair of a working group was critical of RIPE, that is not necessarily a bad thing. He said, however, that his opinion was that Richard crossed a line insofar as his comments were unfair and unjustified, and he confused RIPE with the RIPE NCC in his comments, which is not helpful. He said Richard’s comments unfairly damaged the reputation of RIPE, the RIPE NCC and the Anti-Abuse Working Group.

      Rob Blokzijl, RIPE Chair, noted that this is the first time there has been a situation like this in the history of RIPE. Rob noted that the RIPE Chair, the Chairman of the RIPE NCC Executive Board and the RIPE NCC Managing Director met with Richard where they tried to clear up some misunderstandings. He said all three who met with Richard are disappointed that the outcome of this meeting, where they thought issues had been cleared up, were not reflected in subsequent posts from Richard that were published on websites. He said he felt that if you were elected to chair a working group by the RIPE community then you had a responsibility to that community and to its secretariat, the RIPE NCC. He concluded that it would be better for the community if Richard would step down so it would be clear that when he spoke he was speaking for himself and not the RIPE community.

      ....

      Brian said he had discussed the matter with Rob prior to the working group session and they agreed that the working group had the authority to appoint its co-chairs and, therefore, to remove them. Brian asked if anyone was willing to stand up and object to Richard Cox being removed as Co-Chair of the Anti-Abuse Working Group. As nobody took this action, Brian declared that consensus had been reached. He said that he would require a new co-chair and he expressed his wishes that one could be in place by the RIPE 62 Meeting.

  12. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Microsoft mail unreliable. Film at 11

    Microsoft's E-Mail is unreliable. Film at 11.

    But seriously, on the one hand, I think these services provided a very important service, the spammers were absolutely out of control. Collateral damage? Don't use an ISP or hosting provider that tolerates spammer. I feel for those who have some overzealous local ISP arbitrarily blacklist you.

    On the other hand, I personally use NO blacklists, getting all spam helps my Bayesian filter train better so it can effectively block the spam (as opposed to only training off whatever spam makes it past a blacklist.) The blacklist now is not enough, one must use a Bayesian filter anyway to effectively block enough spam; so personally, I decided to ditch the blacklist, and I think if I ran an ISP I'd also ditch the blocklist and just let the spam filter crunch a bit extra.

    Oh on topic for the article -- I'm glad this kid got arrested and hope he gets the book thrown at him. By all appearances, he was working for hire for greasy greasy spammers. Spammers and those who help them can piss right off.

  13. Vociferous

    So it was that utter dick Kamphuis.

    Called it. Could Holland please keep their dick in their prison in the future?

    Also, please tell me the police didn't actually say: "Financial investigators are in the process of _restraining monies_."

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    bend over son

    He's gonna be held accountable for his actions.

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