Bloke accused of Linux kernel.org hack nabbed during traffic stop A man who allegedly hacked the Linux Kernel Organization's kernel.org and the Linux Foundation's servers has been collared by cops. Donald Ryan Austin, 27, of El Portal, Florida, will appear in court in San Francisco later this month. He is accused of four counts of "intentional transmission causing damage to a protected …
One of their (many) excellent short films. I still like watching the great railway chase (after many viewings)
Indeed, although I think my favourite moment from all of them is Peter Kay's "Stand back! There may be a large rabbit dropping" from Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Sorry. Back to topic.
"Hey, remember that idiot who popped kernel.org a few years ago and put a trojan into Linux systems?" "Yeah, what of him?" "He's working for the city now, in lieu of prison." "Oh, that's nice. What's he doing?" "Installing Linux on thousands of computers that don't belong to him."
As far as I am concerned he could be pink with purple polka-dots. He hacked one of the few organizations on this planet that consider technical knowledge a freely accessible resource. If our Anonymous Coward wants to know where I draw the line it's there. If our Anonymous Coward can't get over the fact that what Mr. Austin did was just plain wrong and wants to obsess on trivia like skin color then our Anonymous Coward will be down voted!
It's only ten years[1]. Not sure where El Reg came up with 40.
A _white_ man raping an unconscious woman may get off with three months. But if a black man does it it's a different story. Yeah, but Buzz Windrip will fix all that. Or not.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/florida-computer-programmer-arrested-hacking
If any racial group (other than whites naturally) is mentioned in any way that could be taken as even slightly denigrating by the hand wringing liberal bedwetters that infest this site, then their knee jerk reaction is to immediately downvote. Ditto if you criticise them since liberalism is now a religion, not a point of view and it cannot, nay must not be gainsaid.
"But if a black man does it it's a different story."
"In what sense?"
it's a common urban legend that police and the justice system 'in general' acts like the KKK and disproportionally arrests and incarcerates blacks compared to other races (in particular, caucasians). It's generally promoted by Saul Alinsky types to stir up 'the masses' and cause riots and demonstrations over something that's not happening, particularly through ridiculous *RACIST* groups like 'Black Lives Matter'. Even the name of that group is an 'emotion bomb'. None of their claims have ANY basis whatsoever. It's just trying to get people to *FEEL* instead of THINK, so they'll pull the 'D' (aka 'Demo-Rat') lever at the ballot box, and to create CHAOS and CONFUSION and STRIFE, so that 'the left' can take more power.
It's completely unjustified "feeling-based" uninformed "made it all up" racist nonsense from the left.
>it's a common urban legend
Uh no its fact. - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377
Then again your post screams low information voter so don't expect you to have much use for that high fa-looting science. Your ilk can't wait to make Waiting for the Worms reality.
This is a federal crime. Theres a big book with tables and stuff that take into consideration the severity of the crime, the loss or potential loss to the victim, the age and past criminal record of the accused, whether drugs were involved, and a few other variables. Then the judge simply runs his finger down the appropriate column and it tells him a range, in months, to give as the sentence. The judge can go outside the guidlines, both over and under, if he feels there is reason to do so. He won't get anywhere near 40 years, probably closer to 72 minths, of which he must serve 85% before release for "good time"
"40 years in the slammer for hacking, while rape of an unconscious woman gets you three months in county jail. America, what a country!"
that's because Mrs. Clinton won't be his l[aw]yer (nor will OJ's l[aw]yer, probably). Mrs. Clinton managed to get a child rapist off (early in her career) with a simple 'inappropriate touching' kind of charge, then BRAGGED about it in an interview, laughing, etc.. Sad part: she used the "she was asking for it" defense against a 12 year old KID, putting the VICTIM on trial, etc.. Yeah, not much for 'proportionality'.
(and of course we can look at the OJ trial for another good example)
'L[aw]yer' Up!
Errm… isn't that pretty much just a case of monitoring the git trees and linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org?
Pretty sure if he was looking for binary builds, those servers are completely the wrong place, I'd suspect most kernel devs would be using their own equipment (laptops, desktops, personal servers) to do builds on.
Did he think he was cracking Microsoft?
The 40 years vs. 3 months comparison is bogus, confusing a possible but highly unlikely maximum sentence with an actual sentence. Anyone who pays attention knows that the American system, and I won't call it justice, works by threatening wildly severe sentences and getting a plea bargain.
In this case I would applaud this asshole getting multiple years behind bars. He's a drag on a properly functioning society.
So... 40 years, or even 1 year in jail, seems a lot of time for changing bits on an internet accessible server. How about the responsibilities of the server admins? Shouldn't such admins have put some effort in preventing script-kiddies from accessing their apparently very important servers that apparently had no copies or backups anywhere? How many years of jail should the guy get that delivers a future faulty hard disk because he did not carefully evade that bump with his Deliveroo bike?
The US has the largest percentage of people in jails in the world, but still crime rates are much higher than many other countries. Of course that is why they allow themselves to have guns at home - same reasoning - to protect themselves from one of the highest uses of gun-violence in the world.
To prevent future hacking of open source goodies, Kindergarten teachers should be told to shoot at elementary school kids if they try to attack the kindergarten lunch computer, maybe than this nasty hacking problem might finally stop and a lot of money on education and employment of server admins can be saved?
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