Get rekt: Two years in clink for game-busting DDoS brat DerpTrolling Austin Thompson, aka DerpTrolling, who came to prominence in 2013 by launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against major video game companies, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison by a federal court. Thompson, a resident of Utah, will also have to pay $95,000 to Daybreak Games, which was owned by Sony …
All you need to start with a DDoS is a sizeable botnet
Alternatively, you need a development workstation connected to the network, some dodgy config and a suitable degree of incompetence when writing a piece of code....
...apparently....
...or so my friend told me....
....<cough><shuffle>
It's a situation where you have multiple corporate plaintiffs requesting damages. The long delay before trial was almost certainly to determine who could claim what, and the delay before sentencing would have been the horse trading over the plea bargain.
anyone doing anything nefarious will be called a hacker by the press..... Correct
The calling them "crackers" ship has long sailed.
It was a battle lost sometime early after the milennium. its game over man.
The original meaning does live on in a small way with people calling their top tips "Life hacks" or "food hacks" etc, this too has opposition from some corners though.
> The calling them "crackers" ship has long sailed...
Sure, and I normally wouldn't bother correcting even El Reg for casual usage of "hacker". But I still reserve the right to be pedantic when a technology hack (journalist) claims [casual|common|current]=classic.
It was a battle lost sometime early after the milennium. its game over man.
I beg to differ.
I had a 2nd hand Spectrum when I was a kid. The previous owner had emblazoned "NO HACKING" across the top of it, and the Spectrum was the result of his trying to do things with his C64 and modem (nice parents who punish you by giving you a not-as-nice computer vs the ones like mine, where you lost it for a period of weeks to months (except my game watch, never saw that again after the 3rd time I got caught playing with it after 'bedtime').
This was in '86 or '87, so 'hacking' as a term for illegal computer access (and trying to break into remote systems) was already pretty well established. When I was involved with Fidonet in the late 90's we were also having the "we're not trekkies, we're Trekkers!", sorry I mean "They're not hackers, they're crackers" arguments quite often as well.
The war was over by '95. Just a few lost soldiers surviving in the jungle who haven't yet been given the news who're still trying to fight.
(Joe, if you're reading, thanks for the hand-me-down that probably kept me from a life of crime! :) )
A cracker was the white guy cracking the whip to 'motivate' the slaves. You rightly dislike the plantation slave owner, but the guy cracking the whip and enjoying it was truly hated.
Me thinks the cracker existed long before any code crackers existed.
Only racists bring up race? Not an unpopular opinion, merely a flawed one.
These uses of "cracker" do not seem to be noted in either the OED or Merriam-Webster - they say a "cracker" is A contemptuous name given in southern States of N. America to the ‘poor whites’; whence, familiarly, to the native whites of Georgia and Florida. Quotations claim various etymologies: "a name they have got from being great boasters", or "supposed to have been suggested by their cracking whips over oxen or mules in taking their cotton to the market."
The operative phrase being "...supposed to have been suggested...".
"Supposed" by whom? "Suggested" by whom? (Hint: If Merriam-Webster, et. al. wanted to sell dictionaries in certain states in certain time periods in the past century-and-a-half, discretion in accepting "suggested" etymologies that were "close enough" -- which would have then been codified in future editions if not challenged -- would have made a lot of sense.)
Since DDoS attacks usually use botnets, they involve hacking; even if the direct victim isn't hacked in the usual sense of the term, other victims are being hacked to make the attack possible.
The term "hacker" may mean only a skilled coder in some circles. Its original meaning wasn't merely a skilled coder, though, but someone obsessed with understanding the minutiae and internals of the system he worked with. This usually involved some degree of unauthorized access, even if benign, or the acquisition of skills useful to unauthorized access. In some circles, the distinction between "hacker" and "cracker", the latter using such skills deliberately for malicious ends, was indeed maintained - but as far as the general public is concerned (to whom the makers of dictionaries generally defer, rather than purging their lexicographical works of incorrect usages of technical terms) the term "hacker" has indeed come chiefly to mean... what it does.
> Since DDoS attacks usually use botnets, they involve hacking; even if the direct victim isn't hacked in the usual sense of the term, other victims are being hacked to make the attack possible.
Only sort of true.
*Building* a botnet involves compromising victims, so would fall under the broad term "hacking".
But, you can *rent* time on a botnet and then trigger a DDoS. No building your own botnet involved. In fact it's big business.
Would you call someone a systems engineer because they ran wget on AWS? Probably not, because there's a distinction drawn between the platform (AWS/Botnet) and the service being run/launched from it.
So even given the murky ass background of the term hacker, and the increasing use of rented botnets and booter/stresser services in general, I think it's fair to say that (as a rule) the act of DDoS involves no hacking, though it may be launched from a platform built by it.
It depends whether he stayed in a local county jail or was sent uptown to the State Penn!
In county jail, he was more in danger of being crapped on, spit on or puked on by the incoming meth and crack heads OR being waylaid into a deep Coronavirous infection (rampant nowadays!) by the 4 to 6 people they TEND to stuff in into each cell in County Jail.
If he went UPTOWN (i.e. State Penn!) AND based upon the bare research I've done, he's too nerdy/small to make it in Medium Security without being preyed upon. He IS or WAS someone's "Prison B^%$" in order to get "Protection" from being shanked and beaten to a pulp for fun by the 250 lbs Gangbangers!
His rear art-hole has been STREEEEEEETCHED to 20 cm for a loooooong time by now!
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American Prisons ARE a B&^&^ in themselves! You don't have to be big, you just have to be BAAAAD A$$$$$$$$$ enough to survive in them relatively unscathed, so when you DO get in, you better be joining the AB's, the Bikers, the Crips/Bloods, the MexMafs or Triads depending upon your ethnicity.
You're "Gonna Be Puttin' In Work" and Shanking someone for the Shotcallers (i.e. Shotcallers call all the "Plays" in their prison group and Shanking = stab in the neck or gut using a homemade weapon those people who don't pay their bills or as in-house prison justice) BUT at least your behind won't be STRETCHED WIIIIIIDE for the next deuce or dime of prison time. (UNLESS you're made into the Shotcaller's "Bi&*^" then you is being opened up for the REST of your prison time and the guards WILL NOT DO A DAMN THING! -- most Prison B's end up killing themselves after a year or two!)
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THAT is the REALITY of the American Prison System!
You're an APEX PREDATOR or you are PREY !!!!
Which is it gonna be?
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