Vigilante Hackers use Old West Tactics for Justice 532
dismorphic writes "Angered by the growing number of Internet scams, online 'vigilantes' have started to take justice into their own hands by hacking into suspected fraud sites and defacing them. These hackers have targeted fake websites set up to resemble the sites of banks or financial institutions in recent weeks, and have inserted new pages or messages. Some say 'Warning - This was a Scam Site,' or 'This Bank Was Fraudulent and Is Now Removed.'" So maybe it's not a posse of horsemen, but it's still kinda cool that someone is taking care of those who would defraud the public.
gov. crackdown (Score:3, Insightful)
The industry itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
So would we.
Re:Old west? (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, your concept of right and wrong is different from mine?
Re:justice (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:justice (Score:4, Insightful)
If you don't have a trial with evidence, all you are doing is creating cycles of revenge, with no resolution. With a justice system, wrongs can be righted, and then we are done with the matter.
There is no justice system that is totally perfect, but resorting to vigilantism when justice isn't perfect would make the situation much much worse.
Re:Jury nullification (Score:5, Insightful)
Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Any halfway intelligent phisher would record the IP address of each submission and just dump all of mine when he saw there were bogus, but it makes me feel good that I at least wasted some of his time
Where are the authorities? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:justice (Score:3, Insightful)
kinda cool though.
Re:justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:gov. crackdown (Score:3, Insightful)
Reminds me of... (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends (Score:3, Insightful)
If the vigilantes take down the scam site, then they may prevent some people from falling victim to it. It may not hurt the scammer, but it might protect the innocent.
And, frankly, these "legitimate companies" should do more to prevent the use of their services for fraudulent purposes. Say, writing a script to search though the hosted material for the phrase "bank account" and flag any occurrences for human review.
I can't say I approve of this behavior...but it might have a positive effect, as well.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
?
You think that it doesn't hurt phishers when their "closer" is rendered inoperational? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to bet that some phisher that used their botnet to send out millions of emails (losing a number of their bots in the process) is going to be pretty pissed when some whitehat knocks their server offline before all of the morons enter their username and password.
Re:justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, slippery slopes sometimes start like this. With a clear cut case of right and wrong. But tomorrow it might be used as precedents for other actions. For example, DMCA "violators" might find their site defaced with a sign that says: "This software brakes the law and the author is a criminal".
When someone bypasses the rule of the law and proper procedures and takes justice into his own hands, and "the system" looks the other way or even condones the action, it opens the door to all other sort of vigilantism.
Re:justice (Score:4, Insightful)
That said I really don't care about these sites getting defaced, if they accidently deface a legitimite site well then I think they should be punished.
Re:Jury nullification (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like you are saying that if a person comes up with a new fraud scheme, he can't be tried and convicted. I think fraud is a very flexible term. Basically, any transaction in which Fraudster deceives "Mark" in order to get Mark to do something (transfer info, money, goods, whatever), that's fraud. It doesn't matter if you do it on the street corner, out of a brick and mortar shop, or on the internet -- the key is deception as the basis of an exchange. The problem with fraud isn't so much its definition, it's finding the fraudster and getting legal jurisdiction over him or her. A brand new innovative scam? If you can get the guy into court, he'll not get off merely because it's new.
Re:justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Hackers should know better. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I know good engineering work is harder, much less exciting, and much less satisfying than hacking the enemy directly, but why play whack-a-mole when you can make them obsolete? Ok, enough ranting. I hope y'all had fun.
Re:Jury nullification (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when they come after YOU, and you don't have due process to protect you?
-d
Re:Jury nullification (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jury nullification (Score:1, Insightful)
There is nothing new under the sun, these days. In the end it all boils down to the same crimes, just in new ways.
Re:Retribution (Score:2, Insightful)
Another benefit- if the scammer tries using these fake credit cards, it's a major alarm bell to the banks. It could very well make them get caught and convicted.
Re:I'm not happy about this. (Score:1, Insightful)
-- Don't hate me cuz I'm ugly
Good news, we hate you because you're stupid, your looks never came up.
I have an idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Jury nullification (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Slippery slope not a valid argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
"This type of argument is by no means invariably fallacious, but the strength of the argument is inversely proportional to the number of steps between A and Z, and directly proportional to the causal strength of the connections between adjacent steps. If there are many intervening steps, and the causal connections between them are weak, or even unknown, then the resulting argument will be very weak, if not downright fallacious."
ie: The strength of the slippery slope argument can be measured by calculating probability of (A leading to B) and (B leading to C) and (C Leading to...) Unless one of those probabilities is zero, it is a valid chain of logical reasoning.
Re:Old west? (Score:1, Insightful)
Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He wasn't leading some vigilante lynch mob.
That aside I think it's kind of alright. Not that I think this sort of vigilance is the best solution I can think of - but if nobody else is doing anything about it, then why not let them. But as always, there's an incedibly thin line between this (good) kind of vigilance and the bad kind. Let's hope that it's not a trend that catches on too much.
Re:Vigilante activism (Score:2, Insightful)
Moreover, most phishers have already obtained a company's credit card verification numbers, and can and will verify the numbers they get anyway. and I'm fairly certain that can be automated as well, anyway. Sure, you can take a couple of clock cycles. big deal.
Re:Self policing society (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is indeed ruled by a mob - a mob extremely intolerant of dissident views and facts that fail to meet it's fore-ordained conclusions.
Certainly - If you define 'freedom' as 'I can do whatever the hell the I want without any restrictions or respect for other peoples rights, except maybe the people I agree with'. The same Slashdot that gets annoyed about GPL violations is the same Slashdot who openly espouses theft of *other peoples* IP.And that's the ultimate tragedy of vigilante justice - it's almost always represents the views of the 'men on white horses', not those of society.
It's almost utterly unregulated and unpoliced - except for very small corners. And virtually all of those small corners are intolerant of anything 'not them'. They aren't about freedom - they are about bigotry and isolationism.Re:Retribution (Score:2, Insightful)
Just becareful that the generating false CC numbers don't get you in trouble
Huh? Are you saying he should be careful to not annoy the scammers? That's the entire point of the exercise.
Re:Self policing society (Score:3, Insightful)
Mob rule follows the loudest idiot and it can be rather dangerous if unatended . Not that i disgree in principle with swift vigilante justice against phishers , its just it can get out of hand
Re:Jury nullification (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Retribution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Old west? (Score:2, Insightful)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:Self policing society (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Old west? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Jury nullification (Score:3, Insightful)