The International Cyber Cop Unit

coondoggie writes "A group of international cyber cops is ramping up plans to fight online crime across borders. The unit, known as the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group, met this month in London and is made up of high-level online law enforcement representatives from the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. One of the main goals of the group is to fight cyber crime in a common way by sharing intelligence, swapping tools and best practices, and strengthening and synchronizing their respective laws."

We should sic em on the MAFIAA

[Finallyjoined!!!]

As they are patently criminal organizations. :-)

Re:

[webmaster404]

We should sic em on the MAFIAA

Chances are they are taking orders from the *AA. Only enforcing draconian laws like the DMCA and not doing any real work done, as most government agencies do, never stop the real criminals but stop the easy "crime" that everyone does.

Re:We should sic em on the MAFIAA

[Opportunist]

Duh. Which headline is the better PR?

"Millions spent, no communists/terrorists/badguyofthemonth caught"
or
"Sting busts ring of (insert random number) illegal filesharers".

When you run security like a profit center (i.e. compare money spent to criminals caught), which ones would you go for? The ones that are hard to catch but pose a threat, or the ones that are easy to catch even though 99% of the population don't care about their 'crime'?

PIGS IN CYBERSPACE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

First against the wall, when the revolution comes.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:PIGS IN CYBERSPACE!

[PopeRatzo]

Way to advocate the murder of cops.

Excuse me, douchebag, but before you get all exercised about the notion of poor, noble boys in blue fighting crime on the mean streets of our cities, remember, these are "cybercops" we're talking about here.

They'll be the same ones who listen in on our phone calls and pressure ISPs to give up subscriber info. They'll be the same ones who monitor the surveillance cams and figure out ways to leverage your credit or medical records against you.

Calling them "cybercops" gives them too much credit. They're the toadies working for Big Brother.

And all the GP said was "first ones against the wall". He didn't say what happens next. That was your own imagination at work, son.

Re:PIGS IN CYBERSPACE!

[AlecC]

Just becasue they are cybercops does not mean that they are necessarily bad guys. Cybercops, like any kind of cops, are a necessary evil: laws must be enforced, so we need law enforcers. If people would do the right thing without enforcers, you wouldn't need a law to tell them to do so. (Or course, laws which cannot or should not be enforced should be repealed; see you local legislator about this, not the police.) The problem is not the existence of cops, not (within broad limits) their powers. It is the checks and balances that need to be in place to ensure that their powers are not exceeded and that they are used in pursit of the ends for which they were allocated.

I absolutely accept that there is a need for police to tap electronic communications at some times. But not at any time a single policeman, however senior, thinks that he would like to. It is not tapping that is bad, it is tapping without a warrant. The executive branch needs some oversight, which is usually provided by the judicial branch i.e. the policeman needs to get a warrant from a judge, whose appointment needs to be transparent enough to ensure that he is not in cahoots with the policeman.

So I think your knee-jerk response to the concept of cybercops is excessive, and damaging. I want them bugging Osama bin Laden's phone calls. I don't want them bugging my, or my neighbours (equally innocent of major crime, though probably mostly guilty of the odd misdemeanor) phones. And i want to know who, and how, it watching to see tha this is so. But I don't want the head in the sand attitud of "they are all evil". They won't go away, and you may make them evil becasue, since you assume they are evil, they have nothing to lose by being evil. Support your local cop *if* he can show he is squeaky clean.

Re:

[cayenne8]

"It is the checks and balances that need to be in place to ensure that their powers are not exceeded and that they are used in pursit of the ends for which they were allocated. I absolutely accept that there is a need for police to tap electronic communications at some times. But not at any time a single policeman, however senior, thinks that he would like to. It is not tapping that is bad, it is tapping without a warrant. The executive branch needs some oversight, which is usually provided by the judicial

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Why do the advocates of "small government" want a cop in every possible situation, empowered to behave with discretionary authority?

Re:

[AlecC]

That, of course, depends upon the instructions given to the police by the politicians, and is a political decision not a police one. Oversight should check that the police are doing what the politicians ordered. We should also have public visibility of the orders the politicians are giving to the police - which arguably is not true at the moment.

I concede that your cross-border seeking of the weakest rule set has validity. The same logic justifies Guantanmo, and "Special Rendition". We need a solution to th

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"synchronizing their respective laws"

Common denominators?
A race to the bottom.

Re:

[AlecC]

Only if voters allow it - even if only by default. Again, the problem is political. We should be holding the politicians much more to account. But if you have a two party system, wealthy companies have only two targets to focus lobbying on, and persuade both to do what the companys want. This leacves the voters no way to tell the politicans to clean up their act. A system which supports only two (or othr small number) of immovable parties is inherently corruptible: the rich can seriously contemplate buying

Re:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Voters can't find their US towns on the map. :-(

Re:

[oliderid]

Maybe we should just call them "The Internet SS". Short, to the point, and descriptive of what they do (spy for the government).

If they can tracked down those responsible for the last wave of paedophilia spams I received the last week (I did my part of the job and I send an email to the appropriate web hosting company), I won't consider them as SS. There are a lot of crimes florishing because of the current state of international laws . It all depends of the mission they will receive from their respective g

Re:

[morari]

Guns are pretty darn nice for personal protection as well, ya' know. I'd hate to leave that up to any aforementioned piggy. Which is really the problem with cops more so than their general abuse and harassment of average people. They create a society that feels protected and is quickly becoming less capable of protecting itself. There are plenty of fools that believe the police will keep them safe and adamantly refuse to keep any sort of efficient weapon. Furthermore, the laws that said pigs do enforce crea

Re:

[Opportunist]

Well, people don't care about my neighbor, but they do care about noisy neighbors. When you can say that your law enforcement managed to lower noise pollution overall by a significant level, chances are good that first of all, most of the population will somehow benefit from it (by having a noisy neighbor that's now quiet), or at least can sympathize and nod their head, since pretty much everyone wants to live quietly.

But frankly, do you think any Joe Shmoe cares whether some filesharer gets caught? If anyt

Another Cyber Control Group?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Just what we need, another vigilante group patrolling the intertubes. As if the americans didn't have enough of these already.

Re:

[Brian Gordon]

That is what we need. What we don't need is a semi-legitimate government-sponsored group operating way out of their legal jurisdiction.

Re:Another Cyber Control Group?

[sasha328]

Just what we need, another vigilante group patrolling the intertubes. As if the americans didn't have enough of these already.

Could you please elaborate on how you define the FBI, AFP, NZP, RCMP and the Scotland Yard as vigilantes?

It is really frustrating the kind of responses to this kind of story. I wonder what the slashdot troll would write when or if this agency manages to arrest a nasty spammer. My guess it'll probably be in the YRO section decrying the freedom to spam.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Well, the RIAA is also a legitimate business. But it doesn't act fairly. I guess vigilante was the wrong word. But the result will be the same.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

the Americans are joining an international community, they're moved to iraq and afghanistan, and who knows where else (covertly!)

Nice name for a group

[Weaselmancer]

Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group. Sounds like a straight to DVD Jean-Claude van Damme movie.

Re:

[explosivejared]

Well you see... no one ever expects the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group!! Among their many weapons are a fanatical devotion to fighting cyber injustice and an acronym that rolls sweetly off the tongue...

You see where I'm going with this.

Re:

[Opportunist]

SACCWG rolls sweetly off your tongue? Do you speak a slavic language by any chance?

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

Looks more Welsh to me. W as a vowel and all...

Re:

[Opportunist]

Well, considering that pretty much every letter can act as the vowel in slavic languages, my first bet stays with them.

Re:

[HTH NE1]

SACCWG

Saxy wig?

Re:Nice name for a group

[mrbluze]

Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group.

SACCWG sounds really stupid if you try to pronounce the mnemonic. How is anyone gonna remember that?

What about "Universal Working Alliance Networking Cybercrime Knowledge", or something?

Re:Nice name for a group

[mrbluze]

Incidentally, I suspect at the announcement of the aforementioned committe, a counter-committee is being secretly formed as we speak:

"Fellowship Undermining Cybercop Knowledge - You Obviously Understand"

Re:

[AlecC]

Police Against New Internet Crimes.

Nothing too knee-jerk.

Re:Nice name for a group

[TheLink]

Nah the first thing I thought of when I saw the countries participating was ECHELON.

I think they're probably going to scare the people to help justify spying and dubious stuff (like the spread of nasty policies to other countries).

I'm personally not afraid of all that malware, while there are lots of bots, there aren't that many hackers out there actually controlling those bots.

The fact that the cops have done little is mainly because it is not a priority. After all they could always follow the _money_. I am sure that some of the money trails will lead to their jurisdiction. Then you could also do stings.

I'm more afraid of the policies and laws that will result from this "cooperation", because they will probably try to infect other countries with the resulting mal-laws.

Yaaawwwn!

[domatic]

Wake me up when they send in the Navy Seals to kill spambot herders.

"Cyber Cops"?

[webmaster404]

Do we really need more laws/people trying to "protect" us online? It has already been proven with laws like the DMCA that congress has no clue how the internet/modern technology works. And adding law enforcement is just an excuse to add more laws that do nothing but annoy us law abiding citizens. And also, if white hat hackers can't get the real criminals, there is no way that these "cyber cops" are going to be able too unless they say control a botnet. This just is more excuse to block "warez" and "piracy".

Re:

[Fear the Clam]

So long as they track and kill spammers in their 20% creative time it's cool with me.

Re:

[Opportunist]

You know, I just read that "piracy" as "privacy". Now I wonder what Freud would say about that...

Re:

[jandersen]

What we see here isn't "The State trying to grab more control" - for one thing this is about international cooperation (ie. not "The State"), and for another, I don't think their primary focus will be on running around like headless chickens after the oh-so-evil music pirates. Some of the big problems with modern, organized crime is are 1) lack of police competence (as you have pointed out), 2) the internet, which makes it very easy for international, organized crime and 3) the fact that national legislatio

Re:

[AlecC]

Legislators have the attention span of a butterfly on cocaine. Bills come, lobbyista swarm, bills are passed, bills go. DMCA, PATRIOT.. just get a good acronym and they will pass it. They don't have the time to think things through - they respond to very short term pressures. Hopefully, a group of policemen full-time committed to cyber-crime will have the time and energy to master the subject. And the resources i.e. the funds to hire a few high level geeks (not new graduates, though you probably need a few

Re:

[blueg3]

Problems with your statement:
* Misuse of "proven". Try "demonstrated".
* Inclusion Congress and DMCA, which has nothing to do with this.
* White-hat hackers lack particular resources that are very useful in finding criminals. Most of them aren't too keen on getting arrested, whereas law enforcement doesn't really need to worry about this.
* You can't "block piracy".

From my experience with "cyber cops", they won't give two shits about copyright infringement (isn't that a civil matter anyway?). Current law enfor

Re:

[BlueStrat]

It has already been proven with laws like the DMCA that congress has no clue how the internet/modern technology works.

Oh, I think they understand plenty well enough if they want to, they have the resources to have advisers, consultants, etc at their disposal to explain it to them in small words.

What is lacking is the _will_ to care. They have all the special interests telling them what laws to write/pass (or not to write/pass) to receive whatever donation, perk, etc that's being offered in exchange for favo

Another unPolice.

[gnutoo]

The US can't get the FBI, CIA and NSA to play nice with each other or the hundreds of state and local athorities. I'm supposed to believe that there will be real international cooperation? Yet another UN police force, what a joke.

I'd like to see bot hearders busted but I don't have any faith in this new super team to get it done. What we will probably see is this team putting pressure on other governments to support imaginary property. At it's worst, it will be used to track dissidents and limit free speech world wide, while criminals continue to do what they always have.

Re:

[webmaster404]

Honestly, unless these people have TONS of bandwidth (or tons of Linux install CDs) there's no way they can take down these botnets. All these people are going to do is try to stop "piracy" because that's all they probably can do, it doesn't take a genius to think that other botnet-overlords have already tried to take down rival ones with theirs and obviously failed.

Re:

[susano_otter]

Why is "tons of bandwidth" the critical resourc for taking down these botnets?

Re:

[webmaster404]

Why is "tons of bandwidth" the critical resourc for taking down these botnets?

Denial of service attacks or similar. Seeing as they probably won't be able to either be legaly threatened enough or hacked into it disables them for a bit.

Re:

[SpaceLifeForm]

It would be cheaper, more effective, and more productive to just
outlaw the use of any software from Washington. State.

Re:

[susano_otter]

Why do you say that legal threats and/or counter-hacking can't work?

Re:Another unPolice.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Honestly, unless these people have TONS of bandwidth (or tons of Linux install CDs) there's no way they can take down these botnets.

I've sat in on talks from several different security researchers who infiltrated botnets and reverse engineered them. That doesn't take a lot of bandwidth. It takes a few honeypots, a decompiler, and and IRC client. They could also have issued a command to redirect the entire botnet to a new control channel under their control and from there disabled the botnet, even patching the vulnerability used to gain control in many cases. People don't do that, not because it isn't possible, or they need more bandwidth. They don't do it because of the legal liability. They have no authority to take control of other people's machines (even if someone else also has control). Worse in many cases, what if they try to patch it and the patch fails? Well, then the researcher is liable for any damage than ensues. No one wants to take that risk.

Stealing bots from other botnet herders is already common practice among crackers. It is perfectly possible for cops to steal them back, it just is a legal nightmare to do so, especially if you aren't even sure whose jurisdiction all those machines are in.

Re:

[SpaceLifeForm]

In other words, preventing crime is now a crime.

Yes, the world is that fucked up.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[AlecC]

Wasn't there a "virus" a few years back that cleaned up any infected pcs it found?

There was a demonstration a few years ago of such a system, but I don't think it was ever released because of the legal problem described by parents. This is an area in which I think the law could be improved. Just as the police are allowed to break down a door (a behaviour normally regarded as criminal) if the genuinely believe a crime is being committed behind it, it seems reasonable that they should be able to recapture a

Re:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I would love to hear more about these meetings you say you have been apart of, I am not challenging you per say, but more so the content of those meetings, if they could have interceded in those botnets, they would have already, sending to ISPS all the clients on the list with compromised machines, or emails to each owner of each machine...hell even take over the control until they find something to do with them, legally speaking.

"They" in this case refers to researchers at two different, private, network security firms, one of which was my employer at the time. They provide security devices and services to pretty much every tier 1 ISP in the world. They absolutely do create lists of infected host IPs, by traffic consumption, worm, etc. They can export the data as XML (among other formats) to automatically create mailing lists to notify users that they are infected. I don't know of any major ISPs, however, who actually took that s

Re:

[mrbluze]

At it's worst, it will be used to track dissidents and limit free speech world wide, while criminals continue to do what they always have.

Maybe. Crime is difficult to fight. They aren't doing anything stupid by comparing methods but you're right that crime requires a determination by the police to be honest and genuine, otherwise it will back-fire. Oh and the crime fighters actually have to be intelligent/educated, which is often a major problem.

alphabet soup

[v1]

"saccwg" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. What happened to the awkward "searched the entire dictionary to put this together" acronym that tries to say what they do in a single word?

Re:alphabet soup

[webmaster404]

All the F/OSS projects already took them all.

Re:

[v1]

ok time for me to dig around for my tinfoil hat. I was THINKING about your .sig when I made that post. you are a scary person.

Re:

[xstonedogx]

It doesn't quite fit, but my brain has already started parsing it as "Sacagawea".

Re:alphabet soup

[ScrewMaster]

Could just shorten it to "sack-wag" because of all the dicks that will be present.

Re:alphabet soup

[SeaFox]

"saccwg" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

It does for a wookiee.

You realize what they really mean

[tkrotchko]

This is going to end up as a copyright/RIAA/MPAA task force to fight the evil copyright pirates putting women and children out of work, right?

It's inevitable.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Evil (non-copyright) pirates do exist. Africa & Pacific Asia are chock full of them. Human smuggling > downloading DVDs = Real Problem

Re:

[Melbourne Pete]

Not all police efforts world wide are there to make you pay for your music. How about the international child pornography rings that have been successfully broken up by some of these same agencies? What about international phishing/bank fraud operations? You might like to see yourselves as some sort of electronic freedom fighters but most cops couldn't give a shit about the petty stuff you consider the front line in cyber crime.

Re:

[Perseid]

I wish I could agree with you but I can't. History has shown that most governments care much more about piracy than they do child porn rings.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Duh. The mafiaa pays taxes, kids cost taxes. Which one do you think gets protection from governments?

Re:

[Cussin_IT]

Silly boy.
The MIAAFIA is from the US. The sack-wag is made up of canadians/brits/ozies/kiwis.

Additionaly, I think this is less l33t-haxors with badges, but rather more traditional policing on an international scale with a veiw to finding bot herders.

Re:

[noidentity]

Indeed:

In the US alone, the GAO said the annual loss due to computer crime was estimated to be $67.2 billion for US organizations, according to a 2005 FBI survey. The estimated losses associated with particular crimes include $49.3 billion in 2006 for identity theft and $1 billion annually due to phishing. These projected losses are based on direct and indirect costs that may include actual money stolen, estimated cost of intellectual property stolen, and recovery cost of repairing or replacing damaged netw

Re:

[AnalogDiehard]

This is going to end up as a copyright/RIAA/MPAA task force to fight the evil copyright pirates putting women and children out of work, right?

(Robocop fires a round of bullets precisely at copyright infringer's hard drive in his tower unit)

"Your move. Creep."

UKUSA intelligence sharing to become stronger?

[Aaron England]

It is interesting to note that the countries named as part of this Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group, are also part of the UKUSA community [wikipedia.org]. This is significant because said community forms the alliance of nations that is responsible for ECHELON [wikipedia.org], a program that collects and analyzes signals intelligence from all over the globe.

Re:

[ve3oat]

UKUSA was the original intelligence agreement between USA and UK. The countries listed here are the countries of the so-called quincipartite or "5-Eyes" community, often referred to as AUSCANUKUSNZ. No vigilantes here.

Re:

[SpaceLifeForm]

It's just all part of the conspiracy [wikipedia.org].

World domination, that's all they ask.

Cyber crime..

[kernowyon]

will be defined as they see fit. So we will see plenty of press about stopping p2p, but bugger all will be done about the other issues which are much more important to the community such as spam. The usual terrorism and kiddie pr0n swoops will be paraded to the press - and rightly so - but nothing will be done to dismantle botnets or other major headaches because they are going to be less easy to detect and bring anyone to justice. IMHO this is just another "think of the children" and "teh evil pirates" pu

I don't want new laws, but...

[j0nb0y]

I don't want new laws, but we have to realize that cyber crime is a global problem.

If law enforcement can't cooperate internationally, then law enforcement isn't going to be very effective against cyber crime.

On a different note, didn't we move past the whole "cyber" thing a long time ago? We should call it "Internet crime" or computer crime instead. "Cyber crime" is lame.

Re:I don't want new laws, but...

[Opportunist]

Computer crime is an international issue. Botnets, phishing and spam is an international problem, with the criminals sitting safely somewhere in countries that have other (read: real) problems than dealing with something like this. I mean, if you have thugs mugging people on the street in daylight, you have better things to worry about than someone sitting at home robbing people abroad.

And this won't change. Do you really think that developing countries are going to put a lot of effort and manpower behind trying to solve crimes abroad? At best, they don't care (for the reasons outlined above). At worst, they are quite happy about someone bringing in some desperately needed foreign money. If anything, they will budge under international pressure and put some token effort into it, some kind of show but no substance.

Are these ...

[PPH]

... the same netkops that get after everyone for misspellings and top posting?

Re:

[hack slash]

Top posting?

"... the same netkops that get after everyone for misspellings and top posting?"

Re:

[SpaceLifeForm]

It's nyetcops.

Top posting?

"... the same netkops that get after everyone for misspellings and top posting?"

Re:

[mjwx]

... the same netkops that get after everyone for misspellings and top posting?

Those are the NetGestapo, there's a difference.

We are now safe!

[definate]

Cyber Cops, keeping us safe, from our selves. Finally I don't have to worry about making a bad decision!

Shouldn't it be the CCCWG

[gkearney]

Let's see the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Shouldn't we call it the Commonwealth Cyber Crime Working Group?

Re:

[kernowyon]

I don't think our American cousins are part of the Commonwealth.

Re:

[owlnation]

Let's see the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Shouldn't we call it the Commonwealth Cyber Crime Working Group?

It's been a while since the United States was part of the Commonwealth. There was a tea party, remember? However, you could consider it an IngSoc Cyber Crime Working Group, or an Oceania one. That would be accurate on more than one level.

The only laws we really need relating to this are laws that protect us from our "protectors". Not likely to happen thou

Re:

[Opportunist]

The US have always been part of the Commonwealth. There never was a tea party. Everyone knows that.

Now please report to room 101 for readjustment.

Re:

[Naturalis Philosopho]

We've always been at war with cyber-criminals...

Re:

[ThePeices]

We would, if the US was part of the commonwealth, which it is thankfully not.

Re:

[memnock]

commonwealth member or not, this will probably make all the other big-brother units pale in comparison, seeing as how two (three?) of the countries in that short list are doing all they can to surveil citizens of supposedly free democracies already. now, thinking they represent the elite of all law enforcement agencies and technically advanced governments, i expect they'll have no qualms with using any means they can come up with.

Re:

[mjwx]

Let's see the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Shouldn't we call it the Commonwealth Cyber Crime Working Group?

Last time I checked the United States was a part of the commonwealth, but that was back in 1776.

So where does the $67 billion go?

[LM741N]

67 billion dollars is a lot of money. Where the hell is it going? Is Uncle Scrooge on the loose filling his money bin? Its hard to imagine that much money just sitting somewhere and never being spent. I mean, that is the purpose of money- to spend.

Re:

[Jstlook]

I imagine its going to fund the 419 emails they're going to send out to try to infiltrate the Nigerian cyber community.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

that is the purpose of money- to spend.

Only if you come from the lower or middle class. You've never heard of investing, eh?

But do they have Tachikomas

[Plazmid]

They sound real official, I wonder if they have Tachikomas like Japan's Public Security Section 9.

International Cyber Unit

[CrazyJim1]

Heh heh heh.

This might even be a good idea...

[david_bonn]

Y'know, I'm feeling I need to play devil's advocate here.

I'm not exactly trusting of the intentions of the fine people doing this, and I'm even less trusting of their ability to implement even good ideas. That's probably not fair but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

If you've ever tried to actually deal with law enforcement on a computer crime, you run into pretty wicked problems both of jurisdiction and technical competence. While the latter problem has improved somewhat in recent years, the former problem still exists (and is arguably worse, twenty years ago your trail wouldn't run cold in Moldova or Pakistan or Vietnam).

This means there is a real problem to be solved here. It also seems to me that the problem has technical, political, and legal aspects. That implies any solution is going to be ugly.

Having the Internet be a separate jurisdiction with its own courts and its own police makes more sense than the mess we have now.

24/7 chat room sit ins

[AHuxley]

They can pass off to others via a 2nd or 3rd person to provide 24/7 logs of a chat room.
Cute.

What's needed...

[Scott Kevill]

What's needed is an organisation with the resources and the authority to fight terrorism wherever it flourishes. It would be composed of the best and brightest counter-terrorism experts from every country, and armed with state-of-the-art weapons and equipment. It would operate in absolute secrecy -- its existence known only to the most senior government officials. It would attack swiftly and silently, cutting off the head of the viper, before it had a chance to strike.

Such an organisation already exists.

It

Re:

[necro2607]

Funny that you would show up here. I thought GameRanger was pretty cool when it first came out, but didn't really need much use of it since I didn't play online much. But whatever, it seemed like a pretty great app. I had won a free copy of QuakeFinder during a contest on a pretty popular mac gaming Hotline server, which was pretty cool (yes, with an actual purchased serial # by the server admin). Some time in the future, after I had been using KDX for some time, I started hearing on forums about how G [haxial.com]

Haha!

[rindeee]

They're no match for the "the world's most formidable hacker posse" [wired.com]!!! Round 'em up ya'll! Oh bother, I'm so disenchanted with all this that I can't even make jokes any more. Just what we friggin' need, yet another l33t cyber-whatever group to keep us safe.

I hear the sound of boots already...

[Jane Q. Public]

Yeah. "... strengthening and synchronizing their respective laws..."

You know what that has meant in recent years.

One cyberworld order. Just what we need. Not.

Good Bye Wikileaks....

[desibattousai]

Good Bye Wikileaks it was nice reading ya...

I'm trying to picture it...

[dave562]

"Put down the zero day and come out with your hands up!"

"Drop the assembler and nobody gets hurt!"

"All of your bases are belong to us!!"

??????

The russian representative ...

[Craig Ringer]

... was sadly unable to attend due to his death in a tragic shaving accident. In a sad twist of fate his three predecessors in the role met very similar ends.

No new delegate has yet been named.

Gives a whole new meaning

[ElMiguel]

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "copper network".

If it's anything like those guys, I wouldn't worry

[Opportunist]

if I was a criminal.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8mgzkkUVoZM [youtube.com]

An explanation for those not speaking German: She's the big police hacker, determines that the server is "damn well secured" and writes up a quick backdoor trojan on the fly to infect him.

Ok, it's from a TV show. But it wasn't meant to be funny.