Man Reportedly Jailed for Using Lynx 912
wezzul writes "A Londoner made a tsunami-relief donation using Lynx on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site operator decided that this 'unusual' event in the system log indicated a hack attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him." Honestly, though, aside from a BBC article about a tsunami fund hacking probe that doesn't mention user agents there's little to corroborate this. Hopefully Lynx users need not worry too much yet.
And for good reason! (Score:5, Funny)
Stupidest mod ever (Score:3, Informative)
Parent is not offtopic !
Re:Stupidest mod ever (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And for good reason! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And for good reason! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And for good reason! (Score:3, Informative)
That's why tty and screen both come under the visual group.
Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, wheres fivers and the like merely look different, apparently the english dont have a paper £1 note (and we do, although they're much rarer these days).
How long until we get arrested for paying for something with "funny money"? Remember, every time you use a non-standard currency, your funding terrorists!
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Woz and the "$2 Bill Incindent" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have recently moved to Scotland, and think that the scottish money is awesome. I particularly like the latin motto on the pound coin, "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT", translates to "no-one provokes me with impunity". That is just so Scottish.
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, it's a common misconception that she's the head of the CoS. The CoS doesn't have a "head", just a elected moderator who serves as a spokesperson for one year.
Live and learn! I knew about the Moderator, but I was equating the Moderator with the Archbishop of Canterbury (which is - roughly - correct), and assuming the Queen had a similar role in both Church and Kirk. You're quite correct, however: The Queen is a member of the Kirk with the same rights as any other member except that she, or her repr [wikipedia.org]
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, not exactly. According to this Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] Scottish banknotes aren't even legal tender in Scotland!
"Legal tender" is a bit of misleading concept though in that it only really applies to the settlement of debts - i.e if you owe somebody and pay them in legal tender they have to accept that payment, but they don't have to accept payment by other means. It's worth noting that buying something in a shop does not constitute settling a debt as you pay before you receive legal title to the goods, so "legal tender" does not apply.
Ultimately you can pay for anything with anything if the other party agrees. Shops in Scotland will of course accept Scottish banknotes because they're familiar with them and trust the Scottish banks to back them. Many shops in England will similarly accept Scottish banknotes for the same reasons. Some shops in England and Scotland will take Euro notes, and a few at airports US dollars and other currencies. You're unlikely to find a shop that will accept Bhutanese Ngultrum, say, though I suppose it's possible if the shopkeeper happens to be about to go on holiday to Bhutan and can't find a bureau de change that carries Ngultrum...
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Funny)
You know, people like to get money even if it looks boring. There's no need to make money look interesting in order to get people interested in it.
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Funny)
And then thought that maybe it isn't the Euro notes that are bland
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:4, Funny)
Blind drivers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Informative)
For full details see:
http://www.royalmint.com/talk/default.asp [royalmint.com], and
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/index.htm [bankofengland.co.uk], and finally
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/knowyourn otes.pdf [bankofengland.co.uk]
Hahaha (Score:3, Funny)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwi
"Mr Nichols says he has spent £6,000 in bail and legal fees"
Apparently his Euros weren't good for that either.
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Turned out it was a Gibraltan coin. Basically identical to regular 20p. However, there's an image of (who I presume to be) the enthroned Queen, staff in hand, on the reverse. The text around the picture reads "Our Lady Europa - Gibraltar".
A really, really beautiful coin. Glad it got turned down so I could keep it I suppose!
It's geeky, but sometimes the artistry in currency design is pretty amazing. Some of the British banknotes are really fantastic. I'm not particularly opposed to the Euro, but it's a shame that the banknotes are a unified design (bridges & windows... the modernity of which increases as the value of the note increases). On the other hand, some of the national designs on the reverse of the coins are interesting.
Kinda weird to think how long these things stay in circulation... I've got a penny piece from 1978 in my pocket.
Change SUCKS! Well, small change does.... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is horribly ironic.
The UK 1p and 2p pieces are the *only* members of the original early 1970s decimal line-up still in circulation, in spite of the fact that they are hideously oversized for their current value. Frankly, they should have been the *first* to be replaced.... but at any rate, they're the only coins that are going to date back that far.
The 1/2p piece was withdrawn in the e
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah; as far as I know, this is the truth.
And I used to get annoyed about the English not accepting Scottish banknotes; but later on I grew up and realised that since most English (or Welsh or people from Northern Ireland for that matter) wouldn't be familiar with Scottish notes, they would have trouble differentiating the real thing fr
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Informative)
Legal tender defines forms of payment that, when used to pay off a debt, the creditor cannot refuse. This rule prevents an evil creditor from bankrupting you by not accepting anything you offer as payment.
In a shop, however, you are negotiating a contract, and so the shop can demand, as a term in that contract, that you pay in any way they want. If you don't like it, don't agree to the contract.
Scot
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's next? Sometime in the near future: Man tries to buy chocolate bar with paper money! Shock! Horror! Maybe this is just a little too random but that's where my mind travelled to.
We are already at the point where making a large purchase with paper money is unusual.
About two years ago, I decided I wanted a dishwasher. I went down to my bank, took out some money, checked a few places, and finally paid for a small dishwasher in cash.
Had some extremely strange looks from the salesperson.
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:3, Informative)
See quote below (from here [bbc.co.uk]).
Re:Where's the buggy-eyed smily when you need it? (Score:5, Funny)
I must have been lucky when I bought my laptop then, the discussion over payment went pretty much like this:
"And how would you like to pay for this?"
"Do you accept anonymous white envelopes stuffed with cash?"
"That'll do nicely, Sir"
This was in one of the more reputable shops on London's Tottenham Court Road (Micro Anvika). Was impressed that not only did he not bat an eyelid, but he was actually able to make the funny.
WHY! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WHY! (Score:5, Funny)
Thank God for people.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank God for people.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when the nimda worm was running around, I wrote a home-grown IDS to watch web hits, identify nimda-type probes and, if I could find a reporting address for the offending IP email a complaint off to the responsible ISP.
We were being serviced by Shaw Cable [www.shaw.ca] at the time, and every once in a while, they'd misread my complaints, and figure that my box was the source of the attack, and they'd send a nasty email to my roommate (who the connection was registered to) threatening to cut off our internet if we didn't delete the viruses install a firewall, etc. (we each had our own BSD firewall).
I got to know one of the supervisors there reasonably well, modified the letter I sent out to make it all but impossible for the people who read the email to confuse the attacking box with the defender, and he even added a note to the file for our connection, which resulted in a period of quiet after which we got yet another threatening letter.
I responded with this letter [bcgreen.com]. My roommate (who took this very seriously because he was paying business rates to be allowed to run servers on the line) thought that I was being a bit flippant about something so important (flippant?! It took me an hour to write the damn thing!), but the supervisor at shaw said that he got a bit of a chuckle out of it when he phoned me to apologize for the error and promise a fix. His explanation was that shaw had installed a new abuse reporting system and that the note about our account had been lost in the transition (but would be added back in).
If you read my letter, (which includes the original autocomplaint) then you'll understand just how far people are willing to go to misread log files.
Re:Thank God for people.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they have complete idiots reading not only the logs, but the mail too. Or maybe idiots who don't read at all :
One day I couldn't access to many sites I'm used to visit, I did some traceroute and found 2 nodes down, 1 in NY, another in South California. I wrote to the companies. The first one answered within an hour, saying they hadn't found any problem (it was working again), the second never answered, but the server was up within an hour too.
I had sent a third mail to my ISP, before anything had been fixed, explaining the problem, with the same traceroute attached, saying that I knew they hadn't anything to do with it, but that it could be useful to know, with the precision that I was running Mozilla on FreeBSD, and personnally hadn't any problem.
Two days later I received a mail explaining that I had a bad configuration and had to check some option (forgot what it was) in Internet Explorer !
Re:Thank God for people.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I really like Comcast. They don't block any ports and none of the pushing from the big companies has forced them to do so. You pay for Internet service and you get it, full service with no restrictions.
When Nimda was around, they'd run automatic probes to check if someone was vulnerable. If their script came back as yes, they'd shut off your connection, and you could make a quick phone call and have it turned back on after speaking with
Re:Thank God for people.... (Score:3, Funny)
If that's what you've had here (and even if its not), you should get to a decent doctor and get them to have a look. Polyps commonly recur even after the proper surgery, so its unlikely you've fixed the problem for long.
Bonus Browser (Score:5, Funny)
He could still have tried to break in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where is the connection of the two? Parent puts some claim in the room, based on a connection which doesn't exist, and is modded up?
Re:Insightful??? (Score:5, Insightful)
So far, all comments are supporting one of two hypotheses:
a) The story is a hoax, no one was arrested.
b) The story is true, OMG they are after us just for using Lynx!
Grandparent pointed out a possible third alternative:
The person was using Lynx, the bastard really tried to hack the tsunami relief site, and that's why he was arrested.
https? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:https? (Score:5, Informative)
Man Reportedly Jailed for Using IE (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HAHA YES THAT IS VERY FUNNY (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are wrongfully jailed you'll get compensation. BUT they'll subtract "housing and food", i.e. the value of the bed and the food in prison from your compensation. Which lead some journalists to report that you're supposed to "pay for jail".
Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up (Score:3, Informative)
Then there's compensation for the suffering of being imprisoned. i.e. the fact that being in prison is less desireable than being a free person, even if you get the same cash for it.
A person wrongfully i
Re:Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up (Score:3, Insightful)
governments are funny. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would speculate that the browser inadvertently sent some malformed HTTP POSTS or otherwise made some "usual" as in "unusual garbage posts to credit card processing engine" and spooked the sysadmin who had far to much time on his hand and the local police number on speed dial.
poor bastard..I bet if he was using linux this wouldn't have happend
Re:governments are funny. (Score:5, Insightful)
Will police arrest somebody if I claim they killed somebody, or do they still need evidence?
Re:False alarm. (Score:3, Informative)
comon everyone, use lynx to go to bt.com (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.donate.bt.com/bt_form.htm
via http://www.bt.com/index.jsp
So I hope everyone does it and makes BT see 100000x increase in LYNX usage
So this is what you get when you hire A+ grads from 'prestigeous' institutions.
So everyone, fire up lynx, lets make em look even dumber.
Perhaps... (Score:4, Funny)
</tinfoil>
No, *I* am Spartacus! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, with all the embedded Flash around, some sites will be totally inaccessible... which would maybe teach them a lesson about accessibility.
Re:No, *I* am Spartacus! (Score:4, Funny)
Who's this Taylor guy?
Because everyone knows (Score:5, Interesting)
Did he file a bug report? (Score:5, Funny)
BUG 6398: Lynx unexpectedly quits when Japanese text is...
BUG 6399: When browsing tsunami relief site, users are arrested by the police...
BUG 6400: Choosing "cyan" for visited links causes all links to show up as cyan...
Re:Did he file a bug report? (Score:5, Funny)
What's that ? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the three of them ?
Re:What's that ? (Score:5, Funny)
Two of them now
call an @ an @ (Score:4, Funny)
Inexperienced techies shouldn't run big sites (Score:3)
Probably a fake story but if it were true... (Score:5, Funny)
Another conspiracy by M$? (Score:3, Funny)
This just goes to show that in the long-run, the TCO for M$ products are a lot lower then using other alternatives.
That's a bit scary (Score:3)
The real headline... (Score:5, Funny)
"Nobody follows RFCs these days -- microsoft has firmly established that standards are there to be ignored. Anyone following the HTTP RFCs as strictly and to the exact letter as this individual did is obviously up to no good, so we reported the incident to police as an obvious terrorist act.".
I am so paranoid (Score:5, Funny)
I am even more paranoid that I use BSD. (Security is more important than speed, new developments, a friendly environment, etc.)
The paranoia continues because I use BSD's jail to secure lynx.
My command to open lynx:
'/usr/sbin/jail -U poor_england_guy
So lets see:
1. You cannot save data about me because I disabled cookies.
2. You cannot see data that I receive or send because I use ssl.
3. You cannot use somekind of frame trick to send me to a site where I do not want to go.
4. You cannot use popups on me. Lynx does not exactly have any windows.
5. No frame tricks either. Lynx does not support frames.
6. If some hole is found in lynx, my automatic secure update (/usr/ports with freebsd) with fix it. It's secure and uses ssh2-like things, so it will take a few thousand/million years to get past that security.
7. Even a virus gets on the machine:
a. I can just restart lynx.
b. I boot off a CD. The filesystem is read-only. Really read-only.
c. Virii are unheard of on bsd.
d. I can switch to links or wget.
Conclusions:
1. I find it a good probability that this system admin saw the person's lynx setup (comparable to mine) and was extremely jealous. After a few minutes of being stuck on "hostname#", the system administrator just gave up and decided to sue this guy.
This jealousy is similar to SCO's jealous of Linux.
2. Everyone should switch to a similar setup. I am sure everyone would enjoy the interface, and some would especially enjoy the ASCII pr0n.
Re:I am so paranoid (Score:3, Interesting)
By the way, gotcha:
This virus works on the honor system:
If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward
this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your
files at random.
We have no confimation of the Lynx bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla (Score:4, Funny)
Now, I am trying to think up something appropriately insulting of their intellect to write to their logs with the UA spoofer extensions in Mozilla.
Any suggestions?
. . .
Re:Have Your Say via UA String Extension Mozilla (Score:5, Funny)
'Mozilla/5.0 (Not Lynx/Do not arrest user) Gecko/20041107 Harmless/1.7.3'
Just tried it out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now let's wait and see what will happen next...
If lots of people do the same:
Re:Just tried it out... (Score:4, Funny)
# more money for the tsunami victims
You forgot one:
Police get lots of free hardware
imagine how many non-standard (Score:3, Insightful)
I bet there's a ton of LWP requests hitting BT as we speak.
mandatory script (Score:4, Funny)
Purple Monkey Dishwasher (Score:5, Funny)
Web Monkey: "It's a web browser that old-school Unix hackers used to use."
-- later ---
Middle Manager: "Sir! An old hacker has comprimised our system!"
CTO: "Release the monkeys."
*phew* that story scared me (Score:3, Funny)
Corrections (Score:3, Informative)
If he hadn't been released, he would have been remanded in custody - still not "jailed".
If he was point on trial and convicted, he would have been gaoled - did I mention not "jailed"?
Banned for using DOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the school authorities had decided that any type of command line smelt of hacking and subversive tendencies.
Re:Banned for using DOS (Score:3, Interesting)
Please yell at the school!
At my elementary school we used to have an IBM network system (token ring--those were the days!) with a menu system in it. It was unfortunate, since a friend of mine and I liked to program in QBASIC, and all the menu allowed was Logo and Microsoft Works. However, Microsoft Works had a convenient "Launch Program" option on the File menu, whose first choice was a command prompt. That led to tons of fun in QBASIC. Fortunately my teachers weren't idiots, and didn't really care.
I
Jailed for IE? (Score:5, Funny)
It's insecure (your computer could be hijacked and used for malicious purposes)... national security risk.
Re:I had to use Lynx once (Score:5, Funny)
No, using Lynx is just plain text.
Re:I had to use Lynx once (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well I think JWZ put it best for Lynx users. (Score:5, Funny)
#
Greetings, Lynx users. There is a reason this page doesn't use ALT tags
on the images. The reason is that the bozos responsible for both MSIE
and Netscape Confusicator 4.0 decided that they would display the ALT
tags of images every time you move the mouse over them -- even if the
images are loaded, and even if they are not links. The ALT attribute
to the IMG tag is supposed to be used *instead of* the image, not *in
addition to* the image.
This looks absolutely terrible, so I don't use ALT tags any more in
self-defense.
If they wanted to implemented tooltips, they should have used the TITLE
attribute to the A tag. That's in the HTML 1.2 spec and everything.
I had to decide between making this page look good for the vast majority
of viewers, or making it be readable by the miniscule minority of you
stuck in the 70s. Those of you in the retro contingent lost. Sorry.
#
reference:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000303115840/http:
Re:First Post - CowboyNeal called the cops (Score:5, Funny)
First post with Lynx!
And your last post here, you hax0r, you!
Re:I don't believe it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing. Hopefully we'll get more info so the words "you got a customer arrested because you were too ignorant to do your job properly?" follow this guy around for his entire career - if justified.
I use lynx regularly, as do many others, any sysadmin who has never heard of it is inexperienced. If someone in a workplace is browsing pr0n for eight hours a day, the only safe way (grannies doing what?) to confirm that the URLs have dodgy content is lynx or similar things, or it's the simplest way to see if your web server is up or not from a console in the cold depths of a server room.
Re:I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
It must have been a windows sysadmin, then. But yeah, that probably is equivalent to "inexperienced", anyway.
Re:I don't believe it (Score:5, Funny)
Police would never arrest someone just because of the browser he was using.
I hope you're right. The link provided in the article [bbc.co.uk] doesn't provide much information about the nature of the attack.
Searching on BBC for "lynx" shows that this browser is very popular in Britain, they even named a real animal [bbc.co.uk] after it.
Re:I don't believe it (Score:5, Insightful)
BWAAAHAAAAAHHAAAAA!!! No wait, this is not even funny.
1) The police arrested him because they thought he was hacking stuff, not because he was using Lynx.
2) The police arrest people for insane reasons all the time in 99% of all countries. While I firmly believe there was no evil intent from enyones side in this particular case, you really need to wake up: The police are only human and most of them do whatever the people who pay their bills tell them to (that means the government, not the taxpayer).
3)The fact that the guy was released in a few days shows us that the system is limping along OK. The "sysadmin" making the hacking claim OTOH, should now be arrested for criminal negligence/incompetence or something
Re:well (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we up the bar a LITTLE?
Um, it's Cory Doctorow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:well (Score:3)
Ignorance? (Score:3)
Which wet rock do you live under, exactly? Your 'net lore obviously extends no further than your slashdot account. Speaking of which, what do you think "slashdot" sounds like to the tech-phobic businessman? Think about it -- you are now categorically defined.
Re:G. Orwell would be proud (Score:3, Funny)
since when dose a "hack atempt" constitute hauling someone off to jail?
Ob Simpsons quote:
Re:Lynx & https (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lynx & https (Score:4, Informative)
Lynx has supported https for years.
Re:Ask the horses mouth (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the tsunami is a disaster, but unfortnualtely there are many countries that are fare worse off. Just because you don't go there on holiday doesn't make it right to ignore it.
Re:Wait a sec (Score:5, Funny)
Log: Lynx - - 195.245.14.212
Windowz Admin: OMG WTF!?
Log: Lynx: Error 255 Is_not_IE
Windowz Admin: OMG WTF!? 0w3n3d? h4x0rd?
PHB: Whats all this then?
Windowz Admin: Hackers
Phone: Ring Ring, Ring Ring
Police: Metropolitan Police?
PHB: Hackers, Tsunami, Help!?
Police: Yes sir, the address?
PHB: The address?
Windowz Admin: [tap tap] 34 Solaris Road
Police: POLICE!
Lynx User: Okay?
Police: Down on the ground! down on the fucking ground!
Lynx User: Ahh? WTF? 0w3nd?
Police: 0w3nd h4x0r mother fucker.
Lynx User: Lawyer!
Lawyer: WTF?
Lynx User: Yes, WTF?
Judge: WTF is Lynx?
Lawyer: WTF is Solaris?
Expert: Shut up n00bs
Bail: Money
Lynx User: Poor
The Sun(tm): Hacker, lynch mob, page 3, Sun readers are tards.
BB: WTF?
Slashdot: WTF OMG?