Finnish KRP Questions Suspected Lizard Squad Member 62
An anonymous reader writes Coming on the heels of the UK arrest of Vinnie Omari, Yle reports that Finnish police have interviewed "Ryan", the Finland-based hacker reportedly responsible for hacking the PlayStation and Xbox networks on Christmas day, but have not arrested him — contrary to reports in the international media (such as Washington Post). Lizard Squad had tweeted that the Finland-based hacker had been detained. Chief Inspector Tero Muurman of Keskusrikospoliisi (Finnish National Bureau of Investigation) confirmed Yle that reports of "Ryan" having been detained were wide of the mark. He had been interviewed at the start of the week, but then released. Finnish police are continuing their probe and co-operating closely with the FBI.
Script kiddies at work (Score:4, Interesting)
In case you might have missed it, this "Ryan" is 17 and wasn't detained obviously because he's underage. When he showed his face on Sky News Finnish authorities knew exactly who he was as he's been caught of being up to similar script kiddie stuff before and escaped being charged due to being underage.
We're talking literal script kiddies here people... Nothing impressive about renting/borrowing a botnet and then directing a DDOS attack with the command tools.
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wasn't detained obviously because he's underage
Yes, very obvious, as we're all so familiar with the Finnish legal system.
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Being Finnish, I am sort of familiar with the Finnish legal system.
That said, I don't understand why the police would even want to arrest him. I mean, he is a script kiddie, not a dangerous criminal.
They probably told his parents, who are now in the process of mending their mistakes in this juvenile's upbringing.
Re:Script kiddies at work (Score:4, Insightful)
I see. So there should be consequences for acts of vandalism, other than the parents can "mend" his ways.
We wouldn't want the poor whittle kiddies having to face consequences. That make might them sad pandas.
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Hmm, I don't know, grounding him for a month, and taking away his computer for a week or two would probably be as effective as a ten year sentence.
Remember, they're script kiddies, which, before /. and the internet went to the dogs, is one level up from being a newborn user. They're the equivalent of angsty teenagers, and should be dealt with as such; anyone arguing otherwise has had life too good.
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Of course there should be consequences; He should be grounded. He should lose several weeks of pocket money.
Anyone who built a h mserious system which can be trivially disrupted by a 17 year old "script kiddie" as the OP rightly called him should be considered for much more serious penalties.
Although the FBI is probably wrong about North Korea attacking Sony, they could have done it. People who have been involved in deliverying weak operating systems or weakening crypto systems or failing to react to vuln
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Just because he's a 5cr1p7 k1dd13 doesn't mean that he can't cause significant harm, making him a dangerous criminal. He could simply disrupt important batch processes like bank financial transfers and worker payroll direct-deposits or realtime processes like aviation communication and control or the civilian telephone system if the vulnerabilities discovered by others are ex
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They DDOSed two gaming networks at a time of their peak load, seemingly for the lulz. There is a non-subtle difference between that and taking down critical networks, both in attitude and required skills.
I haven't read into these DDOSes any more deeply, but thus far I have not found anything that even suggests at them breaking into the servers (except the headlines that seem to inclucde DDOS attacks as "hacks").
Furthermore, e.g. the Daily Mail reports that
Three rival hacking groups have called a ceasefire after admitting their Christmas attack on Xbox and Playstation gamers 'took it too far'.
It is obvious the script kiddies have started to re
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I don't really give a damn if they've started to repent after-the-fact. As far as I'm concerned, if they'd been in a room with a whole slew of gamers and had taken down the gaming servers and been outed, and the gamers had beat
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Causing "minor inconvenience" to *thousands* of people and multiple businesses isn't minor at all. I believe it is you who lacks perspective as to harm to society.
Inconveniencing gaming is minor no matter how many thousands of people or businesses are affected. I know that people and businesses spend millions on it but still, Its Just A Game.
Sheesh, how many productive hours must be generated for every hour of DDoS on gaming sites???
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So is professional sports. Yet, someone that disrupts a game is likely to be arrested and prosecuted. Someone that disrupts a broadcast through malicious or intentional act even if the game itself continues will also be arrested and prosecuted.
Re:Script kiddies at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me ask this the other way: what benefit would come out of arresting the kid? Do you honestly fear he would continue and escalate his criminal activities now?
Hasn't he shown a propensity to do just that? He got caught carding food at DEF CON in 2013. More recently he spent three months in a detention facility for that bomb threat against a Sony executive's airplane; he even joked about his haircut looking bad because they shaved it for him in jail. He got out, went home, and proceeded to step up his game by DDOSing the hell out of PSN and XBL. There does seem to be a pattern of continuing and escalating criminal activity.
I'm not arguing that he's dangerous or that he needs to be locked up for 5 years, but if he's guilty, I do believe there has to be some sort of punishment. Make him pick up litter every weekend until he's 18, or something productive that benefits society.
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And that is why US is a shithole in terms of crime rates, while Finland isn't.
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Being that he's a script kiddy, the hole's he's exploiting have to be known to the world + dog for months, years, possibly decades...this is on the order of having a hole in your living room for weeks, and doing nothing about it, when a hurricane shows up and makes you miserable.
He's underage, a script kiddy, and is truly a threat only to those people who think that 'pa$$word1' is an innovative password.
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All it would take is a swift kick to my front door for any burglar to gain access to my living room. A small fire set outside would torch my house. My car is sitting in my driveway, waiting for it's tires to be slashed. Boy, I'm just asking for it, aren't it?
It's incredibly difficult to practically protect against a very large DDOS attack. Sure, we should look for ways to mitigate this, but at the moment, the only real way to do so is a brute force content of bandwidth versus capacity.
An open and free s
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That is the exact opposite of how actual crime prevention works, and the best way to ensure a lot of crime through recidivism and institutionalization of crime.
Real approach here is involving social workers and psychologists to get the guy sorted out.
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none of which is as serious as hitting someone in the face, for which the jailterm isn't that much in Finland.
and you know what, if those systems are so shittily built they go the fritz from that, then good riddance. I'm not aware there having been any serious actual damages from whatever the group did. did someone break a bone? did they steal something of monetary value? did they break some hardware?
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL! CALL THE FEEEEEEEDS!!! bullshit. none of this is as serious as vehicular manslaught
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Criminal immunity up to age of 15. 15 to 18 you get incremental increase to full criminal responsibility.
You remain liable financially however, so you can incur an impressive debt from damage you cause
Does not sound like hacking (Score:1)
First hackers were people with skills to do cool things, then it was people breaking in to stuff and now it is anyone who are vandalizing something.
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IMHO, "hacker" is as good or bad a term as "amateur", to me they are really the same thing. The word "amateur" starts out great - doing something for the love of it, rather than money. But you mostly hear it used as a pejorative - oh, he's just an amateur, he doesn't really know what he's doing (because obviously people who get paid to do what they do really do know).
Denied involvement? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the linked article: "Muurman had said that the investigation was in its early stages, but that “Ryan” was suspected of aggravated data crimes, but denied involvement."
That's not terribly convincing considering that he did a 5 minute video interview with Sky News the other day where he described the attack and took responsibility for it.
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It seems these guys really aren't all that smart.....never been involved in anything like this in my life but FFS....if you were, you don't advertise it.
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It may come as a shock to you, but a lot of people confess to crimes they don't commit.
That's why we have courts of law that have high standard for evidence they accept, instead of lynching mobs that require "this guy looks different enough" to get the rope out.
KRP is in Cincinnati, not Finland (Score:2)
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Mod +1, (Funny)
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they really should have been more careful. see, the phone cops are real. they've always been real.
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Because I asked them to.
If only (Score:1)
If only murders were investigated with as much rigour as IP-related 'crimes.'
Lost in translation? (Score:2)
Perhaps the Finnish language is to blame here, but by this translation he was clearly detained.
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Precisely.
According to a news article dated 29.12, the police announced they intend to interview 'Ryan' in the coming days.
(http://yle.fi/uutiset/epailty_suomalaishakkeri_krpn_kuulusteluun/7710003) Sounds to me like they asked him to come to the interview. No detaining or arresting involved.
I guess it is not the Finnish language that is to blame here, but the mentality.
Hacked PlayStation and Xbox networks? (Score:1)
Timothy this is slashdot, try and be a bit more technical. They didn't 'hack' the PlayStation and Xbox networks, they ran a DDOS attack on them from thousands of compromised Windows desktops
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Not quite. Under Finnish law, overwhelming personal debt expires in three years after entering a mandated debt repayment agreement. There are also significant limits to what can be taken from him to repay such a debt.
These laws were put in place after a massive disaster in the 1990s when Finnish economy suffered a crisis similar in magnitude to that of 2007 in US which pushed a lot of small business owners into scenario you describe. Current system is designed to allow these people to get back on their feet
Did Everybody at /. have a Bad Christmas? (Score:1)
Geez, a script kiddie denies all you Slashdotters time with your new shiny Playstations and XBoxes on Christmas morning and you are all howling for blood.
Not defending the kid or anything - he'll be an ant squashed under a steamroller in a few months I'm sure. But some of you guys need to shut off the consoles, get out of the basement, and take a deep breath of perspective.