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Taking Revenge Against Hackers..

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by tomsal

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Just a thought I'd like to throw out there and see what others think.

Obviously hacking has gained in popularity a lot over the years, its too the point now that I even see housewives mention it like they know what they are talking about. People assume everything is a hack attempt, its kind of funny in that respect.

But anyway, is it unethical as an IT professional to see revenge on those who hack (or attempt to hack) your network? Should one just let it be, or hack back in defense?

What is your spin on this?

I've been taking quite a heightened interest in security lately, even studying and hacking in test environments at home for the gain of knowledge.

Disclaimer: I harm no one with my testing btw, and the few folks I've tested with are friends and I actually ask permission ("May I hack your box please?"), mind you they don't have much clue on how to turn on their monitor without a 45 page instruction guide but that's beside the point. lol.. gotta love the AOL crowd. ;)

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by maxwell edison

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You don't take "revenge" on a home burglar by turning around and burglarizing his home. Moreover, that could land you in the hoosegow as well as (or instead of!) him.

But to seek justice, whether that be criminal or civil - or both - is certainly understandable. But that would involve reporting the activity to law enforcement agencies and/or having your attorney file a damage suit against him in civil court. (Hit him where it hurts - his pocketbook!)

by dc_guy

Too many hackers are kids with shallow pockets. Unless you can convince America that parents are responsible for the havoc wrought by their children, you've got nothing. Besides, it's almost impossible to get a jury to convict a minor of anything non-violent. Adults love kids by instinct; if they didn't, the species would not survive. ^_^ And how many of the jurors will start wondering if they've got a budding hacker at home?

by cactus pete

Kid hackers can cause millions of dollars worth of damage these days with little effort. Convincing a jury or just a judge of this would not be very difficult, not these days.

Not all hackers are kids, either. Until you have the proper authorities handle the trace in a professional and court-accepted manner, you wouldn't know who it was anyway.

"Hacking back" would be all fine and dandy if you wouldn't be held accountable for goofing up and causing more damage, or hitting the wrong person!

Imagine you were struck in the back of the head, you turn around and see someone glaring at you... he's about your size, and in your head-throbbing rage you strike out at him...

And only later, you find out he was glaring because he had just been struck by the same flying handbag that the little old lady tossed as she went sprawling over the sidewalk, breaking her hip...

People should not take matter into their own hands. Follow the rules when you suspect someone else of having broken them, or you're just as bad.

by maxwell edison

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Not to change the focus of the thread to the recording industry, but they're certainly going after the kids, the kid's parents, and/or to whomever the IP address is leased. And what about the virus writers? I remember of several investigations that have led to teenagers in some cases, so they can certainly be held accountable if, of course, they can be identified.

And on another note, you said, "Adults love kids by instinct; if they didn't, the species would not survive."

I would change that to say, "Adults love to "mate", by instinct, which creates kids; if they didn't, the species would not survive."

by oz_media

I was just talking about that the other day with a friend. It is a known fact of nature that offspring are adorable, this way they recevie nurturing and love needed to grow. Kittens, who could turn one away, babies (although not all are pretty in my eyes) will be absolutely adorable to the mother. There's no question that babies are cute due to the need for caring and nurturing.

This is in babies and infants though. Someone hacking my PC better cover his/her tracks well.

I had an amateur hack attempt by a kid in Vancouver a few years back, an hour later I was knocking his mom's door, he had his computer taken away by his mother and to this day cannot hack anymore from home. He is not a baby, he is 16 (too bad he wasn't older at the time).

What has stunned me by reading these posts is the lack of offensive/defensive agression shown by you guys.

I remember conversations where people said if they saw someone on their property, they would shoot him/her for tresspassing. This is all part of the right to have a gun and use it to defend one's property that is sold so strongly there.

I was amused to see nobody agreeing to take action yourself and instead looking to legal ways to resolve issues.

If you can be so patrient with someone who intends to damage your property, why such a vengeance against someone breaking in or tresspassing?

by dc_guy

Human children require adult care and training for a proportionally much greater part of their life than any other animal. We don't just have to teach them to catch fish and evade lions, but to master language and a bewilderingly complex social structure with millions of rules. Our instinct to protect the young of the species runs for quite a few years. I bet most of us, spying a 13-year-old about to be hit by a bus, would find ourselves in the street dragging him to safety before we consciously realized what we were doing. If it were an adult we'd stop and do the risk analysis first. Same goes for thwarting a physical invasion of our space, it's the pre-programmed synapses we inherited from our Stone Age ancestors. (Actually it goes back 40 or 50 million years before that. All the gregarious primates react the same way to an intruder.) Argh, someone's here to steal our food, mates, furs, tools, or just to run us out of this great hunting area; I can't let that happen. We have no instincts about the virtual space inside our computers, so we have the luxury of being able to react like civilized humans instead of cave men when it is attacked.

by oz_media

You said "Same goes for thwarting a physical invasion of our space, it's the pre-programmed synapses we inherited from our Stone Age ancestors. (Actually it goes back 40 or 50 million years before that. All the gregarious primates react the same way to an intruder.) Argh, someone's here to steal our food, mates, furs, tools, or just to run us out of this great hunting area; I can't let that happen. "

Territorial instinct is inherent in us, it is also too old an instinct to be seen as a viable solution to modern issues. The whole you pushed me so I'm gonna push you back even harder is an antiquated and uneducated train of thought. This is common to anyone who simply does not kow how to deal with a problem, just like school kids in the sandbox but not adults.

I HAVE caight an intruder just last year, yes I broke his arm, yes I held him on the floor with my knife under his chin, but I didn't pull a gun and threaten to shoot him. I held him until te police came and he was arrested. (They didn't like my knife but decided to turn a blind eye as the guy was in a lot of pain from 'falling' and breaking his arm.)

I have two guns, however I have never even thought of them as protection from anything, I don't need a gun to protect myself from unarmed neighbourhood thieves, now I'm sure that if people started defending their homes with guns, thieves would also be armed.

Kinda like in England, the police didn't need guns for the most part ad still don't, but the criminals are VERY rarely armed themselves. If the citizens and police started waving guns around, the criminals would arm themselves.

i was given two guns in the past ten years, both hae been fired on ranges and in the mountains over a few beers but it has never even crossed my mind to use them as protection, it just isn't needed. Plus I'd end up in jail for shooting a burglar, unless in self defense against similar threat, anyhow.

Get out of the stone age and ditch the "protective" weapons.

by hal 9000

Particuarly as l was at a meeting run by Microsoft late last year to show us just how secure 2003 was.

The aim of the game was to hack into a box that was susposed to be controlling a power distribution grid and take it down. We first had to find a way in as it was on a modem connection and then by pass all the so called security protocols. Needless to say we all managed to take down the imanged power grid but some took longer than others.

What was the frighting part however was that they where trying to show just how secure 2003 Enterprise Server was and they had already set it up to stop any intrusions and it was not an out of the box installation but at least there was no other protection on the control box other than M$ products.

Col

by generalist

It would be really tempting to hack back at a hacker/cracker. But if they do a good job of spoofing you might end up hitting the wrong target.

On the other hand, if you do a good job of tracing the hacker/cracker and create a solid evidence trail, you might be able to use the legal system to make sure that they have to pay damages and can't run anything more complicated than a pencil and paper.

Of course, if the hacker/cracker is shown to be guilty in court but gets off due to technicalities, you might have to resort to other means that might be illegal if caught.

Or you might have to resort to spreading the word through the Internet that a certain person can't be trusted and resort to using the court case as proof.

by wordworker

So the kid got 200 hours of community service. Is that considered a slap on the wrist in Australia? Maybe they went easy on him because he was 16 when he did the crime, but I'd still rather see stiffer punishments. Where I'm contracting they fired two people *on the spot* when they were discovered sending porno links to each other using corporate e-mail. Now that's swift justice!

by lisa_rad

My colocated server, supposedly protected by "$100,000.00 Cisco Routers" was recently hacked by the most viscious hacker of them all. My little home network/servers have been hacked a few times, nothing that couldn't be fixed, cleaned up - or just a new os. usually they don't mess with the home dir, nor do they usually delete files. i was monitoring the server for some high bandwidth issues and i noticed sendmail was sending out "low disk space warnings" - 60 gigs and my sites were only 10? system, logs and pre-transfer back-ups less than another 20.. what's going on here? so i look at the running processes (this is redhat 9 using webmin to administer remotely) and see this "Bill-Gates-16" running "iroffer" on my server! AND has uploaded close to 30 gigs of what looks like avi files! i quickly stopped his process and downloaded his source files and a couple of the large avi files, for investigation purposes. the avi files are not anything i have ever played - creepy sounding tones came from these files! anyway iroffer is a "irc filesharing bot" his config boasts about the amount of files that he has uploaded. i began blocking every ip and port he was hitting me with, and he just came back. i deleted his 25+ gigs of files off my server - most hackers would of left it long before that - caught! on to the next hack hehe - but this guy was pissed and began deleting my home dir! gone! ran my tape, dumped it... this was like catching somebody in your house, but instead of runnung away when they got caught, destroyed everything in site! i had to call where my server is colo and tell them to pull the cable - but by the time they answered the phone and got to my server - it was too late - so to answer the question, yes i want revenge! i want to see this punk right in front of me so i can rip his fingers off of his hands! this "iroffer" and irc targets "high bandwidth servers" to use for their filesharing. because of the popularity of pirated dvds, the files are to large to be downloaded on their own servers, so they highjack.

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