As I suspect that quite a few people who have to endure spam everyday might just form a lynching party.

Kid? Right!! He knew what he was doing!!

<snip> "It's immoral, but the money makes it right,"

"I just hope this stuff lasts a while so I don't have to get a job right away,"

</snip>

Bet they didn't think they'd have those words read back to them.....

What used to stun me was the lasck of competence in corporate and governmental sysadmins in these stories, having seen the muppets they hire, and the restrictions the folks that do know what they are doing have to work under - ie stupidly long hours due to under manning, the inability to spec anything other than MS O/S's for political reasons.....etc It's only a wonder that it wasn't much worse.

Rather than send him to prison hire him at the rates the first poster suggests is standard. The long hours and all that aggro will either make him fit to go up against those commie hackers or cure him of the wish to infect.

Then if the Canadians need teaching another lesson in diplomacy like they did in the 1960's or Brown turns into another Wilson, instead of water-boarding a Canadian Ambassador or framing Brown with saucy snaps, they could just give them DDOSs or even BSODs.

That'll learn em!

You recommend giving these people ice cream?

---

@ Hire the biatch

"That'll learn em!"

I don't think we need to learn them, I think we need to teach them.

---

@ the story

It still amazes me that people who plan criminal activities over the internet somehow believe that keeping logs of everything they say and do is A Good Thing...

Gary McKinnon is still wanted behind bars for a very long time! Is it because he isn't a home grown Merkin? Or is it because this kid only did it for the money? That justice system is fucking crazy.

"That'll learn em!" - as you point out, teach would me more correct. But since this is an extremely common turn of phrase, used for comic effect, you just look like an incorrigible pedant.

And as for keeping logs - it's not them that kept the logs. Though it's pretty remarkable, admittedly, that they discussed this stuff on IRC. It is a little like planning a terrorist attack by corresponding on postcards (or is that analogy too cliche?).

Which ones, Sahara, Gobi? I'm all for dropping these guys in the middle of either. Give them a laptop, and no water. See how much fun they have then.

Defence Information Security Agency - not very well defended or secure - maybe they should change their name to "Information Agency"

No it doesn't, asshole. It just gives you a motive to engage in pathetic and despicable self-delusion. You are not exculpated.

And THE SAME RULE GOES FOR YOU, BALLMER, GATES AND JOBS!

"Among the computers infected by SoBe and Ancheta were those belonging to the Defense Information Security Agency"

If a couple of script kiddies can infect above mentioned agency, then that agency deserves to be buggered with a whale harpoon....bloody gits....

BillG icon, cause he infects PCs with Windaz...

Here is a thought. Time to reinstall windows, drivers, and other crap software lets say 2 hours. (I know it is more.)

250,000 computers.

Lets just say he can work on 4 machines at a time.

250,000 X 30 minutes = 750,000 minutes

or

14.26 Years in Federal (Pound me in the ass) prison.

Sounds fair to me.

Instead of teaching them a lesson, why don't teach the public to stop blindly clicking e-mails and ads that they have no idea who or where they came from. These people will be around forever as long these people keep doing this. I understand there are "bugs" in our software in which these crackers will and do exploit, that is why it is a good idea to leave automatic updates on on all OS, AV and firewall software.

I think the last time I read that a vanilla out-of-the-box Windows XP station put on the internet, it would be compromised within 15 minutes. It is probably less now. At least Microsoft is attempting, albeit loosely, to lock down the OS with a generic firewall built in. However, it doesn't matter if the public doesn't know how to use it.

While every just screams "Just go and get Linux/Unix.. and all of your problems will go away!" is sadly mistaken if you believe that to be true. Besides a sleuth of enterprise software that is currently incompatible, if it were the other way around, Linux/Unix with the market share and Microsoft without, then our problems would be mirrored. Why do they target Windows? Not because it is faulty, because it is the accessible. We in the Open Source crowd find security vulnerabilities and bugs all the time in Linux/Unix circles of distributions but, how many stories do you here of those being attacked, cracked and taken over like you do windows? Rarely, if ever, because no one is trying to exploit it. It is easy for any pimpled faced kid and any of the number of so called "Network Administrator Tools" to find a windows box scan for vulnerabilities. However, to search for those Linux/Unix boxes with that one open port that can be infected, will turn tits up. Not because people plugged the whole, because there are not many around.

Sigh, it will never end until the PUBLIC is educated. However, I don't think that grandma and grandpa could really be educated or even care. As long as they can e-mail and surf their genealogy, they could care less if unknowingly their computer compromised.