Is the BT DoSer a tosser?

[We were contacted by a man who informed us he had brought down bt.com, btinternet.com and gameplay.com. He told us he'd done this because he was sick of BT's service. We ran with it in last week's letters and then this week found the program he had used for the attack. The letters kept coming]

BT hacked: revenge for crap service
Blood lust over BT hack attack (letters)
Wanna know how BT.com was hacked?

---

Am I the only Register reader who doesn't think the BT DOSer is a bit of a tosser?

One thing that your story about the "BT hacked: revenge for crap service" missed was the fact that that Gameplay is not part of BT, but Gameplay did buy Wireplay which used to be owned by the Incompetent Telecoms Monopolist.

Another point is that it meant that as a BT Internet customer, I could not access my Email during working hours yesterday, so the people who lost out were also BT Internet customers, something which the correspondents on the letters page seem to miss.

I don't disagree that BT is a bit crap, but the one-man campaign for some sort of consumer justice seems to have hit a bit wide of the mark.

Adrian Skerratt

---

Just a quick comment on the sad little twat and two-hour BT cut-offs. If he can't cope with them why doesn't he just fuck off and leave those of us who read the T&Cs before we joined up alone?

Noogie

---

If you get in contact with that BT hacker again, give him my congratulations. I fully support his view. Being on BTfree myself and being subject to BTs crap service and 0 compression, I find that BT are slow fascist fuckers. Someone needs to kick their arses into line.

Anyway, I've said my piece, I would like to know how many people support my point of view.

Mark Rains

---

[We also garnered some response with our refusal to provide a link to the Plague software which was seemingly used in the attack. Our reasoning behind this was clearly spelt out]

I read your first story on BT's being DoS'ed with interest, as I'm a network security professional for an ISP here in the United States (this address is an old one from college; I don't use my "real" work address for any correspondences of a personal nature). Thus, I was also interested in your second story, particularly in the mention of a new DDoS tool called "Plague" being discussed in a zine.

However, I have to take issue with your ommission of information on where to find out more regarding Plague. The fact is that new DDoS tools are not discovered often; usually they're just another rework of a similar and now-common tool, be it TFN or stacheldraht. If Plague is something truly new and different, that's information of tremendous value to those of us who wear the white hats in the great game of spy vs. spy which security sometimes (rarely) gets to be. Now, I can understand your point, and there is a large part of me that is grateful you didn't, in effect, hand the keys to a new DDoS tool to every script kiddie who reads The Register. The rest of me, however, wishes in such cases you'd, say, drop a line or make a submission to a respected security site. They're trusted sites who test new information thoroughly before releasing it in a responsible manner.

Just a suggestion for the future. :)

Regards,
Michael Williams

---

Hehehehe, Was just about to chuck you a mail to see if you would give out the directions to the exploit info when I read the last line.

That said, we credit you the readers with enough intelligence to find out what you want to know. If it's that important to you, have a hunt around yourselves.

Nice, excellent piece of writing! Really cool way of avoiding being flamed too! Keep it up!

Trey A Mujakporue

---

You mentioned at the end of your article that you wouldn't provide your readers with the info on ddos attacks etc, but said that it wasn't too hard to find if you knew what to look for. Well, you might like to know that it took me about 30 seconds after reading your piece to uncover a veritable goldmine.

All thanks to your clever editing! </sarcasm> It's pretty complicated stuff at first glance, but don't worry, I'm sure I'll suss it out quickly enough! Nice one mate!

Jinn

---

If you want more of a delve in our letter box click

here

. ®