Police swoop on 'Hacker of the Year'

AcidAUS writes "The Swedish hacker, Dan Egerstad, who perpetrated the so-called hack of the year, has been arrested in a dramatic raid on his apartment, during which he was taken in for questioning and several of his computers confiscated. Egerstad broke into the global communications network used by embassies around the world in August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts."

Good.

[MSFanBoi2]

Break the law, go to jail. You don't have to like the laws, but breaking them ain't going to do you a bit of good. And then to go as far as start messing with the cops? Good going there Dan! Enjoy your time in prison!

Hackers, gang crime and bare breasts

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, Swedish police stands by watching an outbreak of gang shootings in the city of Gothenburg, in which even police stations and police helicopter hangars have been destroyed by drive by shootings. The chief of police is quoted as saying "We know who they are but we can't arrest them because we have no proof".

Isn't it amazing that it's easier in Sweden to raid and arrest a white collar hacker than a hard-core gang of criminals with machine guns?

In other news, Swedish feminists were heard crying out for the right to display their breasts in public - "we too [want to] pull off our shirts at football matches". [thelocal.se]

God, what a country.

Re:Well, that's what you get

[Praedon]

There was an article a while back on slashdot, that mentioned about this guy who found a way to duplicate boarding passes for an airline... before he published the information to the internet, he contacted his congressman, which did nothing about it.. but then published how to do it, and the template to the internet. He was then considered a "terrorist" and I have heard nothing more about him.

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[account_deleted]

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Just what is he?

[Billosaur]

From the article, paragraph 1:

The Swedish hacker who perpetrated the so-called hack of the year...

From the article, paragraph 2:

Dan Egerstad, a security consultant, intercepted data carried over a global communications network...

Emphasis mine. So what is he? If he's a hacker, the raid is just desserts. If he's a security consultant, and he's exposed this flaw, he's being persecuted. Frankly, I don't know what he really is, but it seems like the press is schizophrenic on this issue. It just goes to show that when it comes to technology, the mainstream press is a bit low on clarity and high on sensationalism.

Re:Well, that's what you get

[bytesex]

A bit too paranoid. He was told to shut up about it, but nothing happened to him. It was a journalist who'd found out that if you made two boarding passes at home, one in his own name (not conspicuous) and one in the name of Osama Bin Laden, and you switched bottom barcodes on them, you could get Osama on the plane. Or something. Apparently, the two barcodes are read at different stations, and only the first one checks for identity (but not the no fly list), and the second one checks for the no fly list (but not the identity). Or something.

Re:What a moron!

[UncleTogie]

Creating that kind of bad will and then complaining that you might not get your computer equipment back for years, well what do you expect?

He might not get the PC back working at ALL.

A client of mine had to give a medical server over for discovery in an insurance case. After much "analysis" {which turned out to be a bunch of guessing} they returned the box 6 months later... minus hard drive. To this day, neither the insurance company nor "expert witness" will admit that they lost 10 years of patient info and charting.

Stories like this kill me. If we had a better-informed society, the call wouldn't be "get the hacker!"... It'd be "get the idiot that thought non-encrypted communications between embassies was a good idea"...

Government raids

[killerkalamari]

People are always looking to the government to protect them. Who protects you from the government? My biggest fear in my home isn't some criminal breaking in, it's a stupid government raid that possibly gets me or one of my family members killed, or all the programs I've written in my entire life being confiscated. Perhaps some would say I shouldn't be afraid because I'm not hacking or doing anything (that I know of) that's illegal, but I am a programmer, so nevertheless it hangs over my head. I hate those who favor strong and intrusive government and want to "send a message"; it is you who should die, all of you! I won't miss you.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."o7

This was NOT a hack.

[miffo.swe]

This guy is a very good security consultant that has been around for a while. This is not the first leak he has discovered and tried to warn people, Dan discovered that his home DSL was going slow and started sniffing out the traffic from his ISP. He quickly discovered that the ISP sent him traffic from about 4000 other customers on 16 different subnets! He could see everything on the network. This very time he had setup a tor link and started sniffing out the traffic, just as NSA does in the US on their large tor links. What he found was countless passwords and other sensitive stuff floating around. He found large amounts of usernames and password floating by all the time. No doubt this was from a hacker/foreign security intelligence that used tor for anynomity. The fact that most passwords was from governments like Iran, Russia and other countries not in the US "group" suggests this was US spying in progress. The fact that Swedish "Säpo" (intelligence is not the right word for theese people) was pressured into action against something thats not a crime at all in sweden also makes one wonders what is going on. It seems people are dissatisfied that this leak was made public. I doubt the people being hacked was miffed at Dan for showing them that someone was spying on them. Now that they know and secure their communications, maybe with stringent encryption and backdoor free open source, i do now one country that will be angry.