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Free Software Hits Back at Crackers 153

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this'll-slow-'em-down dept.
flokemon writes "This article from the Register announces the release of some free software from Backfire Security called Payback. "The software has the ability to instantly and dynamically 'trace' the IP source address - no matter how well masked - of the network attack/infection and respond by launching either a Domain Name or Mail Server flood attack in the direction of the attacker." This raises quite a few questions though, the legality of the software first, and I'm not really convinced that this would hit back at hackers more than it would hit back at infected servers." Hopefully those would be crackers will think twice now before engaging in their 31337 activities!
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Free Software Hits Back at Crackers More

Free Software Hits Back at Crackers

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  • April fools! (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by mrtroy ( 640746 )
    You cant stop the 31337 h4xs0rs!

    I owned my roommates computer last nite...and she couldnt trace NOTHING!

    Err...yes...it would have been EASIER to go into her room...but less fun

    Now all day today her computer background will be changing to some funny pictures, for obvious reasons

    • Re:April fools! (Score:5, Funny)

      by decarelbitter ( 559973 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:03AM (#5637700)
      I owned my roommates computer last nite...and she couldnt trace NOTHING! Err...yes...it would have been EASIER to go into her room...but less fun

      Only on Slashdot men find more joy in owning a girls pc than actually owning the actual girl :)

    • Re:April fools! (Score:5, Funny)

      by drunk_as_in_beer ( 661124 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:17AM (#5637762)
      it would have been EASIER to go into her room...but less fun

      Me, personally, I would've gone into her room and gained direct access to her box.

      Of course that has more to do with the type of female roommates I have had.
      • you have to stay away from the roommates.

        Reason #1. Hot girls generally have hot friends. And lots!

        Reason #2. You do something with her...she gets pissed at you later...then who is going to cook and clean?!!?

        Reason #3. You have to put up with her 24/7...can you really take the risk of having a bitchy roommate?

        Reason #4. She will catch you with other girls. Girls you dont live with wont find out about each other.

        And the list goes on and on....
        • No, no.. You interpreted what I said that wrong way, that's not what I meant. What I meant was, the female roommate I had didn't mind me going into her room late at night and playing with her box. In fact she encouraged me to, since she usually needed me to do something with it. She depended on me to work on her box. And man, did she have a nice one, I didn't mind one bit. I played with it a lot.

        • Re:April fools! (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          you have to stay away from the roommates.

          If you're a guy living with a girl, you're already screwed.

          Reason #1. Hot girls generally have hot friends. And lots!

          If you mean lots of hot male friends, you might be right.

          Reason #2. You do something with her...she gets pissed at you later...then who is going to cook and clean?!!?

          She's going to get pissed at you for any given reason, you can't do anything about this. And you need someone to cook and clean for you? That's fucking pathetic. Roommate !=
        • > you have to stay away from the roommates.
          >Reason #1. Hot girls generally have hot friends. And lots!
          >Reason #2. You do something with her...she gets pissed at you later...then who is going to cook and clean?!!?

          Her hot roomates, obviously, which is why you shouldn't stay away from 'em. *rimshot*

      • Of course that has more to do with the type of female roommates I have had.

        Microso... oh, nevermind.
    • try http://www.backfiresecurity.co.uk/aprilfool.htm for more jokes.......

    • I owned my roommates computer last nite...and she couldnt trace NOTHING!

      She could not trace nothing...

      Oh boy, you're so scr3w3d. Depending on the girl, this could be a reward or a punishment I guess (the same goes the other way around, but in this case, I'm willing to bet it'll be a punishment for her, in which case this entire reasoning becomes void [recursive error detected]).
    • Aw people, this mrtroy wrote a stylish joke
      and got moderated down, while
      those who explained his joke got mod'd up...

      Something's terribly wrong here.
      Stupid and ugly people, go work in mines!
    • I like how a joke response to an April Fools joke is modded as offtopic. No, wait....I don't like that. Hold on. Actually I don't care. Forget I said anything.
  • Isn't retalliation for crimes the antithesis of our modern legal notions?
    • Yes it is, but it's also a lot more fun...
    • Some person was heard saying, "An eye for an eye will make the world blind."

      Or in this case, An eye for an eye will make the world OFFLINE.
      • I dig your username.
        • Thanks... been using it since late 1993 (started using it as my EFNET nickname). Had a 'drugs and behavior' class while a freshman at the Univ. of Pittsburgh and thought that first portion of the name 'D9 THC' was rather unknown. So I started using it and rarely anyone knows the real meaning of it. (No I don't like that crappy band).
  • Well, heck, as long as we're hitting back at SOMEBODY I guess its ok...

    Take that *zap*
    and that *bzzzzt*

  • aahhh (Score:1, Interesting)

    by veeoh ( 444683 )
    anyone checked the date? lol

    • backfire (Score:4, Funny)

      by wadiwood ( 601205 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:30AM (#5637816) Journal
      So this backfire thing might backfire on the backfirer? ie what goes around comes around goes around comes around x 6000.

      Personally I like the one about internet cleanup day (there goes my cobweb).

      As many of you know, each year the Internet must be shutdown for 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it. The cleaning process, which eliminates dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allows for a better working and faster Internet.

      This year, the cleaning process will take place from 12:01 a.m. GMT on April 1st until 12:01 a.m, GMT on April 2nd. During that 24-hour period, five powerful Internet search engines situated around the world will search the Internet and delete any data that they find.

      In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you do the following:

      1. Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their Internet connections.

      2. Shut down all Internet servers, or disconnect them from the Internet.

      3. Disconnect all disks and hardrives from any connections to the Internet.

      4. Refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in any way.

      We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some Internet users, and we apologize. However, we are certain that any inconveniences will be more than made up for by the increased speed and efficiency of the Internet, once it has been cleared of electronic flotsam and jetsam.

      We thank you for your cooperation.

      Interconnected Network Maintenance staff,
      Main branch,
      Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • ...so that the crackers at the Pentagon will get hit back.

    Sigh...Remember when "Cracker" meant "White Person"?

  • OMG (Score:5, Funny)

    by secolactico ( 519805 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:02AM (#5637692) Journal
    God, I hate April Fools... and it's only 9 in the am. What am I supposed to do in the absence of interesting news? Work? My boss might think I'm playing an April Fools on him.

  • WARNING (Score:5, Informative)

    by FFtrDale ( 521701 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:02AM (#5637693)
    This site collects your name & email before you can see the "April Fool! punch line. Use a pseudo.
  • (or .co.uk's)
    Our aim is to exterminate all hackers and virus felons from the Internet by the end of 2004, and we have the unique technology to do it."

    Even as a joke thats extra funny!
    I hope their past work experience involved inventing the question mark...
  • ...is there something they can't do?
    • um certainly, they can't report any relevant news. for one day of the year all actual news ceases to exist and the entire world learns only of horrible attempts at humor by technical writers who really really should stay with technical writing and not fiction.
  • Seeing how worms can bring the net to its knees, how is ever MORE traffic (probably misdirected) supposed to help anyone? Getting sucker-puched sucks, but it only gets worse if you start swinging-away in the croud...
    • When I read your post, I read "Seeing a woman on her knees....suck punch...swinging away..."

      It must be still early...or slashdot is using some invisible "whitespace" code to make the words change!
    • Hopefully those would be crackers will think twice now before engaging in their 31337 activities!

      Man.. Cracks are engaging in thirty one thousand three hundred and thirty seven activities? Wow, they really must be elite.
  • They forgot to give credit where credit is due, though: ICE (intrusion countermeasures electronics, often fatal to the cracker), from William Gibson's novels.
  • "originally developed for the Chinese Space Program."

    Ha this gave it away for me

  • Sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aren't April Fools jokes supposed to at least be funny? Seriouusly now...
    • "Here are some other great hoaxes to enjoy......"
      -Website ...Implying that this one somehow is. I can't say it qualifies with such heady company as a UFO landing in London, personally.

  • great.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by v_1_r_u_5 ( 462399 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:12AM (#5637744)
    PAYBACK v1.0 is a new kind of anti-hacker application called an IRS (Intruder Retaliation System) and is based upon "guerrilla" programming protocols and algorithms originally developed for the Chinese Space Program.

    The IRS is not only every American's nightmare, it is now Godless Red Thread In Cyberspace

  • Internet Special Ed Day (Score:4, Insightful)

    by portege00 ( 110414 ) <npbradshaw@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:12AM (#5637745) Homepage
    ...a.k.a. April Fool's day. Remember when the jokes were really like, "HA HA, GOTCHA!" Now their about at bright as a crackhead trying to get past "J" with a crayon on wallpaper.

    Looks like today is going to be a C-Strike day!

  • April Fools on /. ... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm, so far all the stories have been very transparent and rather shallow.

    Somebody give me a good April Fools hoax that I will actually belive, pls.

    (Gento Lunux was good and had me beating up my monitor for a bit ... but that passed.)

  • Free Software Hits Back at Crackers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:15AM (#5637756) Homepage
    Yeah, DIE you motherf*cking animal crackers! I'll bite your heads off and drown you!

  • Continuing the trend of *dumb* April 1 stories (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @09:19AM (#5637771) Homepage Journal
    Is anyone else getting pretty pissed that:
    1) There haven't been any real articles today so far
    2) All the jokes so far aren't even remotely believable

    I remember the fun we had last year with some well-crafted stories. (In particular I remember a lot of flames generated over Linus quitting kernel development). The fraction of hoaxes was more than it should have been, but not as bad as this.

    Anyway, about the article in question, note that backfire security [google.com] doesn't exist, nor does Archie Mendoza.

  • *BOOM* Beer gushes out of the chimney
  • I learn so much. Maybe it's that spring is in the air and that the annual rebirth of the earth leads to exciting decisions being made, bold new ideas in software, and just general inspiration all around.

    I haven't figured out how this applies in the Southern hemisphere yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out soon.

    (It never grows old for me... ;-) )
  • For that April fools, I just hijacked his FormMail script and am broadcasting pr0n spam to postmaster@ and abuse@ for all domains world wide.
  • Even if you don't don't want to read the article the ad for bill gates in red rubber is funny.
  • I KNEW that today was April Fools, I told myself watchout for /. and their little games. I prepared myself.

    Oh My God! They Pranked Phoenix...You Bastards!

    (good one though)

    Phoenix

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by Apreche ( 239272 )
    Um, I'd say something like this...

    Slashdot is supposed to be a serious news source. How can it be when it participates in April fool's day by putting up LOTS of silly articles. I mean one is ok, but all of them?

    But slashdot isn't a serious news source, and that's its mistake. It should and could be.

    Anyway, I'm even more po'd because none of the joke articles are funny! They are all obviously false and didn't even get a grin out of me because of their lame-ness. Especially this one. Hack-back software?
  • Free Software Hits Back at Crackers

    Yea, Just cause I am white doesn't mean... uh nevermind... =P
  • Hello? Hello, Dimitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? Oh, that's much better. Yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dimitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine. I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well then as you say we're both coming through fine. Good. Well it's good that you're fine and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. Now then Dimitri. ...
    • my post got an offtopic mod? Is this another April Fools' joke? To the mod who marked me down on my test, go rent Doctor Strangelove, watch the first hour, then stop and write me an essay about how goddamned hilarious I am for drawing such a clever parallel between a frontpage April Fool's slashdot post and the brilliant premise of one of the greatest American black comedies ever filmed (thanks in no small part to a certain underappreciated genius [terrysouthern.com] of human dialogue).

      So few geeks have even the slightest sem
  • The freeware package - PAYBACK v1.0 - is available from www.backfiresecurity.co.uk in both PC and Mac formats.
  • Let's just go ahead and put feet all the way across the banner so that everyone knows what day it is.

  • Nice one... let's see if it'll be duped later on the day.. :)

  • Anyone else read that and immediatly think "Black Ice," as in the nasty stuff that fried your brains in Neuromancer? Definitely useful as a deterrent, but, as the the summary said (yes I know it's probably a joke), what if it struck back at the wrong person? Imagine someone going on a hacking spree, frying innocent bystanders left and right...

    Jw
  • So what IF someone traces your IP# ?

    Nowadays, smart h4xx0rZ should probably take a laptop and connect to the internet through some idiot's wide-open Wi-Fi router...

    I mean, there's seven of those on the way I take to work, and that's just three blocks away...

    • So what IF someone traces your IP#
      The tracer will report you to your ISP. It's serious if you are on a certain knee-jerk ISP, but some others simply ignore those reports. In very rare instances, a tracer may retaliate with an attack of his own.

      Note that certain attacks are much more resistant to these attacks. (e.g. SYN flooding with spoofed IPs)
      • you failed to read the rest of my comment:

        you are quite right about ISPs, BUT you really don't care when you connect through some newbie's wide-open Wi-Fi router from outside his house now do you?

  • I am now going to schedule my server to remind me not to visit slashdot on april 1st, and just to be safe April 2nd too.
  • > This raises quite a few questions though, the
    > legality of the software first...
  • Does that mean i am insecure?

    What is this piece of metal that can talk??

    Signautres are for unsigned ppl....
  • That is one of the most subtle and sweet April Fools pranks of all time.

    Thanks
  • If this gets any worse, I'll have to wipe my screen off with toilet paper everytime I visit today.
  • "...by launching either a Domain Name or Mail Server flood attack in the direction of the attacker."

    Doesn't seem nearly as effective as just /.ing the server.

    Here's Backfires website;
    "This account has exceeded it's bandwidth quota and has been temporarily disabled. "
  • You use the deprecated meaing of h4x0r and craking !(is 1337)
  • Having been the target of a /. DOS Attack ("This account has exceeded it's bandwidth quota and has been temporarily disabled."), do you think backfire security will retaliate agains CowboyNeal?
  • It was called Hand of God. It would trace back to the offending computer and hunt thru cookies/email logs/outlook etc and find the person's email address then submit it to 250,000+ porno sites. I believe the makers reffered to it as reverse email bombing. Anyone heard of this program or others like it?
  • lets see if a server behind X corporation is infected and there are serveral others infected to send the deny attack that would lead me to believe that 1. cracker.hacker makes virus to infect system servers to do the work for him.
    2. now half the Net has gone down

    Yep sounds like a BACKFIRE to me.

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