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Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire 163

Posted by Zonk from the black-hats-for-cash dept.
Ritalin16 writes "An Ohio computer hacker recently pled guilty to carrying out crippling denial-of-service attacks on a shady internet hosting company's competitors. From the article: 'In a deal with prosecutors, Richard "Krashed" Roby, 20, pleaded guilty in federal court in Toledo last month to intentionally damaging a protected computer, after launching a 2003 attack on an online satellite TV retailer that caused at least $120,000 in losses.'" Another article indicating an openness on the international stage to cracking for cash.
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Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire More

Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire

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  • Finally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ritalin16 ( 867772 ) * on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:25PM (#13532707)
    I know Richard Roby, and it's good to see he's finally getting what he deserves. He's attacked my IRC Network a lot. He's also famous for bringing down mIRCx.com.

  • Foonet (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:27PM (#13532719)
    The ISP involved is CIT, aka foonet. Here's a link [easynetworknyc.com] (google cache [64.233.167.104] to information regarding the takedown.

  • Who you callin' a cracker? (Score:5, Funny)

    by moofdaddy ( 570503 ) * on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:28PM (#13532721) Homepage
    Ohio Cracker Confesses to Attacks For Hire

    Man, why do we have to bring race into this?
    • I'm glad I caught your comment despite it being unfairly mod'd. Rest assured it will be modded back up and the people that modded you "Troll" will be meta-moderated into never having mod points again.

      Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to Cracker Barrell for dinner tonight.

  • I Must Point Out... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spdt ( 828671 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:30PM (#13532734)
    This is neither hacking, nor is it cracking. This is just filthy DoSsing.

  • If you think this is corrupt for satellite people (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:31PM (#13532737)
    you should see how they do things in the field business. I've done repair jobs on more dish installations than I could count which were monkeywrenched by a competing service when they did a prior add-on or upgrade and did everything they could to badmouth and undercut the prior guy and then farked up the work they did and blamed it on that poor sap.

    The satellite biz is loaded with huckesters, scammers, and just plain bad people from suppliers to installers to servicers. This doesn't surprise me at all. When you have people selling RG-11 jumpers as "Monster Satellite Coax Cable", when you have $2.36 diplexors being sold as "Super High Tech Satellite Splitters" for $32.95+ and $3 roof tar sealant being sold as "Hi-Tech Satellite Waterproofing" for $20 a tube, you know the woods are thick with people whose ethics are not just questionable, but gone entirely.

    The things I've seen in satellite work... They make cable companies look like emissaries of Heaven and the phone company like Knights of the Round Table.

    • Re:If you think this is corrupt for satellite peop (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ddx Christ ( 907967 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:46PM (#13532815) Homepage
      The automobile industry is much the same. My father once worked at an autoparts shop and whenever someone clueless came in looking for a part, the manager would come out, pretend to look at a list, then pretty much charge $20-$30 for a part that cost $2, and so on.

      My dad said there was nothing he could really do, since the guy was his boss, except inform customers to pretend to know what they're doing so that they don't get taken advantage of. Come to think of it, this also happens at places like Best Buy when it comes to computers.

      • Re:If you think this is corrupt for satellite peop (Score:5, Funny)

        by magarity ( 164372 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:02PM (#13532897)
        pretend to know what they're doing so that they don't get taken advantage of. Come to think of it, this also happens at places like Best Buy when it comes to computers.
         
        Funny, I always get the impression the BB sales staff is pretending they know what they are doing so that I won't take advantage of them.
        • Funny, I always get the impression the BB sales staff is pretending they know what they are doing so that I won't take advantage of them.

          I have observed that their web prices are different than their store prices, so I do have to go in there with a printout of their website to get their web price. I imagine I "could" change all the prices around and take advantage of them if I really felt the need.

          But needless to say the parent should be marked as informative.
        • Funny, the BB staff pretends to tell me about their products but then just pays me to leave so I don't make them look bad.

      • Re:If you think this is corrupt for satellite peop (Score:5, Informative)

        by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:53PM (#13533165) Homepage
        I always like to retell my best buy experience when the subject comes up simply because it was so frustratingly lame.

        I was going to purchase a laptop from them -- I did my research to make sure all of the essential hardware would run with my choice distro, yadda yadda.

        I walked into a store and instead of just picking the laptop up, decided to go ask one of their sales droids about it. "Will it run Linux?"

        The basic thing I got from him was that it would not. It was way underpowered to run a Linux server. (I had a 400MHz PII that ran RH, and this laptop had at least twice the stats of EVERYTHING the ol' PII had). I explained I didn't want a server but a desktop install. Same thing, he says. Says they all run their Linux servers on Alienware laptops.

        Asks why I disliked XP. Performance issues, security issues, MS antics. Guy tries to sell me XP Pro instead. Tells me an alphabet soup of certification credentials to make himself the smarter one...then says Bill Gates had bought out Linux and that in a year we wouldn't even be talking about Linux at all. This was two years ago.

        I politely thanked him and said I'd go home to rethink my strategy. I bought a Dell. Now running on Ubuntu Hoary.

        So yeah, not sure if that guy still works at that Best Buy but the degree of misinformation to upsell shtuff can get ugly.
      • I think the plumbing industry is probably much the same. Moving a dishwasher this weekend, I snapped an improperly soldered joint the previous home owners had done themselves. I call in a plumber. He says he can't resolder the joint and he would have to charge me $125 to open the wall and see what is going on.

        He heads out to his truck and in the 5 minutes he is out there, I grab my rotozip and open the wall (Wow, 5 minutes of work just saved me $125). He looks at it and comes up with some other stuff tha
    • satellite work... They make cable companies look like emissaries of Heaven and the phone company like Knights of the Round Table.

      Knights? More like robber barons. The only difference between them and incumbent telcos is that the incumbents are backed by government granted monopolies. The guys who did everything in their power to keep you from hooking a modem to your phone line are still overcharging you for their obsolete services. You won't find unilaterally changeable contracts outside of government

  • Finally... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by DourSalmon ( 728491 )
    Hackers, crackers, and even the lowly DOSers no longer have to pretend that they are malevolent killers, but now can pretend that they are hitmen. There's a distinction there that lends itself well to delusional self-image and far too much RPGing. (Lawful evil folks often have more interesting campaigns than chaotic evil.)

  • They should definitely be treated harshly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:43PM (#13532799) Homepage
    Attacking companies' online presence and preventing them doing business is only a step away from being as bad as smashing a store's windows in and tossing a stink/smoke bomb in and clearing the store out for an entire day while the workers clean up. If they were to destroy all of the databases, corrupt the server settings and destroy the web applications, it would be almost as bad as throwing a pipe bomb in through the window at night after everyone is gone. This is no more honorable than hiring the mafia to "protect you" from competitors.

    • Re:They should definitely be treated harshly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by m50d ( 797211 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:17PM (#13532978) Homepage Journal
      It's worse than that. The Mafia will, by and large, do what you're paying them for - stop anyone else trying to do what they're doing. If you pay off one DDOSer there's nothing that stops another one coming around next week.
    • One could also argue that this is the same as hiring a hitman, except the results are temporary. It's not like the mafia, because the mafia is an association, and it looks like this Echouafni guy just hired some random people.

    • Re:They should definitely be treated harshly (Score:4, Insightful)

      by E8086 ( 698978 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:49PM (#13533131)
      "Attacking companies' online presence and preventing them doing business is only a step away from being as bad as smashing a store's windows in and tossing a stink/smoke bomb in and clearing the store out for an entire day while the workers clean up."

      I'd consider it closer to blocking the store's enterance preventing customers from entering. If someone were to do that I wonder what the penalty could be, but it might be more than 18-24mo and monetary fines for any local laws, blocking doors is a fire code violation, blocking the sidewalk should be another, the barracade could be considered littering, maybe someone can fit in disturbing the peace.

      It's about time the real weight of these "digital" crimes is considered. Yes, the statutory fines for an unauthorized copy of an audio or video file is up to $250,000 and a few years in prison, but that mp3 file on some kid's computer they got with some p2p program isn't worth $250,000, maybe 99c if it's available from a legal download service or a new or used CD if you can find it. A copy of a Hollywood movie it worth the price of a new copy on DVD. And the RITA (recording Industry Trust of America) abuses the laws designed to take down people reselling bootlegs for profit, not giving it away.

      Then there are these people who are hired to take out someone's competition. They're nothing more than hitmen and extortionists, pay up or we'll take out your site. These things cost real companies lots of money, lost sales, lost reputation, customer thinks the site/company may not be very reliable, lost man hours trying to repair the damage. And then they're only looking at 18-24mo or less with good behavior/parole.
      They're no longer doing drive-bys in upgraded Model Ts with Thompsons, but the concept is similar.

  • Stopping this altogether (Score:3, Interesting)

    by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:45PM (#13532813)
    Practices of DDos'ing servers is upsetting. It disrupts the generally shared used of the Net among the community of users. Equally upsetting (in this case), is the fact you can practically put a competing small business out of business by participating in this type of conduct.

    As a somewhat techie, I know that packets can be dropped from their "origin" but someone surely incurs a cost (either in implementing this feature) or having to deal with the packets anyways e.g. bandwidth costs ... (while other servers would not). Is there anything that is being implemented to eliminate DDOS attacks altogether?

    • Re:Stopping this altogether (Score:4, Interesting)

      by davidu ( 18 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:59PM (#13532880) Homepage Journal
      Yeah, fixing windows and or firewalling the shit out of it.

      It's no longer a matter of stopping spoofed source addresses, people DoS with massive botnets using real src_addr's.

      Fix windows and you'll start to get somewhere. It'll stop spam too.

      -david
    • Is there anything that is being implemented to eliminate DDOS attacks altogether?

      Two things are being done. First, the FBI is nailing inept perpetrators as they can. This is like trying to cure a flea infestation by pinching the fleas off your friend's back. The second, more effective thing is the replacement of Windoze. Without Windoze, there will be no botnet. If you are new here, I suggest you get one of the following to improve your computing experience and help stamp out the weakness that will de

    • Decentralized networks (see Usenet or Freenet [freenetproject.org]) are more or less immune to specialized (i.e. aimed at one location) DDoS attacks by nature; the only way to bring down a site is to bring down the entire network, and there is some work being done towards making even that impossible. Unfortunately, making dynamic content (e-mail, forums, more or less anything you'd be inclined to use a server-side language for) available through these sorts of networks ranges from painfully annoying to impossible.

      What I'd lik

    • It disrupts the generally shared used of the Net among the community of users. Equally upsetting (in this case), is the fact you can practically put a competing small business out of business by participating in this type of conduct.

      Funny you should mention that. As one of the satelite companies went through 3 ISP's over 10 days trying to avoid the DDOS attack, the Department of Homeland Security had the unfortunate missfortune of being hosted by one of the ISP's. That's one way to get the Fed's to take no

  • It's the future (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mhollis ( 727905 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:48PM (#13532841) Journal

    Rather than innovate, I think we'll see more companies resorting to attacks of competitors' information systems. Innovation costs real money. You have to hire really smart people and they're not as inexpensive as the dullards who willingly participate in these schemes.

    Of course, it's a matter of time before terrorists and/or other countries (China and North Korea being two that come to mind) start these kinds of attacks on their enemies' or perceived enemies infrastructure.

    • Rather than innovate, I think we'll see more companies resorting to attacks of competitors' information systems. Innovation costs real money. You have to hire really smart people and they're not as inexpensive as the dullards who willingly participate in these schemes.

      Hiring some dullard might be cheap, but civil lawsuits and potentially jail time isn't. It'd be quite the idiot (such as those demonstrated in the article) to think this was a credible business scheme.

      The thing about human beings, especially c
    • No offense, dude, but you're not current - they've been doing this for quite awhile - and it is increasing....

  • The Great Enabler. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anti-Trend ( 857000 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @02:50PM (#13532845) Homepage Journal
    Let's not forget the thing which made it possible for Roby to carry out these attacks in the first place. FTA:

    "In his plea agreement, Ashley admitted he knowingly allowed clients and employees to control networks of compromised Windows machines, or 'bots,' from Foonet."

    Now I realize that this may come across as trolling, but it doesn't make it any less true. If Windows wasn't so difficult for Joe Sixpack to lock down to the point where it can be used in a semi-secure fashion, it might be a different story. As it stands, you need a good antivirus, multiple spyware tools, browser hardening tools (if you continue to use IE) or a new browser, patches, service packs and more. And that's just the software end, not even best practice. In an average user's hands, it seems it's not a question of whether the system will be compromised, rather of who cracks it first. In this case, it seems to have been a script kiddie from Ohio.

    • Re:The Great Enabler. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by waferhead ( 557795 ) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [daehrefaw]> on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:12PM (#13532949)
      Is a troll who makes a valid point really a troll?

      If I had mod points today, I'd probably mod the parent up, as it is at least a good point for discussion to start.

      ISPs IMHO should actively monitor their customers, at least to the point of looking for zombie machines, and shutting them down automatically.

      It would be a public service.

      • If I had mod points today, I'd probably mod the parent up, as it is at least a good point for discussion to start.

        Metamoderation would correct that. It's an old, tired discussion attended only by neophytes with more fire than sense, proposing solutions that are unworkable and/or ineffective, or lead to worse problems than the one it solves.

        For instance, active ISP monitoring:

        • Increases ISP cost
        • Increases ISP liability
        • Zombie identification difficult as zombies evolve and authors intentionally obscure

    • Re:The Great Enabler. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 )
      If Windows wasn't so difficult for Joe Sixpack to lock down...

      To be fair, Microsoft has made huge headway in regards to security with XP SP2. It isn't perfect, but a slipstreamed install of SP2 is a world more secure than a copy of Windows Me. Now that it's an actual focus (after well deserved criticism), Microsoft really seems to have made it a priority.

      In any case, how many Slashdotters, who we know largely run Windows, are running Firefox with the IDN hole waiting to be exploited? Uh oh, I brought up a f

    • Re:The Great Enabler. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 )
      Let's say you drive me to the bank. I go in and decide to rob the place. You have no knowledge of the robbery. But, because you drove me there, you become an accomplice. We both go to jail for bank robbery.

      What we need to do is start filing lawsuits agianst every owner of every computer that is involved in botnet attacks.

  • Damn Crackers (Score:1, Funny)

    by PipOC ( 886408 )
    Those damn whiteys finally getting what they deserve.

  • the worst part (Score:3, Insightful)

    by akhomerun ( 893103 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:14PM (#13532962)
    Jay Echouafni, the 38-year-old satellite TV mogul who allegedly ordered and funded the cyberhits, went on the lam last year, and remains a fugitive from a federal indictment out of Los Angeles.

    the worst part is that this guy is still out there and hasn't been caught yet. hopefully it's only a matter of time before he's nabbed
    • Jay Echouafni, the 38-year-old satellite TV mogul who allegedly ordered and funded the cyberhits, went on the lam last year, and remains a fugitive from a federal indictment out of Los Angeles.

      Actually, its sorta funny, cause i knew this guy's son. He wasn't my best friend or anything, but I knew him. He went to my school. Funny, he always seemed to be trying to sell computer parts real cheap, but I never trusted him. He had a huge house, though.
  • Who would have thought a Ritz could use a computer, let alone dDoS businesses?

  • Pleading Guilty (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mishra100 ( 841814 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @03:34PM (#13533059)
    "Under federal sentencing guidelines, Ashley faces 70 to 87 months in prison for his role in the attacks" Unless he pleads non-guilty, which he should. If you plead guilty then they give you the maximum sentence. Non-guilty defendants have a change of arguing a couple of years off their sentence.

    • Re:Pleading Guilty (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DoddyUK ( 884783 )
      I don't know how it works in America, but under UK law if the defendant pleads guilty, then the Judge may be likely to cut the custodial sentence by up to a third, although this may also be done if this is the defendant's first offence. Added to the fact that you may serve half of your sentance under curfew at home, if the judicial system is anything like that in the US, then he'll be out in no time.
    • Non-guilty defendants have a change of arguing a couple of years off their sentence.

      Actually, the hope is that non guilty defendants go free... the preference is to punish the guilty. Now, I assume you meant defendants who plea non-guilty which is different. Also, in most cases defendants who plea guilty usually do so because there is an "offer on the table". IE... the prosecutor tells them you can go to jail for up to 8 years, but if you plea guilty I will exercise my right to suggest a sentence and I w

  • Title... (Score:2, Redundant)

    by vectorian798 ( 792613 )
    Did anyone else read that as "Ohio White Boy Confesses to Attacks for Hire"?

  • He used (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    wInd0z!!!!
    LolL you know windoz si gfor hackerszzz.

    PROUd luinix usar fo 200 yeaRS!!!!!1

  • Racism! (Score:2, Funny)

    by l00sr ( 266426 )
    I believe they prefer the term 'melatoninally-challenged computer enthusiast'.
  • as Chris Rock would say...

  • Cracker Jack (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @04:31PM (#13533342) Homepage Journal
    Roby and the rest of his cracker gang are criminals and deserve jailtime when they're proven guilty. But the cops caught these guys because all they had to use to get away was a measly $1000. The guy who hired them, Echouafni, is "on the lam", because he's got the money to hide. So the cops and prosecutors will pounce all over Roby, because he's an easy target. Will the keystone kops take any heat for not getting Echouafni, who will easily find other people who are "brilliant in one area, but absolutely lacking in common sense in others"?
  • If you need to bring down your competitor's network to keep earning money, shouldn't YOU be the one who needs to be brought down?

    It just reminds me of microsoft, squashing or buying the competition. I really think such actions should merit a trial on monopolic practices.

  • Crackers? (Score:3, Funny)

    by deft ( 253558 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @05:01PM (#13533459) Homepage
    Someone let Chris Rock know those damn crackers finally getting their due!!

  • Taking Offense . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Sunday September 11, 2005 @05:06PM (#13533478) Homepage
    "Ohio Cracker Confesses . . . "

    I can't believe nobody else has taken offense to this. "Cracker" is a highly-charged derogatory term. The politically correct term is "Saltine-American."
  • "Krashed"

    How appropriate.

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