RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Computer Crime

["Spurling, Shannon" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

This is my personal opinion, but... this would be more like a person on
an airline encouraging every one to stop their feet to bring the plane
down. It's rude and infantile, but hardly distructive. If it were, they
need to get a funding increase to replace the 386 with windows 3.11 they
are using for a web server. 

I agree, it needs to be handled internally. The kid needs an attitude
adjustment, not a criminal record.

-S

 
-----Original Message-----
From: EMAIL:PROTECTED
[mailto:EMAIL:PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Miller
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 10:02 AM
To: MLUG Off-Topic Discussion
Subject: Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Computer Crime

On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Rick Buford wrote:

> Jerry Gamblin wrote:
>> 
>> Maybe you don't know how un-serious this is. You cant really DOS a 
>> website by hitting F5.  I went to the website 
>> (http://lake.stark.k12.oh.us/) he DOS'd with the magic F5 key and it
is 
>> 19 kilobits. Once the images are cashed on your local drive it is 3 
>> kilobits.  So, It would take 341 people refreshing at the exact same 
>> time to cause a 1 meg spike in the bandwidth to that server for one 
>> second. To keep that up over a minute you would need 20460 people 
>> hitting the F5 key at the right time.
>> 
>> It was a joke the kid was charged with a felony, this should have
been 
>> handled in the school.  If he gets put in front of a judge with no 
>> computer knowledge and is found guilty the kid will have the rest of 
>> his life ruined over nothing.
>
> I agree with Jerry here. If the kid had setup a small botnet to run 
> httpperf against the site, that would be different. The article is 
> written by someone who is apparently quite computer ignorant because
the 
> impression that I get is that the F5 key is some 1337 hacker tool vs
the 
> built-in refresh button.


But what is the legal principle here?  If the kid is trying to attack
his 
school's computer, and he has a way of doing it, and the school claims 
that it was partly successful (they may be wrong), are we supposed to
let 
him off the hook because of his weak technical skills?

I suppose if we apprehended terrorists working on a nuclear bomb, and a 
technical expert reviewed their work and concluded that their plans were

rather poor and could never have resulted in a working H bomb, we should

let them go and apologize for inconveniencing them.

Mike

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