Computer Gamers Jailed Over Virus
From "The Guardian" today, this story.
"Computer Gamers Jailed Over Virus".
For some time now the government have wanted to catch some of the "evil hackers" and punish them severely - as a warning to the others - and now they have.
The message the British government has sent to the "hacking community" is harsh - infringe the law and get sent to jail - but with sentences that will run only a few months, Andrew Harvey and Jordan Bradley might rest in their cells a little happier.
Because they could have done a lot worse.
Their co-conspirator Raymond Paul Steigerwalt was sentenced to a whopping 21 months in jail for his part in the design and release of the worm.
Of course, this was nothing to do with the embarrasment of the Department of Defense who had at least two computers "owned" by the worm.
After all it was to the DoD that Steigerwalt had to pay $12,000 in restitution - as well as serving his sentence.
At least they didn't call them "hackers", but instead described them as "computer gamers" and "computer buffs", although some might call them script kiddies given that their "worm" was mostly cobbled together out of other people's utilities.
No only that, but the original vulverability for the TK worm was first posted back in October 2000 by Rain Forest Puppy and a patch was issued.
Anyone with any sense should have updated their system there and then. I mean I know sysadmins are busy, but surely anyone who waited nearly three years before applying a security patch so important wouldn't be working for much longer.
So .. what of the DoD guys administering the two, or more, computers that were infected by the worm and that needed $12,000 worth of restitution ... are those sysadmins still working?
Well .. they probably got promoted for their part in the "War Against Evil Hackers" ..
They might well be giving lectures on computer security right now, writing articles, planning books and mini-series.
God knows .. it's happened before ...
But .. all in all a good day for the powers that be.
The culprits have been caught and given a good slapping.
Now we can all sleep safely in our beds knowing that our servers are safe from all those nasty hackers.
Until the next time ...