Some lonely, 18-year-old fat kid rewrites an enormously successful worm to point users to his website. A tiny percentage of people infected by that virus -- LovSan, or MSBlaster -- get infected by his variant. Unlike all the OTHER variants, though, his happens to point (rather stupidly) to a site that he purchased through a hosting company (which fingers him immediately, when asked).
He is almost immediately arrested, and is now being accused of being responsible for a "significant percentage" of the infections out there.
Leaving aside the issue of whether 7,000 is really a significant percentage of 500,000, it's worth noting that LovSan, as a worm, would have infected those computers ANYWAY if his version hadn't gotten there first.
And the FBI is calling this a triumph?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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That is EXACTLY what I thought when I first heard about that story. Granted, the kid is a moron, but they're trying to throw way too much of the rap on him. I wonder if the FBI realizes this isn't going to help at all...
Posts: 183 | Registered: Aug 2002
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True the FBI shouldn't congratulate themselves for catching the culprit, but it's ALSO true that everyone who gets caught doing stuff like this should be penalized harshly.
It's quite possible that the SCADA systems that failed to prevent the cascading fault that caused the blackout were messed up by that worm. That means whatever stupid jerk released it is a mass murderer, since at least 3 people and probably more died as a result of the blackout. The things people like that do are serious crimes and they should be treated as such. They should not be treated as pranks.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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I did not see in the article where it identified Jeffrey Lee Parson as either "lonely", "fat", or a "kid". The only word close in the article is Parson's userid as "teekid".
Here is an example of someone planning and intentionally committing to a crime . Then and admitting to a crime that is widely recognized as a crime because it has an economic impact on both businesses and individuals.
Yet, it sounds like you are trying to "drum up" sympathy for Parsons by these labels.
None of these "sympathies" went for the "crime" committed by the theatre company who edited out the "f" word in Neil Simon's play.
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Why couldn't he just make a video of himself in a lightsaber fight like a normal lonely teenage fat kid?
Posts: 6213 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: It's quite possible that the SCADA systems that failed to prevent the cascading fault that caused the blackout were messed up by that worm. That means whatever stupid jerk released it is a mass murderer, since at least 3 people and probably more died as a result of the blackout. The things people like that do are serious crimes and they should be treated as such. They should not be treated as pranks.
I think that's a bit to hasty. Although the programmer and releaser of the worm is responsible, so are the companies who maintain these machines. System administrators must be on the ball about all security updates, backdoors, and exploits. If they aren't properly maintaining their servers, they're just as much to blame as the worm's maker.
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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It's even more possible that Dubya's minions started the SCADA->worm->blackout rumors to coverup that Cheney's Energy Commission friends at FirstEnergy (who played a large part in the California Energy Crisis/fraud) deliberately set off the blackout to hoodwink the public (once again) into supporting the Republican porkbarrel energy bill. And it is probable that Dubya's at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will once again fail to do their job.
I find it unlikely that the worm was related to the blackout, since the blackout occurred before the worm had reached anything resembling a critical mass online.
As to how I know the kid was fat and lonely: 1) His picture is prominently displayed in the article.
2) Until a few hours ago, his webpage was available.
It's true, by the way, that I did NOT think to describe the organizers of a community theater project as "fat" or "lonely." If this was an oversight -- particularly if the people involved were grossly obese or absolutely friendless -- I apologize. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Tom, that's not true. The worm was rebooting my system once a minute a couple of days before the blackout, and my brother was still fighting it at his corporation several days AFTER the blackout. It could very well have contributed.
But the idea that someone who damages something is no more responsible for the problem than those who didn't do enough to protect it is ludicrous. Is the person who didn't buy burglar bars as responsible for their loss as the burglar of their house is? That's a ridiculous idea. Criminal mischief that causes deaths should be prosecuted as second degree murder. There are no accidents when you are committing a felony.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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The source of the blackout is unlikely to be the worm, it seems to be an unfortunate coincidence of normal outages.
However, the worm both had reached high volume (I work in a major tech support call center (and it is the type that would receive calls specifically because of the blaster worm), and worm calls peaked right before the power outage) and would not need to reach high volume to affect the power system.
Of course, that is the blaster worm. Welchia is proving nastier for it's network effects, and it did peak after the power outage. However . . .
The power system as I understand it is not heavily dependent upon the presence of the internet. As such, it would still function even if the worm was obliterating all network traffic. It is, however, dependent on certain critical systems (none of which, I believe, are running windows). The worm could still effectively cause the outage if it affected monitoring computers, preventing a system failure from being averted. Even in this situation, however, it's not how many systems the worm is on, it's which systems.
As a side note, the worm did shut down a minor monitor at one power station (however, this had nothing to do with the blackout).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I don't see any picture of Parsons in the linked story, only the guys in suits. I also didn't see a link to Parson's web page. So I had/have nothing to lead me to believe that he is a "fat, lonely kid".
My point was NOT asking you to research and report the social life or weight of the Mormon theatre company (although if we combined their total weight I'm certain you could call the group obese). My point was twofold:
1 - using words such as "fat, lonely, and kid" are labels designed to invoke sympathy for Parsons. I doubt that you would ever have used the words "scrawny, lonely kids" to describe the Columbine shooters. Should they have survived I believe you would have expected them to be tried as adults. The 18 year old Parson probably also will be treated as an adult.
2- two examples of "crimes" have been in recent discussion at Hatrack. (1) The crime of the Mormon theatre company violating their agreement with Samuel French by omitting the "f" word from their production of a Neil Simon play. (2) The crime of creating a computer worm that randomly attacks computer systems disrupting sytems that affect/control businesses which affect people's livlihood and perhaps their very lives.
What disturbs me is that much outrage and concern was expressed at Hatrack forum over crime #1; whereas only one or two people have seen the seriousness of crime #2 and posted as such.
Posts: 874 | Registered: Oct 1999
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"I doubt that you would ever have used the words 'scrawny, lonely kids' to describe the Columbine shooters."
What's hysterically ironic about this is that I DID. In fact, following the Columbine shooting, I posted a thread -- one of my longest threads at the time, really -- in which I commented on how tragic the whole thing was, and how angry I was about the media coverage describing the kids as "shooters" in black trenchcoats who played a lot of RPGs and FPSes (especially since I was a goth/punk kid in high school, myself).
The thread's still around on the Big Mouth Lion board, I believe. It's really pretty good.
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Again, pics of the kid are easily available. If you want, you can head out to what used to be his webpage -- www.teekid.com -- which at this moment has been redirected to point to Yahoo accounts of his arrest. His picture is featured prominently.
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Moreover, I started this thread precisely because what this kid did, while stupid and illegal, was NOT particularly dangerous or harmful -- although the FBI is making him out to be some criminal mastermind.
He's not even particularly good at computers, for God's sake. He's a dumb script kiddie who changed two or three lines of code, and the virus he released didn't infect anyone who wouldn't've been infected by the original worm ANYWAY.
I'm not saying he shouldn't get punished, but I AM saying that it's disgraceful for the FBI to use him as a scapegoat for the real culprit.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Okay Tom, he is "fat". I still don't buy the descriptive terms "lonely" or a "kid". All three are still designed to evoke sympathy for Parsons.
I'm surprised that you sympathized with the Columbine shooters by having labeled them exactly like my example. Of course I can't find anything without a direct link (as should be obvious by now). I'll take your word for it that such a thread existed and said thus.
It sounds a bit like you are writing sympathetically about these people because they share characteristics that they share with you. For example, you identified yourself in the Kathy Kidd Letter thread as a "fat man" and now that you were a "goth" kid in reference to the Columbine thread.
Does identification with a person or persons who commit a crime make you take that crime less seriously? Or is it only if their crime directly or indirectly impacts you?
Posts: 874 | Registered: Oct 1999
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"All three are still designed to evoke sympathy for Parsons."
Well, duh. *rolls eyes*
That was kind of my POINT, KEGE: that he was being strung up as a patsy, despite the fact that his own role in the crime was minor, if not completely negligible. Calling him an "evil mastermind" is something that I'll leave to the prosecuting attorny -- who pretty much already has.
And if you COULDN'T sympathize with the Columbine kids -- even as you condemned them -- then, frankly, you had a childhood quite unlike mine.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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