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“I will slaughter you”

daniel.haxx.se

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Re: “I will slaughter you”

#171

Post by ProAm »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #17

Some context: Daniel is the primary maintainer of curl (the ubiquitous utility and library for HTTP requests) [1] His name often shows up in the licensing disclosures/attributions of applications that include curl. The general opaqueness of modern software leads people to latch onto him and his email for all manner of things, and for non developers to attribute to him all sorts of bad motives ("You hacked me!"). This…

> This is especially unfortunate as Daniel has been such a genuinely positive and helpful face to a popular open source project.

I can't agree more, Daniel is one of the friendliest approachable maintainers out there. Several times he takes time to answer menial questions and is friendly about it. I recommend the curl mailing list if you work with it in any manner as for you will learn a lot from other people.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#173

Post by znpy »

If this hadn't been such a dangerous threat, I'd have replied like this: "oh i'm sorry, I'll refund you of all the money you paid in licenses for curl specifically".

But, quite frankly, I'd go to the police immediately.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#174

Post by Zuider »

shin_lao wrote: post #167
Nextgrid wrote: post #15

The general demeanor of that person, some of the lingo used like "rooting" or "federal server hijacking", the fact that in the screenshot he's using some text editor with ads in it to browse the offending code combined with the fact that he doesn't know what Curl is (if he did he wouldn't have sent this e-mail) screams "script kiddie" to me. I'm not sure whether this person is actually responsible for a multi-million…

We are dealing with a person with mental illness, because nothing is coherent. It's all made up. That's why you don't answer that kind of mail, the goal is to trigger a reaction from you.

This is the sort of magical thinking that can be a symptom of paranoia, the unfortunate combination of extreme anxiety and a disengagement from realistic thinking. The person clearly does not know what Curl does and simply lashed out like a wounded animal at the first thing that caught his attention.

I would take this threat very seriously.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#175

Post by adrian_mrd »

This surfaces an important point that our communities (online, offline, families, etc) have no easy solution for: if indeed some one does have a mental illness* how do you factor that in and make allowances for it? How do you quantify that the actions come from someone who is mentally unwell? And without diagnostic tooling, how do you know they are mentally ill?

* In this case there is no way to comfirm if the sender/s are mentally ill because all you have is inference to play against the words written and the images sent to Daniel.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#176

Post by jessaustin »

stonepresto wrote: post #136
carlsborg wrote: post #65

Unfortunately this is what a mental health problem looks like. Our society is ill trained to identify and deal with this category of heart breaking disease.

This mental health problem is called defense contracting.

Yes it would be nice if free software could get rid of all the "multimillion dollar defense projects".

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#177

Post by hobofan »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #138
growt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is on GPT-2 (GPT-3 would probably generate better text). This whole reply just isn't coherent (first it's a defence contract, then it's learning software for kids?). So either AI generated or someone with some mental illness.

Yeah, I have a seriously hard time believing someone responsible for a multibillion dollar defence project writes that shit.

I have a hard time believing that they only spent $15k on a prototype for a multimillion dollar defense project.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#178

Post by yalogin »

This person clearly doesn’t understand what software is and how it works. If he really lost a multi million dollar defense project to a hack it’s not a bad thing at all.

Of course this has nothing to do with curl or any other software, one can only get hacked because of their ineptitude.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#179

Post by Zuider »

type0 wrote: post #128
brunes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure they are not even a script kiddie... they are just a fairly immature troll. Not sure what caused the original email, but the reply is just a copy/paste of various unrelated things and security incidents that the person Googled without even understanding enough about them to form a comprehensible narrative. Which tells me they are simply trying to get a rise out of someone. The way the grammar is cons…

If it's not a troll I don't know what is, if it's for real that person has to have some serious mental health problems.

Trolls prefer to use public fora in order to upset the greatest number of people possible. They don't target individuals through private correspondence.

Re: “I will slaughter you”

#180

Post by Jtsummers »

ChrisRR wrote: post #146
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #53

I think we all owe Daniel a certain amount of thanks for somehow, incidentally, maybe, preventing nutjob exhibit A from getting a multi million dollar defense project. And anytime such unrealistic threats are made, this always makes it seem like maybe it's not so bad: https://youtu.be/Nw1643T0RD0 (One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces, by Pink Floyd)

I think any defense agency would've looked at his code if it were so easily hacked and not awarded him anything

Sadly, no. V&V in defense projects are often short on evaluating security in any meaningful way. It’s mostly theater, show you ran a couple of security assessments or have a code review process that includes checking for buffer overflows and you’re fine.
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