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Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

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Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#121

Post by imgabe »

richbell wrote: post #118
imgabe wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually think the police send a SWAT team to every single call? 99% of calls in the US would be the exact normal response you said - police knock on the door and ask questions. The problem is the swatters know the exact type of call to make to elicit a SWAT response, usually involving someone being held hostage and in imminent danger of being killed. The police can't just assume people making that kind of cal…

> Do you actually think the police send a SWAT team to every single call? I don't think that's what they're implying at all, given the context is about swatting.

They are more or less stating that the problem is overzealous responses from police, rather than police receiving a fake call for which a SWAT team would be an appropriate response.

Do police in other countries simply not have the capacity to deal with people in imminent danger? Their response to getting a call claiming that there's a crazy person in the house about to murder the caller is to knock politely and ask questions? Seems more like the police in other countries suck then.

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#122

Post by ericmcer »

Someone1234 wrote: post #42
macintux wrote: post #4

I hope that at some point swatting becomes a felony akin to attempted murder.

"Swatting" isn't a significant problem in other parts of the world because the result is super boring: The police knock on the door, ask some questions, and then leave. It is only a problem in the US because the response itself is terrifying and often dangerous. Multiple people have died from "swatting" in the US[0]. "Swatting" should carry a jail term for sure. But police reform is a large component in solving the p…

In other parts of the world the police get a call saying there is an armed individual threatening to hurt hostages and they send a single unarmed officer to knock on the door?

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#123

Post by Bud »

acdha wrote: post #61
sowbug wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hearing "let's block or delay 911 calls for [a reason]." Not sure that'll get a lot of traction. It's an awful problem that will exist as long as people suck.

This is a problem created and continued by phone companies. It wasn’t a huge problem before VoIP because the phone company networks didn’t allow everyone to forge sender info (SS7, not CallerID). When VoIP came along they didn’t put strict authentication in because it would have cost more, and that really opened things up. Right now, you could have extra caution for 911 calls which originate from VoIP. Pass a law tha…

Sounds easy, but I think you'll find that in practice, it's not so easy to just toss around murder (or accessory to murder) charges because something annoys you. Even if it annoys you a lot. It's a slippery slope from that to making basically anything a "murder" charge. Not saying you can't pass some sort of law or create some sort of penalty, but murder-related charges aren't going to fly.

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#124

Post by vbitz »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #106
everfree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You take the compromised plaintext password, hash it using the same algorithm you typically do for your customers, then you check the hash for matches in your database of existing customer password hashes.

Shouldn't salting make that expensive?

Not if your only checking 1 possibility rather than a few million.

It could take on the order of a few seconds per password in the worst case. Normally a few Milliseconds.

So 1,000,000 breached passwords * 100ms per check is 100,000 CPU seconds or about 30 CPU hours to check all passwords. The is easily paraliseable so imagine more like 10-20 minutes in parallel.

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#125

Post by jasonhansel »

hprotagonist wrote: post #62

https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905 Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize. The only modification i'd recommend is replacing the gun with something simpler, like a sledgehammer. Can't be too careful.

Careful about that printer: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/11/hp-pr...

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#126

Post by nawgz »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #86
nawgz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few questions about the relevance of this. > 1.2 guns per citizen After 1 gun, do guns truly become more dangerous? For someone opening a door, I don't think handgun vs AR vs shotgun is a very meaningful distinction - you're going to die if you get shot in the face > loaded up to the gills Isn't it true that one of the top arguments used against gun control that criminals will have the weapons anyways? There…

A small group of Americans actually own guns, maybe 20%. So yes, the average gun owner has more like 5 guns. As for entering the property, if there’s five people and one gun, that’s a lot different to five people and thirty guns.

You mean 44% of Americans have more like 3 guns, by the official record, which vaguely addresses my weakest point I suppose. Not sure this does anything to justify the US approach to policing

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#127

Post by tshaddox »

ericmcer wrote: post #122
Someone1234 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Swatting" isn't a significant problem in other parts of the world because the result is super boring: The police knock on the door, ask some questions, and then leave. It is only a problem in the US because the response itself is terrifying and often dangerous. Multiple people have died from "swatting" in the US[0]. "Swatting" should carry a jail term for sure. But police reform is a large component in solving the p…

In other parts of the world the police get a call saying there is an armed individual threatening to hurt hostages and they send a single unarmed officer to knock on the door?

The comment didn’t say it was only a single officer or that they were unarmed.

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#128

Post by kneebonian »

themagician wrote: post #87
bestcoder69 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's because we have to protect ourselves from SWAT teams!

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, "The only way to stop a bad guy from swatting you is a good guy with his own personal SWAT team."

Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#129

Post by richbell »

imgabe wrote: post #121
richbell wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you actually think the police send a SWAT team to every single call? I don't think that's what they're implying at all, given the context is about swatting.

They are more or less stating that the problem is overzealous responses from police, rather than police receiving a fake call for which a SWAT team would be an appropriate response. Do police in other countries simply not have the capacity to deal with people in imminent danger? Their response to getting a call claiming that there's a crazy person in the house about to murder the caller is to knock politely and ask q…

> They are more or less stating that the problem is overzealous responses from police, rather than police receiving a fake call for which a SWAT team would be an appropriate response.

The problem is that swatting is enabled precisely because the police's response isn't appropriate. The fact that swatting is so prominent, let alone an issue in the first place, is a testament to that.

Police forces demonstrably: tend to be hyper-militarized, do not train or require de-escalation, do not face legal repercussions for unlawful actions, do not keep up-to-date with various trends and technology, etc. Going in guns-blazing isn't going to save anyone if you don't validate basic information like "is this the right house?" or "did this call purporting to be from someone in our city come from a random Google Voice or Skype number?" or "have we received fake calls from this address already?"

Re: Amazon Ring cameras used in nationwide ‘swatting’ spree, US Justice Dept. says

#130

Post by phendrenad2 »

cortesoft wrote: post #99
hprotagonist wrote: post #62

https://twitter.com/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905 Tech enthusiasts: My entire house is smart. Tech workers: The only piece of technology in my house is a printer and I keep a gun next to it so I can shoot it if it makes a noise I don't recognize. The only modification i'd recommend is replacing the gun with something simpler, like a sledgehammer. Can't be too careful.

I don't know, I have been a professional software developer for 15 years, and my whole house is smart. The trade offs are worth it to me.

Same here. This joke/meme is cute but it isn't really true, lots of tech people have smart devices.
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