Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 98 posts

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#41

Post by amiga386 »

d-lowl wrote: post #5

>Jubair and Flowers who both have autism , gained access to the data by tricking a phone help desk worker. What does this have to do with anything in this article.

It's a magical superpower.

It kept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon from being extradicted to the USA. Apparently the courts don't accept "your opsec is shit and I got in with default passwords", but they do accept "I have autism"

Let's try it in action:

- "Mr Wallace, we have several credible reports that you harrassed TV production staff by going around with no underpants on, and finding excuses to take your trousers down. What do you say to that?"

- "Did I mention I have autism?"

( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx24lxl85wyo )

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#42

Post by watwut »

d-us-vb wrote: post #32
masfuerte wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schrodinger's hackers. They are simultaneously autistic and skilled at social engineering.

Autistic people are unusually good at studying patterns objectively. While each individual person is... an individual, studying a sample from a population yields patterns, and thus the justification for the "social sciences". While autistic people may struggle with in person communication and upholding norms of human interaction, they do not generally struggle with understanding game theory, motives, and other aspect…

That is not autism, that is sociopathy. Autism does not turn on and off when you can gain something from it.

In your telling, autism is an excuse when they abuse others, because they cant help themselves. But, when it is for their benefit, the same person actually displays higher social skills.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#43

Post by victorbjorklund »

smith-kyle wrote: post #35

Sad that they're being sentenced based on the impact of the response by TfL's IT team

I mean you can’t put a building on fire and say you should not be sentenced for the whole building burning down because the impact of the response by the fire department (if they had been faster/better the fire would not caused so bad damages)

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#44

Post by Aeolun »

Kichererbsen wrote: post #10
jonathanlydall wrote: post #2

Remembering back, I certainly lacked a lot of critical reasoning which could have led me to do possibly equally stupid stuff like this had I the skill in my early teens. As I remember it, life felt more like a "game" in that you do whatever it lets you, without much consideration of whether people will be (potentially very) upset with what you've done. In person activities stood high risk of getting caught, but onlin…

I have found that keeping dialog open from early age on helps a lot. If kids get into trouble when they do something they're not allowed to, they're going to learn to stop telling you stuff real quick. And hide their activities. If they learn that you'll stay calm and continually prove that you trust them to handle their stuff, they might end up telling you things you wouldn't expect. But then... you don't get to blo…

You can absolutely blow your lid, you just have to apologize afterwards and admit that you were wrong. This is very hard for some adults to do to a 5 year old.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#45

Post by filoleg »

inigyou wrote: post #28
williamdclt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean, can you explain?

Let's say I invented a genius way to use cryptography to send anonymous payments, I'd go to jail for doing that (Tornado Cash). Let's say I made a secure messenger, I'd go to jail for that (Telegram, EncroChat, SkyECC) or narrowly avoid jail (Session) or be forced to add a backdoor (Anom). Let's say I made an operating system that didn't spy on you, I'd be threatened with jail for that (GrapheneOS). And of course the…

> Let's say I invented a genius way to use cryptography to send anonymous payments, I'd go to jail for doing that (Tornado Cash)

This is just a disingenuous take.

Tornado Cash founder didn't get criminally convicted for "a genius way go use cryptography to send anonymous payments." He got convicted for operating a money-laundering service.

The fact that his service utilized "a genius way to use cryptography to send anonymous payments" is entirely orthogonal to the actual crime he got in trouble for. He would have gotten convicted just the same regardless of the cryptography usage, because the actual crime here was operating a money-laundering service.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#46

Post by illliillll »

Aurornis wrote: post #11
jonathanlydall wrote: post #2

Remembering back, I certainly lacked a lot of critical reasoning which could have led me to do possibly equally stupid stuff like this had I the skill in my early teens. As I remember it, life felt more like a "game" in that you do whatever it lets you, without much consideration of whether people will be (potentially very) upset with what you've done. In person activities stood high risk of getting caught, but onlin…

From the arrival: > Jubair has 22 previous convictions related to hacking, fraud and harassment. There’s more to what was going on here and none of us is really qualified to diagnose the psychology behind it from the details. I hope they can find some peace later in life because they are obviously not lacking ambition or ability

It’s extremely easy for a kid to commit tens, or even hundreds of crimes in a matter of hours on the internet.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#48

Post by Aeolun »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #16

When I see this it makes me depressed. > gained access to the data by tricking a phone help desk worker. The whole edifice was built on a helpful, possibly overworked and possibly harassed help desk worker? The end result is that two kids end up in jail. It could have been so different, and better. What they did was wrong for sure, and has real-world consequences for those whose information was leaked. But, when I lo…

Like, at some point we have to start considering teens natural disasters, and put it on the company to prevent something as banal as a password reset that can be requested on a phone from compromising their _entire_ fucking system. These kids aren’t most at fault here.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#49

Post by exe34 »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #2

Remembering back, I certainly lacked a lot of critical reasoning which could have led me to do possibly equally stupid stuff like this had I the skill in my early teens. As I remember it, life felt more like a "game" in that you do whatever it lets you, without much consideration of whether people will be (potentially very) upset with what you've done. In person activities stood high risk of getting caught, but onlin…

I wish they would have turned to Russia or Belarus to do this, it would have been a lot safer for them.

Re: Teen hackers who live streamed cyber-attack on TfL jailed

#50

Post by exe34 »

Aurornis wrote: post #11
jonathanlydall wrote: post #2

Remembering back, I certainly lacked a lot of critical reasoning which could have led me to do possibly equally stupid stuff like this had I the skill in my early teens. As I remember it, life felt more like a "game" in that you do whatever it lets you, without much consideration of whether people will be (potentially very) upset with what you've done. In person activities stood high risk of getting caught, but onlin…

From the arrival: > Jubair has 22 previous convictions related to hacking, fraud and harassment. There’s more to what was going on here and none of us is really qualified to diagnose the psychology behind it from the details. I hope they can find some peace later in life because they are obviously not lacking ambition or ability

Or hire them into gchq on a short leash.
Post reply on HN