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Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

bbc.com

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Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#11

Post by tptacek »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable concern to have, but it's worth being aware that it's the exact same concern people had about Hans Reiser. Intelligence and judgement are orthogonal, and sometimes even in slight opposition. If you want to consider a different perspective: I'm an example of someone who does not have a hard time understand how someone who has enjoyed the rush of getting over on the entire media industry from behind…

The local police force here has a test to see if you 'have what it takes' to be a part of their cyber security squad or whatever they call it. On a lark I took part in it (the test was pretty simple, at least, that's what I thought). After taking the test (and knowing full well I had no intention to follow through on applying for a job with them, I just can't look at puzzles without getting this itch to solve them) I…

Easy: breaking into computers is very, very fun, and when something feels like a game, it's easy to treat it that way.

If you have a hard time believing anyone would do something like this, look at the 1990s: we got a book practically every year about one hacking group or another breaking into phone switches, credit reporting agencies, government and military networks, and financial institutions. If you can do it, and you're unlikely to get caught --- and you are very unlikely to ever get caught --- why not? Plenty of smart people did stuff like this. Plenty of them.

The most interesting stories from that era did not get written up. Kevin Mitnick didn't write the TCP sequencer. Kevin Mitnick couldn't sequence an ordered array of integers if it was #defined for him in advance.

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#12

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local police force here has a test to see if you 'have what it takes' to be a part of their cyber security squad or whatever they call it. On a lark I took part in it (the test was pretty simple, at least, that's what I thought). After taking the test (and knowing full well I had no intention to follow through on applying for a job with them, I just can't look at puzzles without getting this itch to solve them) I…

Easy: breaking into computers is very, very fun, and when something feels like a game, it's easy to treat it that way. If you have a hard time believing anyone would do something like this, look at the 1990s: we got a book practically every year about one hacking group or another breaking into phone switches, credit reporting agencies, government and military networks, and financial institutions. If you can do it, an…

[deleted]

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#13

Post by jimrandomh »

tptacek wrote: post #3
jimrandomh wrote: post #2

> Defence lawyers said although the hack attacks were carried out using a computer owned by Mr Warg, he was not the person that used it to steal the files. Instead, they said, an unnamed hacker took over this machine and used it to carry out the attacks. Given the circumstances, this claim seems obviously true. People who break into computers usually use broken-into computers as proxies.

Are you familiar with the evidence the court considered? Is it instead the case that you'd have a hard time convicting anyone of hacking-related crimes under any circumstances because of the possibility that someone else might have been pulling the strings? Often when cases like this are reported, the evidentiary details don't make it into the story. It's easy to understand why someone would have a problem with a con…

I've taken a look at the evidence, but the primary sources are in a foreign language so there's certainly a possibility I've missed something major.

There are kinds of evidence that I would find convincing. Testimony from police that he had certain things open on the screen at the moment of arrest (as in the Silk Road case). Or hidden-camera video of him at a terminal, doing something bad. Or an audio recording of a voice call in which he tries to do social engineering.

I haven't found anything like that. If someone posts a link, I'll certainly change my mind. But for know, all the evidence I know of is of a sort that one person could've forged.

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#14

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tptacek wrote: post #7
daeken wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could not agree more. There's always that voice in the back of your head wondering why you got a funky error message when your input contained an apostrophe; it doesn't take a lot to tip over the edge into something risky, even if you're conscious of the attention on you.

Yep. You train a lot of app pentesters and you get used to warning them: do not try this at home . You know you can just edit a URL in your browser by just a couple characters and poof be an admin. It should would be interesting to find out what it's like to be an admin on this site... oh, wait, if I do that I might end up talking to a prosecutor. That's obviously not a normative description. I don't think it's good…

> I don't think it's good that the world works like that, although I probably blame different people than most of HN.

Who do you blame, out of curiosity?

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#16

Post by tptacek »

jMyles wrote: post #15

Although the details of this story are interesting and compelling, my initial read of this story left me thinking, "Six years is lengthy, eh? I don't think that's considered 'lengthy' in the USA." Our prison system terrifies me.

What's the longest anyone's actually served in custody for breaking into computers in the US, and what's the median sentence actually served? I don't have the data at my fingertips but if I had to bet, I'd bet that it's much less than 6 years.

Google: [popehat whale sushi]. One reason you're terrified is that our system (idiotically) goes out of its way to deceptively terrify people. It is in practice not as bad as it (idiotically) tries to make itself seem.

Six years is a long time for what this offense appears to be, though.

('at-fates-hands has more or less refuted this comment, though the whale sushi post is still very much worth reading.)

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#17

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #7
daeken wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could not agree more. There's always that voice in the back of your head wondering why you got a funky error message when your input contained an apostrophe; it doesn't take a lot to tip over the edge into something risky, even if you're conscious of the attention on you.

Yep. You train a lot of app pentesters and you get used to warning them: do not try this at home . You know you can just edit a URL in your browser by just a couple characters and poof be an admin. It should would be interesting to find out what it's like to be an admin on this site... oh, wait, if I do that I might end up talking to a prosecutor. That's obviously not a normative description. I don't think it's good…

[deleted]

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#18

Post by zz1 »

tptacek wrote: post #3
jimrandomh wrote: post #2

> Defence lawyers said although the hack attacks were carried out using a computer owned by Mr Warg, he was not the person that used it to steal the files. Instead, they said, an unnamed hacker took over this machine and used it to carry out the attacks. Given the circumstances, this claim seems obviously true. People who break into computers usually use broken-into computers as proxies.

Are you familiar with the evidence the court considered? Is it instead the case that you'd have a hard time convicting anyone of hacking-related crimes under any circumstances because of the possibility that someone else might have been pulling the strings? Often when cases like this are reported, the evidentiary details don't make it into the story. It's easy to understand why someone would have a problem with a con…

Is it enough to be skeptical about the trial to know that prosecutors installed software on the piece of evidence without informing anyone?

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#19

Post by tptacek »

zz1 wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with the evidence the court considered? Is it instead the case that you'd have a hard time convicting anyone of hacking-related crimes under any circumstances because of the possibility that someone else might have been pulling the strings? Often when cases like this are reported, the evidentiary details don't make it into the story. It's easy to understand why someone would have a problem with a con…

Is it enough to be skeptical about the trial to know that prosecutors installed software on the piece of evidence without informing anyone?

You don't need an excuse to be skeptical. Skepticism is healthy.

Re: Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Warg faces lengthy jail term

#20

Post by mixmax »

The courtcase has been followed closely by the Danish media, especially the tech-savvy version2.dk that has had a reporter in the courtroom every day of the trial. It has caused quite a stir as all sorts of problems with CSC, the prosecutor and police investigation came to light during the hearings. Some highlights:

- CSC, that handles a large part of Danish infrastructure including social security numbers, police backend, etc. has dismal security. They don't even update their software as security patches become available. Warg had access to their mainframe for 9 months without them having a clue about it. The only reason they found out was because the Swedish police called them and told them.

- username/password pairs for CSC's server were readily available on one of their subsites(!)

- Warg turned off the logs on the CSC mainframe, and they didn't notice. It appears that logs were turned off for months. As a result CSC doesn't know whether data has been altered. We're talking about all police systems, social security systems, and more.

- The police have not had their own investigative team at CSC, and haven't looked at the technical evidence. This has been done by CSC, which is an obvious problem.

- The Danish police was contacted by Swedish police three times during 2012 because the evidence from a Swedish case turned up files from CSC, and the Danish police didn't respond as they apparently didn't find the information important. During the courtcase the Danish police's chief IT investigator was caught lying about this.

- The prosecutor and judge were clueless, bordering on the hilarious, about technical issues. For instance the prosecutor refused to acknowledge that other user accounts except Wargs existed on the computer (there were 5 accounts), tried to paint putty as a hacking tool that only criminals would use, tried to establish Jacob Applebaum and Warg as friends because Applebaum retweeted one of Wargs tweets (only friends do that!), etc. etc.

These are just the highlights...

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