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Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

krebsonsecurity.com

101–110 of 114 posts

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#101
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If communism is the cause, then why would this same mentality be such a massive problem in America?

> If communism is the cause, then why would this same mentality be such a massive problem in America? By communism I don't think people talk about the philosophical basis of an idealized society, but the totalitarian regime that oppresses a society and keeps the working class constantly in survival mode under the risk of losing it all.

Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of. All it does is let people and politicians weasel around them using authoritarian policies because they aren't communist.

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#102
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's racism when it's (a) racially motivated, (b) not a correct fact. In this case the person is itself a member of the group, and the statement they made isn't even a generalization to the group at large - just an observation about certain common tendencies seen in it.

"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is.

Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!")

We're on an international forum. Making "observations" like what the original commenter did can only decrease employment opportunities for an already geographically disadvantaged talent. Why do that?

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If communism is the cause, then why would this same mentality be such a massive problem in America? By communism I don't think people talk about the philosophical basis of an idealized society, but the totalitarian regime that oppresses a society and keeps the working class constantly in survival mode under the risk of losing it all.

Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of. All it does is let people and politicians weasel around them using authoritarian policies because they aren't communist.

> Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of.

You're nitpicking on semantics. Communism is the poster child of totalitarian regimes that oppress their citizens to extreme levels. When you talk about communism, people think of gulags, forced labor, murdering political opponents,and even force-admittong rivals to psychiatric hospitals.

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> email service provider (pissmail) I'm sorry this happened to you.

it was a good alternative to cock.li for some time. alas

German authorities arrest people for running email services and then they are confused about why doesn't Germany have a Silicon-Valley-style tech industry.

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of. All it does is let people and politicians weasel around them using authoritarian policies because they aren't communist.

> Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of. You're nitpicking on semantics. Communism is the poster child of totalitarian regimes that oppress their citizens to extreme levels. When you talk about communism, people think of gulags, forced labor, murdering political opponents,and even force…

Are you sure that's the route you want to go down? Going by the statistics, democracy has killed more people - in the USA, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc - than commuinsm has. If we go down that route. Which I don't think we should.

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#106
post #58
post #10

I’ve been on the defender side of security my whole career. I know in some markets crime pays more than legitimate work, but it never ceases to amaze me how much thought, effort, planning, and engineering goes into providing infrastructure IT services for cybercriminals. The people involved definitely have the skills to be profitable at legitimate work; it just puzzles me that they choose to support criminals.

I wouldn't advise thinking of it as "providing infrastructure IT services to cybercriminals", as if these people are primarily IT people, running primarily infrastructure, who just happen to favor this audience. I would rather advise thinking of these efforts as various cybercriminal groups going through the schlep of setting up their own backend IT infrastructure for their own use (because they couldn't find anyone…

Both forms exist. There are real hosting companies that just turn a blinder eye to crime than others, and those ones should maybe be forced to divest from certain customers but shouldn't be completely raided. And there are cybercrime groups who form fake hosting companies. These ones were from the latter group. I tried to rent servers from them once, but they don't actually take customers because they aren't a real hosting company.

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#107

When I was learning some homelab stuff, and was setting up pfSense, I was able to see the geos of all the scans/attacks on my home internet IP. I was surprised to see that Netherlands was up there with Russia and China in volume. They all got geo blocked. What is it about the Netherlands that makes them so attractive to these people?

Amsterdam is one of the biggest (perhaps the biggest) global internet hubs - European equivalent of North Virginia - and also not a totalitarian country like Germany (otherwise there'd be more in Frankfurt).

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#108
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's racism when it's (a) racially motivated, (b) not a correct fact. In this case the person is itself a member of the group, and the statement they made isn't even a generalization to the group at large - just an observation about certain common tendencies seen in it.

"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is. Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!") We're on an inte…

There can be other valid perspectives than your own. Not everyone is going to agree with your specific definition of what's racism or bigotry or whatever, and not only is that OK, but it's expected, and we shouldn't try to change other people's minds unless they asked for our opinion. There was especially no need to inject this discussion into the middle of an unrelated thread.

Trying to tell people their way of thinking is incorrect just because they disagree with you, is not only childish, but such dogmatic thinking is going to alienate you from a large part of society if you cannot learn to get along with people without constantly trying to correct everyone who you think is "wrong."

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#109
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's racism when it's (a) racially motivated, (b) not a correct fact. In this case the person is itself a member of the group, and the statement they made isn't even a generalization to the group at large - just an observation about certain common tendencies seen in it.

"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is. Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!") We're on an inte…

>"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is

I know. Are you maybe confused? I qualified it that it's not generalization "to the group at large". Not that it's not any kind of generalization at all.

>Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!")

Oh, come on. ranger_danger put it perfectly "There can be other valid perspectives than your own. Not everyone is going to agree with your specific definition of what's racism or bigotry or whatever, and not only is that OK, but it's expected, and we shouldn't try to change other people's minds unless they asked for our opinion.".

Re: Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think s/he meant that if you earn 30k it's easy to be tempted by crime because the numbers are big. What night not tempt a Google engineer might tempt a telecoms infrastructure key from Anytinytown, Moldova/Romania/... That said I don't think there are many good software engineers that earn less than that in Western Europe. Net maybe, but certainly not gross, and if it's net that covers anything from pension securi…

> I think s/he meant that if you earn 30k it's easy to be tempted by crime because the numbers are big. I'm pointing out that this reasoning doesn't pass the smell test. A 30k salary in those countries actually represents between 5-to-10x your average salary. You are already considered rich and we'll off and leading a comfortable life. It's like claiming your average FANG engineer earning half a million a year would…

The median annual salary in places like Moldova and Romania is $3-6k USD? Edit: apparently $5k and $10k, respectively.
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