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Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

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Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#281
post #89

For whatever it's worth, the Reddit story here says that the federal courts used "fraudulent warrants to jail my husband again". Maybe! The other side of that story, via PACER, is a detailed parole violation warrant (you can hear the marshal refer to it in the video); the violations in that warrant: 1. Admitting to using cannabis during supervised release 2. Failing to make scheduled restitution payments and to coope…

OK, I think I found the original thing Rockenhaus was convicted of. Back in 2014, Rockenhaus worked for a travel booking company. He was fired. He used stale VPN access to connect back to the company's infrastructure, and then detached a SCSI LUN from the server cluster, crashing it. The company, not knowing he was involved, retained him to help diagnose and fix the problem. During the investigation, the company figu…

>He plead this case out, so these are I guess uncontested claims

In a technical sense, this may be true as part of the plea agreement.

In reality, a lot of plea deals are made because of various factors, which unfortunately is often not that the person accused is guilty, rather the risk of going to trial or especially the cost of going to trial is too large.

I feel the need to point this out as too many folks look at “accepted plea deal” to mean that the person accepting is the guilty party when it can be more complicated than that in reality even if technically by judicial process they are by accepting that considered guilty.

That said, in this particular case, the hard evidence suggests that indeed, the person accused committed the crimes they pleaded out for

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "incrementing a GET request" mean?

He incremented a number in the query string of a get request https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmethods.asp

Okay but what information did he obtain by doing that? If I break into a mistakenly locked police station, surely I cannot use the excuse "I was simply turning a door knob"

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#283
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if you brute forced their crappy login with commonly-used credentials. You think it's OK for someone to rummage around in your garage just because they correctly guessed your keycode was 12345? Of course not.

Doesn't this posture also criminalize white-hat hackers, whose disclosures would protect you from the people who actually want to do damage?

(I don't know enough about the CFAA to know whether this is true so I'll assume it is.)

To continue the garage door analogy, you wouldn't walk up to any random garage door and try code 12345 to help protect the owner's stuff, would you?

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#285
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to consider that crime on the internet is as real as crime in real life. Funny to say it out loud. Criminals move a certain way and just because you are a nerdy tech dude doesn’t also mean you’re not a gangster. Edit: Reminds me a lot of the lives of people in this saga: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01L8C4WBG/ The poor wife, “can you stop being a criminal for like, one month, please?”.

> We have to consider that crime on the internet is as real as crime in real life. Funny to say it out loud. According to the court documents his crimes extended into “real life” as well, with intentional damage to his former employer to shut down their operations.

[deleted]

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#286
post #241
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example: Take a look at the URL of this page ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163 ). Add 1 to that ID value (45261164) in your address bar. Hit Enter, your browser will GET whatever exists at the next ID.

Ok, that makes sense but why is this so serious? Is this a grave crime in some context?

Because people think they are clever and are trying to separate the act from the intent.

Unlocked doors, open windows, any lack of security doesn't give you permission to enter. Just as "incrementing a GET request" doesn't mean anything outside of the intent.

The intent was to do damage.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#287
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction What are you getting at? If an appeals court says “wrong jurisdiction”, that’s an “rm -rf” on the whole entire case. There’s nothing left to argue about.

> > his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction > What are you getting at? > If an appeals court says “wrong jurisdiction”, that’s an “rm -rf” on the whole entire case. There’s nothing left to argue about. I think your parent comment meant something like "the case wasn't overturned on the basis of deficiencies in the legal theory of the crime."

"jurisdiction" literally means "the power to say what the law is"

If the court had no jurisdiction, it is not possible for them to rule on "deficiencies in the legal theory of the crime" in that case.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the post is really click bait and does not tell the whole story?

It’s a calculated appeal by a biased narrator (his wife) who knows how to exploit the anger and sympathies of a community that often doesn’t click links, read documents, or look for facts before passing judgment (Reddit)

This is why Reddit has become a cesspool. Looking at some of the Reddit comments: “fascist, thank trump” without doing any bit of research on the story. Reddit harbors anger and frankly dangerous thoughts from the habitually outraged and poorly informed on details.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#289
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a lawyer by chance? I seem to remember cases or interpretations of the CFAA in which even guessing the username password combo of "admin:admin" would violate the act, resulting in teenagers or children being caught up in cYbEr FrAuD

I mean... if someone walked into your house cause you only closed the screen door while running to the store quick you'd still call the cops cause there was someone breaking into your house lol.

Sure but I wouldn't expect that guy to get locked up on federal charges simply for being in the house without authorization.

Re: Man jailed for parole violations after refusing to decrypt his Tor node

#290
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter if you brute forced their crappy login with commonly-used credentials. You think it's OK for someone to rummage around in your garage just because they correctly guessed your keycode was 12345? Of course not.

Doesn't this posture also criminalize white-hat hackers, whose disclosures would protect you from the people who actually want to do damage?

> Doesn't this posture also criminalize white-hat hackers, whose disclosures would protect you from the people who actually want to do damage?

There is no law for "white-hat hackers". You don't get to break into a system because the color of your hat.

"White-hat hackers" have contracts, or very specific rules of engagement. Having run many a bug bounty, if someone was malicious, we would absolutely work to prosecute.

You can also find bugs in software freely, as long as you don't obtain unauthorized access to other people's systems.

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