6 ms·

Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.

by mox1 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 10y ago
Probably should read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-cyber-attack-that-hurt-no-one_us_5825bc49e4b0852d9ec2146b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-... A fundraising campaign was inconvenienced. Probably not as bad as torturing a little girl for months, leaving her unable to walk.
- aaron695 10y ago
  Not true. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker-charged-with-opjustina-ddos-attacks-on-hospitals/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker... Huffington post is the internet at it's worst. Pretends to be factual but isn't even close. "Imprisoned human rights activist, journalist, and author Martin Gottesfeld " I see no external evidence of this other than people can now just call themselves these and it's true? There's a story here but the mess that's HP destroys that.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Did you see something at that link that contradicted anything at my link? Everyone seems to agree that BCH got DDoSed. Sophos adds a juvenile "hacks're bad, mm-kay?" gloss to it, apparently because all their readers are in elementary school, but that's all they have to offer. They don't mention any reasons why this hack was as bad as any other hack. If one recognizes, as all thinking people do, that some hacks as justified even though some other hacks are not, Sophos has no retort. This is a basic rhetorical failure; Sophos ought to be embarrassed. One more thing: this was just a DDoS, yet, "The indictment states that BCH had to shut down its access to the internet and email servers to protect patient medical records." Come again? How on earth would a simple DDoS have that effect? Does the DB "fail open"? This is pure bullshit, yet DoJ and Sophos are happy to parrot it, because this is the sort of bullshit that pays their bills. Pathetic. [EDIT:] He writes and he's in prison, so he mostly fits that description; do you have a particular reason to deny that he's concerned about "human rights"?
    - danso 10y ago
      I wish I was as optimistic about the modern workplace as you are, in which every single employee has the training and capacity to calmly and precisely diagnose why their computer programs aren't working. But in my experience, when the Internet goes down, the average non-IT person sees it as "the computer is broken". And instead of doing something rational -- like running `ping` -- they'll do things like restart the program, or even the computer, until an IT professional tells them that the fault is with their Internet connection. Not too long ago I was at a very modern Palo Alto clinic getting some routine x-rays. My doctor warned me that things might be a bit slow because their office had just made the transition from XP to Windows 7 (because of XP's end-of-life, not because Windows 7 was new), and the clinic was having problems all week. I ended up waiting an extra half hour because they couldn't figure out how to get digital x-ray images taken from just a few rooms over onto my doctor's computer. And it wasn't some high school summer intern who was stumped, but the doctor, the radiologist, and a couple of nurses. Sure, I'll admit, as an engineer, I can't help but think that this was an unnecessary shitfest. But, as an engineer, I also know that the "common sense" git-er-done solution -- such as just putting the files on a USB stick and moving them over -- might not apply in this situation. Sometimes, software is just hamstrung and shitty. Luckily, this was a routine checkup at a small, very-well equipped clinic in Silicon Valley, and not an entire fucking hospital in Boston, that, besides tending to children, also has to operate an emergency room and trauma center, in which a 10-minute tangle in IT can easily mean the difference between life and death. I don't have a strong opinion on whether the perceived cruelty justifies criminal action by the OP. But I strongly disagree with his smug assertion ("I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. ") that a hospital that he's never worked at can safely pivot when their entire Internet shuts down. If no one was seriously afflicted by the outage -- and how the fuck would we even know that when modern healthcare can't even consistently diagnose causes of death on an average day? -- then that would have been pure luck, and not because the OP performed his attack with deliberate consideration of its possible effects.
      - jessaustin 10y ago
        I'm not sure you've modeled my thought process all that well; it's certainly a novel experience to be labeled "optimistic". If a patient had actually died because her physician couldn't access WebMD for an hour during the fundraiser, that fact wouldn't have been omitted from the indictment. Actually it would have been a typical-bullshit element of a typical-bullshit homicide charge. Internet interruptions occur regularly, and they very rarely have fatal consequences even in hospitals. If they did, hospitals would have more redundancy. Lots of people seem eager to criticize Gottesfeld for not somehow foreseeing this unlikely thing that didn't actually happen except in their own imagination. That's revealing. We expect private individuals to act with perfection, so that no unintended consequence, however unlikely, could ever be imagined. Yet giant wealthy firms with lots of lawyers can run roughshod over innocent children, being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, and they must simply be endured. How could the hospital know this handicapped girl wasn't simply imagining her symptoms? Actually lots of people at the hospital knew what was happening; nurses were quitting over it. Actually providing appropriate care for sick people is basically the reason that hospitals exist. Yet at every turn we give the giant abusive bureaucracy the benefit of the doubt. In this case as in every case, DoJ stood ever ready to serve the interests of the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected. With gag orders, even complaining about abuse was grounds for more abuse! Policing a big urban hospital is not a good DoJ career move. Crushing little people who speak truth to power, even if only for an hour during a fundraiser: that's what really gets a federal prosecutor's juices flowing. We've seen enough from DoJ to expect this behavior, but don't imagine for a second it's justified by anything but their own craven self-interest. [EDIT:] Rather pointless googling I'm afraid. It's not as though the interests of the wealthy and powerful are never found in opposition. By all means, though, keep trying to change the subject from your silly spurious movie-plot medical-procedures-dependent-on-constant-Facebook-access theory. I'm not sure that something as braindead as "CVS is just like this tortured handicapped girl" is any better though...
- zzalpha 10y ago
  Ah, so I see we're all for vigilantism now. Good to know! Now where did I put my pitchfork...
- danso 10y ago
  Horrific, inexplicable tragedies happen in hospitals and emergency rooms because in the normal chaos of medical emergencies and communication snafus, surgeons don't properly wash their hands or mark which limb is meant to be amputated [0]. But your experience with such institutions is that while they may fuck up the routine small things and kill patients, they are yet able to pivot like well-oiled military units when their information technology infrastructure is unexpectedly cut? [0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
  - strainer 10y ago
    If we can appreciate inexplicable medical tragedies - can't we appreciate a mans emotional response? If he was wrong was he yet not caught in a tragedy? >their information technology infrastructure is unexpectedly cut You are attributing offence of a kind which is far removed from his case - he never attacked the kind of critical systems which you indicate with the Newyorker article. He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the protest. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-chi... " I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation. "
    - danso 10y ago
      > He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the protest. Uh, OK... You'll have to pardon my skepticism that you actually read the New Yorker article when it appears you didn't even read the OP whom you defend. Here's one sentence you appear to have skipped over: > Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet. Edit: clarification. The thing that I quote directly above is not in the OP, but in the link u/strainer provided as rebuttal, i.e. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-chi...

Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.

by mox1 10y ago

Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jessaustin 10y ago

Probably should read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-cyber-attack-that-hurt-no-one_us_5825bc49e4b0852d9ec2146b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-... A fundraising campaign was inconvenienced. Probably not as bad as torturing a little girl for months, leaving her unable to walk.

aaron695 10y ago
Not true. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker-charged-with-opjustina-ddos-attacks-on-hospitals/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker... Huffington post is the internet at it's worst. Pretends to be factual but isn't even close. "Imprisoned human rights activist, journalist, and author Martin Gottesfeld " I see no external evidence of this other than people can now just call themselves these and it's true? There's a story here but the mess that's HP destroys that.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Did you see something at that link that contradicted anything at my link? Everyone seems to agree that BCH got DDoSed. Sophos adds a juvenile "hacks're bad, mm-kay?" gloss to it, apparently because all their readers are in elementary school, but that's all they have to offer. They don't mention any reasons why this hack was as bad as any other hack. If one recognizes, as all thinking people do, that some hacks as justified even though some other hacks are not, Sophos has no retort. This is a basic rhetorical failure; Sophos ought to be embarrassed. One more thing: this was just a DDoS, yet, "The indictment states that BCH had to shut down its access to the internet and email servers to protect patient medical records." Come again? How on earth would a simple DDoS have that effect? Does the DB "fail open"? This is pure bullshit, yet DoJ and Sophos are happy to parrot it, because this is the sort of bullshit that pays their bills. Pathetic. [EDIT:] He writes and he's in prison, so he mostly fits that description; do you have a particular reason to deny that he's concerned about "human rights"?
  - danso 10y ago
    I wish I was as optimistic about the modern workplace as you are, in which every single employee has the training and capacity to calmly and precisely diagnose why their computer programs aren't working. But in my experience, when the Internet goes down, the average non-IT person sees it as "the computer is broken". And instead of doing something rational -- like running `ping` -- they'll do things like restart the program, or even the computer, until an IT professional tells them that the fault is with their Internet connection. Not too long ago I was at a very modern Palo Alto clinic getting some routine x-rays. My doctor warned me that things might be a bit slow because their office had just made the transition from XP to Windows 7 (because of XP's end-of-life, not because Windows 7 was new), and the clinic was having problems all week. I ended up waiting an extra half hour because they couldn't figure out how to get digital x-ray images taken from just a few rooms over onto my doctor's computer. And it wasn't some high school summer intern who was stumped, but the doctor, the radiologist, and a couple of nurses. Sure, I'll admit, as an engineer, I can't help but think that this was an unnecessary shitfest. But, as an engineer, I also know that the "common sense" git-er-done solution -- such as just putting the files on a USB stick and moving them over -- might not apply in this situation. Sometimes, software is just hamstrung and shitty. Luckily, this was a routine checkup at a small, very-well equipped clinic in Silicon Valley, and not an entire fucking hospital in Boston, that, besides tending to children, also has to operate an emergency room and trauma center, in which a 10-minute tangle in IT can easily mean the difference between life and death. I don't have a strong opinion on whether the perceived cruelty justifies criminal action by the OP. But I strongly disagree with his smug assertion ("I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. ") that a hospital that he's never worked at can safely pivot when their entire Internet shuts down. If no one was seriously afflicted by the outage -- and how the fuck would we even know that when modern healthcare can't even consistently diagnose causes of death on an average day? -- then that would have been pure luck, and not because the OP performed his attack with deliberate consideration of its possible effects.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      I'm not sure you've modeled my thought process all that well; it's certainly a novel experience to be labeled "optimistic". If a patient had actually died because her physician couldn't access WebMD for an hour during the fundraiser, that fact wouldn't have been omitted from the indictment. Actually it would have been a typical-bullshit element of a typical-bullshit homicide charge. Internet interruptions occur regularly, and they very rarely have fatal consequences even in hospitals. If they did, hospitals would have more redundancy. Lots of people seem eager to criticize Gottesfeld for not somehow foreseeing this unlikely thing that didn't actually happen except in their own imagination. That's revealing. We expect private individuals to act with perfection, so that no unintended consequence, however unlikely, could ever be imagined. Yet giant wealthy firms with lots of lawyers can run roughshod over innocent children, being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, and they must simply be endured. How could the hospital know this handicapped girl wasn't simply imagining her symptoms? Actually lots of people at the hospital knew what was happening; nurses were quitting over it. Actually providing appropriate care for sick people is basically the reason that hospitals exist. Yet at every turn we give the giant abusive bureaucracy the benefit of the doubt. In this case as in every case, DoJ stood ever ready to serve the interests of the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected. With gag orders, even complaining about abuse was grounds for more abuse! Policing a big urban hospital is not a good DoJ career move. Crushing little people who speak truth to power, even if only for an hour during a fundraiser: that's what really gets a federal prosecutor's juices flowing. We've seen enough from DoJ to expect this behavior, but don't imagine for a second it's justified by anything but their own craven self-interest. [EDIT:] Rather pointless googling I'm afraid. It's not as though the interests of the wealthy and powerful are never found in opposition. By all means, though, keep trying to change the subject from your silly spurious movie-plot medical-procedures-dependent-on-constant-Facebook-access theory. I'm not sure that something as braindead as "CVS is just like this tortured handicapped girl" is any better though...
zzalpha 10y ago
Ah, so I see we're all for vigilantism now. Good to know! Now where did I put my pitchfork...
danso 10y ago
Horrific, inexplicable tragedies happen in hospitals and emergency rooms because in the normal chaos of medical emergencies and communication snafus, surgeons don't properly wash their hands or mark which limb is meant to be amputated [0]. But your experience with such institutions is that while they may fuck up the routine small things and kill patients, they are yet able to pivot like well-oiled military units when their information technology infrastructure is unexpectedly cut? [0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist
- strainer 10y ago
  If we can appreciate inexplicable medical tragedies - can't we appreciate a mans emotional response? If he was wrong was he yet not caught in a tragedy? >their information technology infrastructure is unexpectedly cut You are attributing offence of a kind which is far removed from his case - he never attacked the kind of critical systems which you indicate with the Newyorker article. He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the protest. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-chi... " I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation. "
  - danso 10y ago
    > He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the protest. Uh, OK... You'll have to pardon my skepticism that you actually read the New Yorker article when it appears you didn't even read the OP whom you defend. Here's one sentence you appear to have skipped over: > Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet. Edit: clarification. The thing that I quote directly above is not in the OP, but in the link u/strainer provided as rebuttal, i.e. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-chi...