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"This is patently ridiculous" ... how? The guy plead guilty to what was essentially a DOS (corrected from DDOS) attack intended to interfere with the company's

"This is patently ridiculous" ... how? The guy plead guilty to what was essentially a DOS (corrected from DDOS) attack intended to interfere with the company's ability to do business. Was it a really simple attack? Yes. But I'm not sure that's relevant. It's kind of like being caught trying to burn someone's house down and then claiming you were just testing to see if it was flammable.

cheald 15y ago
Minor nit - unless he was using an EC2 cluster or something, this would be a regular old-fashioned DOS, not a DDOS. It's something of a condemnation of YouSendIt's software and NOC that they weren't able to mitigate a huge number of connections from a single IP. Leveraging a botnet against someone is worlds apart from running a high-concurrency ab test.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  You're right... I was kind of assuming that it would take more than a single computer running AB to do this to any service of this size, but there's nothing in the article to support that.
snowmaker 15y ago
How do you know that he intended to interfere with the company's ability to do business? Sure, that's what the FBI said (channeled, presumably, from YouSendIt), but he could have just been running apache benchmark as a simple test to see how the server would respond. In fact, the allegation doesn't really make sense, because as the former CTO, if he had really wanted to interfere with the company's ability to do business, you'd think he could have found much better ways to do so. Logging in and deleting the company's data, turning employees/investors against them, or writing negative articles about them would have had a far greater consequence on their business than running an apache benchmark program. To be clear, I'm not claiming to know what happened; I'm just saying that this press release is a deeply one-sided view of the story, and that the situation smells funny.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  Well, at this point, that's what he himself has said, since it was a guilty plea. Presumably he had to admit not just his actions but his intent / malice.
  - enjo 15y ago
    While I tend to agree with you that he likely did something malicious, a guilty plea in this day and age doesn't really tell you that. He may have been taking a plea bargain out of fear of much worse?
    - Stormbringer 15y ago
      The problem with pleading guilty, is that then everyone thinks that you're guilty.
    - tomkarlo 15y ago
      While he might have taken a plea to avoid a more serious charge, last time I checked you still have to be guilty of whatever lesser crime you're pleading to, as well. You're not allowed to make up a lesser crime in the name of bargaining down.

cheald 15y ago

Minor nit - unless he was using an EC2 cluster or something, this would be a regular old-fashioned DOS, not a DDOS. It's something of a condemnation of YouSendIt's software and NOC that they weren't able to mitigate a huge number of connections from a single IP. Leveraging a botnet against someone is worlds apart from running a high-concurrency ab test.

tomkarlo 15y ago
You're right... I was kind of assuming that it would take more than a single computer running AB to do this to any service of this size, but there's nothing in the article to support that.

snowmaker 15y ago

How do you know that he intended to interfere with the company's ability to do business? Sure, that's what the FBI said (channeled, presumably, from YouSendIt), but he could have just been running apache benchmark as a simple test to see how the server would respond. In fact, the allegation doesn't really make sense, because as the former CTO, if he had really wanted to interfere with the company's ability to do business, you'd think he could have found much better ways to do so. Logging in and deleting the company's data, turning employees/investors against them, or writing negative articles about them would have had a far greater consequence on their business than running an apache benchmark program. To be clear, I'm not claiming to know what happened; I'm just saying that this press release is a deeply one-sided view of the story, and that the situation smells funny.

tomkarlo 15y ago
Well, at this point, that's what he himself has said, since it was a guilty plea. Presumably he had to admit not just his actions but his intent / malice.
- enjo 15y ago
  While I tend to agree with you that he likely did something malicious, a guilty plea in this day and age doesn't really tell you that. He may have been taking a plea bargain out of fear of much worse?
  - Stormbringer 15y ago
    The problem with pleading guilty, is that then everyone thinks that you're guilty.
  - tomkarlo 15y ago
    While he might have taken a plea to avoid a more serious charge, last time I checked you still have to be guilty of whatever lesser crime you're pleading to, as well. You're not allowed to make up a lesser crime in the name of bargaining down.