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Leave no trace: how a teenage hacker lost himself online

131 points by freddier 5y ago

DerekBickerton 5y ago
That was painful to read. Mental illness combined with a talent for computers do not make good bedfellows. In-fact mental illness combined with anything invariably leads to a bad ending. I just learned of a word: parasocial[0]. It happens when socially withdrawn people seek friendship online and build credibility over time with their peers or 'hacker buddies'. This is not so good because it lacks the nuance and real-time feedback of proper social interaction (i.e face-to-face talking). Then you could ask: what about video chats? Well they still pale in comparison with being actually with a person IMHO. Now we have this new word: 'metaverse' endorsed by Zuckerberg and others. It makes me wonder where we're heading with all this? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction Edit: I'm aware how this may sound ironic since I'm conversing with people here on HN, but it's not to extremes as discussed in the article.
- tsukikage 5y ago
  Interesting; the wikipedia article describes "parasocial interaction" as a relationship that is inherently one-way, as with an entertainer or celebrity, which the other party perceives as building rapport. You seem to want to extend the word to mean any relationship that does not involve physically meeting the other person, but I don't see any basis for this in the article you linked. Do you have any references for this usage, or is it something you've coined yourself?
- falcolas 5y ago
  Mental illness by itself - without treatment - leads to a bad ending. There's no need to conflate mental illness with all of these other things (computer skill, online interactions, the metaverse); they are healthy hobbies and behaviors.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    There’s no need in general but that’s exactly the case here. And it’s not far from common, it’s an avenue that needs further discussion imo
- bitwize 5y ago
  It's becoming increasingly hard to find someone with a talent for computers who doesn't have some sort of mental illness. Computing seems to attract intelligent but mentally screwed up people, and we even live under rules that say you're not supposed to acknowledge their screwed-up-ness. Like, you can't say someone has dissociative identity disorder. They are a Multiple System, and you have to acknowledge the personalities in the system, or face disciplinary action from HR. The Metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson for Snow Crash. The version in the novel was pretty rad. Like everything cyberpunk, its real-world counterpart seems to have all the sucky features of the fictional version with few to none of the cool bits.
  - syshum 5y ago
    There is a big different because DSM5 official mental illness, and what seems to me what you are talking about when referring to "mental illness" where by a person is not conforming to a life style you believe is "normal" or "proper" I do agree that as a society in the US anyway we are losing the idea of pluralism, more and more people are being forced to conform to a given sociopolitical ideology largely split on "left" and "right", if you do not conform with the orthodoxy of one or the other you are cast as any number of things other than a free thinking nuanced individual.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      I'm not sure what American political orientation has to do with this. DID is a DSM V recognized disorder. Anyone who thinks this is because of a tyrannical society that oppresses them by refusing to recognize that they are sometimes themselves and sometimes an anime character who has taken over their body, probably needs help -- and chances are there's a lot of shit in their lives they don't have together. I'm not the one confusing a mental disorder with a lifestyle choice. And HR departments are starting to adopt rules to force companies to treat employees' significant mental issues as lifestyle choices, to the detriment of the employees and the companies.
- smolder 5y ago
  IIRC, Parasocial interaction is not so much about being real time or not, but being one sided or not. Parasocial relationships are those you have with TV, youtube, or twitch stars, and might leave you with feelings like they're you're friend, even though that's illusory. Similar to if you feel closeness to a nice server at a restaurant or a bartender, when they're simply doing their job.
- Zababa 5y ago
  That's not what a parasocial interaction is. A parasocial interaction is something that only goes one way. For example, young girls that are fan of a band or a specific artist, and talk about them as if they knew them.
teddyh 5y ago
> His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”. I don’t think I like these people. > Occasionally, his parents caught glimpses of what he was doing. Mostly, he played games, especially the kind in which people are violently killed – such as by building amusement parks and then throwing people off the rides. There were also lots of shoot ’em ups. Ah, yes. > Edwin’s contacts abroad gave him a confidence boost. He spent hours chatting with people from all over the world about ways to hack websites. Edwin often mocked “normal” life and western society. He denounced materialism and superficial concerns. As if that’s a bad sign.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > > His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”. > I don’t think I like these people. Since I read your comment before I RTFA, it wasn't immediately clear to me what was so awful about this. Just to be explicit, José is the mother of the teenage hacker in question, saying it was a mistake to get her son a computer. (I would think the remark considerably less reprehensible if it came from the hacker himself.)
  - syshum 5y ago
    Given the audience here I would image the majority of the people on this site had computers supplied by our parents at a young age, and we often played violent video games, or spent hours talking to people online yet we did not become criminals Scape goating video games, or "the internet" for these types of things is a long disproven trope. There are more factors in criminality that just playing a violent game or having computer supplied to you by your parents. Putting the blame on these things however is easier that looking at other more human causes.
    - JadeNB 5y ago
      Just to be clear, I am not arguing that having a computer plays any role in criminality—except possibly that it gives mischievous and easily bored youngsters a healthy outlet for their curiosity and restlessness, which presumably militates against criminality. I was agreeing with teddyh (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898239) and I agree with you. I just meant to clarify (for the benefit of those who, like me, read the comments before the article) that José is the hacker's mother, not the hacker, which puts a different, and much darker, spin on the statement that José thinks that the hacker's getting a computer young was a bad thing.
Ajay-p 5y ago
This is very sad, such a bright young man. The state took away his entire world, his community, friends, all in one swoop. Hopefully the authorities in western countries are not locking (fairly innocent) hackers in solitary confinement for 5 years without trial anymore....
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  He was sentenced to either community service or 240 days in prison. Presumably the intention and expectation was for him to do the community service. For some reason he chose jail. Community service seems like a pretty reasonable punishment for attacking computer systems at a university and an ISP... > The state took away his entire world, his community, friends, all in one swoop. I mean... it sounds like his entire world/community/friends were mostly bonding over criminal mischief. Oh, and one of those "friends" reported him to the police. Even by criminal gang standards those aren't real friends! I'm not really convinced that he wouldn't have headed down the same path even without his run-in with the law. Honestly, at least from the US perspective, the entire thing sounds like it was handled extremely well by the criminal justice system in the Netherlands. A bunch of community service seems pretty reasonable for such serious criminal trespass... and it sounds like they didn't charge him at all for various other criminal acts (e.g., launching DDoS attacks against sites whose owners he didn't like).
tejohnso 5y ago
>According to the public prosecutor, it constituted “one of the most serious hacks in the Netherlands’ history”. Edwin’s work was “ingenious” and the “impact on KPN and thus on society at large, immense”. By KPN’s own reckoning, it cost them €3m. So much potential in this young man. It's a shame he had these difficulties to deal with. It sounds like he had absolutely no guidance, no encouragement toward a positive way to use his skills. I see it as the equivalent of the school prankster falling in with the wrong crowd, and ending up doing something seriously harmful to try to gain respect. > found guilty of hacking and given a suspended prison sentence of 240 days plus community service. He didn’t want to do community service, however, so did the time instead. I wish they had dug into that a little bit more. What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I don't imagine it would have been a highly social or physically demanding job. >Edwin asked Ruud if he could move back home, but his dad didn’t feel up to the task of taking in his now 22-year-old son. That's heartbreaking. Having to turn away your son who is desperate need of care because you can't provide it, and then having him commit suicide a while later. This story is depressing. I wish there was more about how people were trying to help him, because as it stands, it seems to me he was mostly abandoned.
- Idesmi 5y ago
  He was abandoned by his biological parents first, and then by the foster ones too. > As Edwin stood on his doorstep, Ruud turned him away with a heavy heart. > “Come on,” Edwin pleaded. But Ruud was at the end of his tether. “We can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.” > Edwin left with a backpack. His parents had no idea where he’d go.
- scotty79 5y ago
  > What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I'm assuming it wasn't USA prison. So doing involuntary labor might be worse than just being locked away. Netherlands has very civilized prisons.
  - SwanRonson 5y ago
    Community service usually isn’t that bad, people volunteer to do it all of the time. Just from what I read in the story, it seemed Edwin was more inclined to want to stay inside than interact with others in person. I also assume the exchange rate between community service and jail time is reasonable. I think in his eyes the extra time was a painless and quicker way to pay his debt.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
enuit 5y ago
From reading this article, I get the suspicion that not only the parents have no idea about computers, but neither does the author. If I have only a single quote to proof my point, I would choose: "His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power." Never have I ever heard someone who knows anything about computers describe his systems to have a "big memory card". If I type memory card into google, it shows the things you smash in a digital camera. In the 90s and 2000s you would put it in your Nintendo or Playstation. My other favorite is his use of "Rollercoaster Tycoon" as an example for an excessive violent game (I assume he refers to that game. Its the only game I know that fits the description). Yes, it is possible in that game, that people die, yes it can happend by being ejected from a ride. It is how ever neither the focus of the game nor endorsed by the game mechanics. Describing Anonymous as a "looser collective" seems somewhat unnecessary. What brings him to the conclusion? With the feeling of the article, I assume the reason is, that they are "hackers". All in all this article reminds me on the old articles on how computer games lead to violence. Or old US articles on communism. Or my grandmothers take on the Beatles. Or roughly any topic that a group of people perceives to be dangerous while not understanding it even remotely. All in all, I wonder what anyone should take away of this article. Should parents not buy their children computers with "big memory cards"? Should parents be afraid if their children are using computers for gaming? Should they be afraid if they use it not for gaming? Should I be concerned to be confronted with a hacker if someone plays Rollercoaster Tycoon? The guy seemed to have a tough live and his parents even more so. But this article will help no one to prevent anything.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  Where does the article or the book mention "Rollercoaster Tycoon"? That seems to be something you came up with yourself.
- kgeist 5y ago
  >Never have I ever heard someone who knows anything about computers describe his systems to have a "big memory card". If I type memory card into google, it shows the things you smash in a digital camera. In the 90s and 2000s you would put it in your Nintendo or Playstation. It's probably a translation issue. Here in my country it's common to refer to RAM as "memory card".
antonzabirko 5y ago
What a mess.. He didn't even do anything malicious to the provider by the looks of it. > Finally, the hacker made a mistake. He skipped the VPN and entered a hacked KPN computer server directly from his home connection. With that, he exposed his home address. Also this part seems like a lie.
- iso1210 5y ago
  I don't trust a lot of this reporting, it's quite clearly written from an anti-computer anti-nerd slant, with no empathy for the kid involved
  - MarcScott 5y ago
    I agree. I found this painful to read. > They let him do whatever he wanted. If he felt like gaming, he’d boot up Windows. But more often he chose Linux, his go-to operating system. Why is this important? This is exactly what I do. I also frequently use a VPN, yet it's treated in the article as if the use of such technologies automatically labels you as some sort of nefarious hacker.
- saberdancer 5y ago
  It seems that they didn't need that mistake if they were checking connections to the VPN from KPN users. They could do a cross reference by checking his connections to the outside and then times when the hacker was "attacking". They could also drop his internet connection for a bit to see if the hacker gets disconnected. And looking at how it was portrayed, it's doubtful his PC was "clean", especially if they catch him in the act.
iso1210 5y ago
> Edwin’s actions, he charged, had been “malicious and deliberate” and caused “imminent danger to life”. If the script kiddie breaking in was being charged with such serious crimes, what about the people who allowed this to happen > Scanning the rest of the network from the KPN machine he’d accessed, Edwin saw the obsolete software being used in hundreds of places. Almost every computer server in the telecom provider’s vast network had a window open. The kid from Barendrecht strolled around unimpeded, and what he saw astonished him. He could control 514 computer servers. He could even access the core router, the backbone of KPN’s entire network. He could see the data of 2.1 million KPN customers Their seriously negligent actions. This isn't someone exploiting a bug a couple of days after it came out, this is gross negligence of a system that, if hacked, can cause imminent danger to life.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "what about the people who allowed this to happen" If you're expecting agreement, remember that you're on HN. As far as I can tell, most developers have been vocally and fervently against being held liable or even accountable for bugs, design defects, security issues, etc. <sotto voce> probably because, collectively, developers produce so many of them.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    “HN” is probably against blaming programmers for bugs, since this would be blaming the lowest-level employees for something which can only realistically be fixed at the top level. Programmers have some blame in producing bugs, but that is mostly because they are not given the time, resources, incentives or training to do things right.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Indeed; Software Engineering and IT Admin need to be professionalized, in the sense that both individual practitioners and institutions take personal legal responsibility for the systems they implement. But also, gross negligence doesn't justify criminal trespass. You can't walk into someone's home and touch all their stuff just because they left their front door open.
dzink 5y ago
His brain clearly developed little to no social reading skills but plenty of abstract and analytical thinking. Kids with brains like that feel incredibly lonely and he clearly need some kind of social interaction with peers with similar mental skills. If he had been given an opportunity to learn and interact with computer problems in a healthy, constructive way with peers, the outcome might have been dramatically different. I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere with nobody to talk to about the things I found truly interesting. Instead I would built things online and looked for ways to compete with my brain to get into communities with peers who were more like me. Physics, CS, Math olympiads, chess, star craft, a competitive high school, and building for the web. I was in poor Eastern Europe, but I still had options. If you don’t have constructive resources around you the path of least resistance is not ideal. Government officials are elected, not picked for their mental skills. They need to recognize they have a naturally occurring resource of mathematically inclined kids and have open resources for those locally. Or you get lonely malicious behaviors occurring naturally instead.
k1rcher 5y ago
Obligatory link to the Hacker Manifesto: http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html “… we’re all alike.” Rest in peace, Edwin.
- nonima 5y ago
  That was cringe inducing
  - k1rcher 5y ago
    Probably so for anyone who didn’t grow up reading the old Hacker zines. Phrack (and the Hacker Manifesto) are iconic in the scene.
- cupofcoffee 5y ago
  Whoever wrote that and is not 14, it's a clear sign of stunted emotional growth.
  - k1rcher 5y ago
    Well, speaking for myself personally, I was around 11-13 when I first joined the scene. Right before the fall of the classical hacker collectives and old school zines. It sounds to me like you were not, so I will give your unsubstantiated opinion the benefit of the doubt of not understanding the context or implications of Phrack and aforementioned Hacker Manifesto.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/g9cOO https://archive.is/g9cOO http://web.archive.org/web/20211017155725/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/14/leave-no-trace-how-a-teenage-hacker-lost-himself-online http://web.archive.org/web/20211017155725/https://www.thegua...
b123400 5y ago
I got into my school's network when I was 10, people were furious for my hacking, nobody questioned why was there a security issue so obvious that even a 10-years-old could break in. Few years later I accidentally found another way to get in. I sent an email to the school's IT department, got ignored. I sent it to the headmaster, he said "Thanks, will fix it". Except it was never fixed. Maybe fixing the child is easier than fixing the software.
- watwut 5y ago
  In low crime areas, people don't lock the doors. It is obvious security fault, but in fact, the people walking in and messing with their stuff are in the wrong. Of course they were furious at your hacking. And of course you should have not done that regardless of what fault the system had. (They would be in the wrong of they tried to impose serious consequences on 10 years old, which I hope did not happened.)
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    No part of the internet can be considered “low crime” least of all a school system. If you have an isolated network that is truly airgapped from any other network then and only then is it remotely acceptable to “leave your doors unlocked”. This doesn’t absolve the criminals who deface/destroy/steal your PII/data but rather you’ve got to adapt to the times.
    - watwut 5y ago
      The point is, the person who went through those front doors really don't get to blame owners for not locking the doors. Sometimes the line is fuzzy, yes. But in situation described above, it sounds like it was not fuzzy at all.
  - philprx 5y ago
    Analogy is not about a home but a factory: The infrastructure can be a danger to others, to employees, etc. So yes, it's a mandatory duty for organization owners to secure their infrastructure. There's a problem with the reaction to security issues in most of the countries.
renewiltord 5y ago
Interesting use of the textual equivalent of the Kuleshov Effect (which I’m sure has a name of its own). The text presents: - Kid was troubled hacker - Kid played violent video games - Kid threw game characters off rides he created - Kid played lots of shooters - Kid preferred Linux You associate them all. I, on the other hand, did all these things. I did worse: I crashed cars into others for fun (Demolition Derby 1&2), laughed as I destroyed cities full of people with tornadoes (Simcity), pretended to drown my brother (Mduel), etc. Turns out that people can distinguish play and reality. I love my brother, but in game the point is to kill him. And now I’m a productive member of society. How did that come to pass?
m3kw9 5y ago
“I’m more anxious about computers now,” Ruud admitted. When he fills in his tax returns and can’t get the site to work, he gets stressed out. “Sometimes I’m afraid someone might be using my identity. I’m forced to depend on technologies I can’t understand, and that worries me.” Now try “Web 3.0”
peterkelly 5y ago
Edwin's actions were illegal and wrong, and his punishment was justified. Having said that, it seems to me that once he had served his time in prison, it would have been in KPN's interests to hire him and pay him a large salary to lead what was a clearly necessary internal effort to fix the security flaws that left them so vulnerable in the first place. Directed in the right way, Edwin's skills could have brought substantial benefit to KPN and any other companies he might have consulted with in the future. But instead he's dead now, and KPN has lost an opportunity to hire someone that was likely more capable than anyone on their security team.
franga2000 5y ago
> the public prosecutor was scathing in his condemnation. Edwin’s actions, he charged, had been “malicious and deliberate” and caused “imminent danger to life” The kid got into a network using a known vulnerability and all he did was send an IRC message from it and install a backdoor that probably had better security than the network itself. Deliberate yes, but not malicious and certainly not any kind of danger to anyone. > He could control 514 computer servers. He could even access the core router, the backbone of KPN’s entire network. He could see the data of 2.1 million KPN customers. He could block hundreds of thousands of people from connecting to the national emergency telephone line. He could redirect internet traffic so that people who wanted to visit, say, a news site, would wind up somewhere completely different. Edwin could do whatever he wanted and KPN wouldn’t know a thing. See how the word COULD keeps popping up, but not a single example of something bad he DID. I am currently sitting on a bus and there's a pocket knife in my jacket. I could stab the guy next to me. I have the capability and access. Are they going to send me to prison too? At worst what he did was equivalent to trespassing. He didn't steal or break anything. It's digital urbex - illegal only in principle, not because of any harm done.
Borrible 5y ago
>Edwin was less than a year old when he was taken from his biological mother. She was on her own and unable to care for an infant. For months, she didn’t even touch him. I didn't need to read any further. A long, long time ago, in another hell, I worked as a male nurse in trauma surgery and intensive care in a hospital near a "socially challenged neighborhood". From time to time we had a little one there with a broken arm or leg. Two, three, four years old. No, they were not mistreated or abused, perse. They were just neglected. Shit happens when Kevin is home alone with just his two older siblings. Its not always like in the middle and upper class families in the movies. Fortunately, we didn't specialize in burns. A mother once complained to the doctor that her four-year-old son had gotten much fatter after he was discharged from the hospital and that she now had to buy new clothes. Probably his first healthy diet since its inception. So, how much, do you think, the risk of developing antisocial behavior later in life increases when you rob a child of their most important emotional need in their first year in hell?
happy-go-lucky 5y ago
I was always a bookworm when I was a kid. I hadn't had many friends and even at home had a lack of consistent human contact. Back then, we were going through a rough patch. When I started using computers and the Internet at work in the late '90s, it seemed that the whole world was opening up for me. When I came home after work, my folks and I would catch up with each other, engage in lively and thoughtful conversations over a meal. Once I had a personal computer, I began to spend more time surfing the Net than interacting with my family; they were having a hard time connecting with me, since I seemed out of touch with the real world. They were feeling neglected. Then came the smartphones and things went downhill fast. Now all of us spend our days glued to screens of different sizes, although we realize that social isolation or deprivation is risky for health.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hjek 5y ago
> I’d wanted to hear the story from Edwin himself. The one time we Skyped, he’d been in a hotel room in South Korea. Eight minutes into our call, he signed off with a smile and a peace sign. After that we chatted sporadically over WhatsApp. His final messages were laced with despair. “I don’t like it here,” he wrote, and “They’ve got guns”, and “I want to get out of here ASAP.” He stopped responding to my questions about KPN. A few days later I was contacted by a source. “Did you hear about Edwin?” He’d been found dead in a hotel bathtub, not far from Seoul’s international airport. The door of his room had been barricaded from the inside with furniture and pillows. Wow, that's intense.

131 points by freddier 5y ago

That was painful to read. Mental illness combined with a talent for computers do not make good bedfellows. In-fact mental illness combined with anything invariably leads to a bad ending. I just learned of a word: parasocial[0]. It happens when socially withdrawn people seek friendship online and build credibility over time with their peers or 'hacker buddies'. This is not so good because it lacks the nuance and real-time feedback of proper social interaction (i.e face-to-face talking). Then you could ask: what about video chats? Well they still pale in comparison with being actually with a person IMHO. Now we have this new word: 'metaverse' endorsed by Zuckerberg and others. It makes me wonder where we're heading with all this? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction Edit: I'm aware how this may sound ironic since I'm conversing with people here on HN, but it's not to extremes as discussed in the article.

tsukikage 5y ago
Interesting; the wikipedia article describes "parasocial interaction" as a relationship that is inherently one-way, as with an entertainer or celebrity, which the other party perceives as building rapport. You seem to want to extend the word to mean any relationship that does not involve physically meeting the other person, but I don't see any basis for this in the article you linked. Do you have any references for this usage, or is it something you've coined yourself?
falcolas 5y ago
Mental illness by itself - without treatment - leads to a bad ending. There's no need to conflate mental illness with all of these other things (computer skill, online interactions, the metaverse); they are healthy hobbies and behaviors.
- tartoran 5y ago
  There’s no need in general but that’s exactly the case here. And it’s not far from common, it’s an avenue that needs further discussion imo
bitwize 5y ago
It's becoming increasingly hard to find someone with a talent for computers who doesn't have some sort of mental illness. Computing seems to attract intelligent but mentally screwed up people, and we even live under rules that say you're not supposed to acknowledge their screwed-up-ness. Like, you can't say someone has dissociative identity disorder. They are a Multiple System, and you have to acknowledge the personalities in the system, or face disciplinary action from HR. The Metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson for Snow Crash. The version in the novel was pretty rad. Like everything cyberpunk, its real-world counterpart seems to have all the sucky features of the fictional version with few to none of the cool bits.
- syshum 5y ago
  There is a big different because DSM5 official mental illness, and what seems to me what you are talking about when referring to "mental illness" where by a person is not conforming to a life style you believe is "normal" or "proper" I do agree that as a society in the US anyway we are losing the idea of pluralism, more and more people are being forced to conform to a given sociopolitical ideology largely split on "left" and "right", if you do not conform with the orthodoxy of one or the other you are cast as any number of things other than a free thinking nuanced individual.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    I'm not sure what American political orientation has to do with this. DID is a DSM V recognized disorder. Anyone who thinks this is because of a tyrannical society that oppresses them by refusing to recognize that they are sometimes themselves and sometimes an anime character who has taken over their body, probably needs help -- and chances are there's a lot of shit in their lives they don't have together. I'm not the one confusing a mental disorder with a lifestyle choice. And HR departments are starting to adopt rules to force companies to treat employees' significant mental issues as lifestyle choices, to the detriment of the employees and the companies.
smolder 5y ago
IIRC, Parasocial interaction is not so much about being real time or not, but being one sided or not. Parasocial relationships are those you have with TV, youtube, or twitch stars, and might leave you with feelings like they're you're friend, even though that's illusory. Similar to if you feel closeness to a nice server at a restaurant or a bartender, when they're simply doing their job.
Zababa 5y ago
That's not what a parasocial interaction is. A parasocial interaction is something that only goes one way. For example, young girls that are fan of a band or a specific artist, and talk about them as if they knew them.

teddyh 5y ago

> His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”. I don’t think I like these people. > Occasionally, his parents caught glimpses of what he was doing. Mostly, he played games, especially the kind in which people are violently killed – such as by building amusement parks and then throwing people off the rides. There were also lots of shoot ’em ups. Ah, yes. > Edwin’s contacts abroad gave him a confidence boost. He spent hours chatting with people from all over the world about ways to hack websites. Edwin often mocked “normal” life and western society. He denounced materialism and superficial concerns. As if that’s a bad sign.

JadeNB 5y ago
> > His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”. > I don’t think I like these people. Since I read your comment before I RTFA, it wasn't immediately clear to me what was so awful about this. Just to be explicit, José is the mother of the teenage hacker in question, saying it was a mistake to get her son a computer. (I would think the remark considerably less reprehensible if it came from the hacker himself.)
- syshum 5y ago
  Given the audience here I would image the majority of the people on this site had computers supplied by our parents at a young age, and we often played violent video games, or spent hours talking to people online yet we did not become criminals Scape goating video games, or "the internet" for these types of things is a long disproven trope. There are more factors in criminality that just playing a violent game or having computer supplied to you by your parents. Putting the blame on these things however is easier that looking at other more human causes.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    Just to be clear, I am not arguing that having a computer plays any role in criminality—except possibly that it gives mischievous and easily bored youngsters a healthy outlet for their curiosity and restlessness, which presumably militates against criminality. I was agreeing with teddyh (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898239) and I agree with you. I just meant to clarify (for the benefit of those who, like me, read the comments before the article) that José is the hacker's mother, not the hacker, which puts a different, and much darker, spin on the statement that José thinks that the hacker's getting a computer young was a bad thing.

Ajay-p 5y ago

This is very sad, such a bright young man. The state took away his entire world, his community, friends, all in one swoop. Hopefully the authorities in western countries are not locking (fairly innocent) hackers in solitary confinement for 5 years without trial anymore....

throwawaygh 5y ago
He was sentenced to either community service or 240 days in prison. Presumably the intention and expectation was for him to do the community service. For some reason he chose jail. Community service seems like a pretty reasonable punishment for attacking computer systems at a university and an ISP... > The state took away his entire world, his community, friends, all in one swoop. I mean... it sounds like his entire world/community/friends were mostly bonding over criminal mischief. Oh, and one of those "friends" reported him to the police. Even by criminal gang standards those aren't real friends! I'm not really convinced that he wouldn't have headed down the same path even without his run-in with the law. Honestly, at least from the US perspective, the entire thing sounds like it was handled extremely well by the criminal justice system in the Netherlands. A bunch of community service seems pretty reasonable for such serious criminal trespass... and it sounds like they didn't charge him at all for various other criminal acts (e.g., launching DDoS attacks against sites whose owners he didn't like).

tejohnso 5y ago

>According to the public prosecutor, it constituted “one of the most serious hacks in the Netherlands’ history”. Edwin’s work was “ingenious” and the “impact on KPN and thus on society at large, immense”. By KPN’s own reckoning, it cost them €3m. So much potential in this young man. It's a shame he had these difficulties to deal with. It sounds like he had absolutely no guidance, no encouragement toward a positive way to use his skills. I see it as the equivalent of the school prankster falling in with the wrong crowd, and ending up doing something seriously harmful to try to gain respect. > found guilty of hacking and given a suspended prison sentence of 240 days plus community service. He didn’t want to do community service, however, so did the time instead. I wish they had dug into that a little bit more. What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I don't imagine it would have been a highly social or physically demanding job. >Edwin asked Ruud if he could move back home, but his dad didn’t feel up to the task of taking in his now 22-year-old son. That's heartbreaking. Having to turn away your son who is desperate need of care because you can't provide it, and then having him commit suicide a while later. This story is depressing. I wish there was more about how people were trying to help him, because as it stands, it seems to me he was mostly abandoned.

Idesmi 5y ago
He was abandoned by his biological parents first, and then by the foster ones too. > As Edwin stood on his doorstep, Ruud turned him away with a heavy heart. > “Come on,” Edwin pleaded. But Ruud was at the end of his tether. “We can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry.” > Edwin left with a backpack. His parents had no idea where he’d go.
scotty79 5y ago
> What did the service entail? How could it be worse than doing time? I'm assuming it wasn't USA prison. So doing involuntary labor might be worse than just being locked away. Netherlands has very civilized prisons.
- SwanRonson 5y ago
  Community service usually isn’t that bad, people volunteer to do it all of the time. Just from what I read in the story, it seemed Edwin was more inclined to want to stay inside than interact with others in person. I also assume the exchange rate between community service and jail time is reasonable. I think in his eyes the extra time was a painless and quicker way to pay his debt.

deleted 5y ago

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enuit 5y ago

From reading this article, I get the suspicion that not only the parents have no idea about computers, but neither does the author. If I have only a single quote to proof my point, I would choose: "His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power." Never have I ever heard someone who knows anything about computers describe his systems to have a "big memory card". If I type memory card into google, it shows the things you smash in a digital camera. In the 90s and 2000s you would put it in your Nintendo or Playstation. My other favorite is his use of "Rollercoaster Tycoon" as an example for an excessive violent game (I assume he refers to that game. Its the only game I know that fits the description). Yes, it is possible in that game, that people die, yes it can happend by being ejected from a ride. It is how ever neither the focus of the game nor endorsed by the game mechanics. Describing Anonymous as a "looser collective" seems somewhat unnecessary. What brings him to the conclusion? With the feeling of the article, I assume the reason is, that they are "hackers". All in all this article reminds me on the old articles on how computer games lead to violence. Or old US articles on communism. Or my grandmothers take on the Beatles. Or roughly any topic that a group of people perceives to be dangerous while not understanding it even remotely. All in all, I wonder what anyone should take away of this article. Should parents not buy their children computers with "big memory cards"? Should parents be afraid if their children are using computers for gaming? Should they be afraid if they use it not for gaming? Should I be concerned to be confronted with a hacker if someone plays Rollercoaster Tycoon? The guy seemed to have a tough live and his parents even more so. But this article will help no one to prevent anything.

FDSGSG 5y ago
Where does the article or the book mention "Rollercoaster Tycoon"? That seems to be something you came up with yourself.
kgeist 5y ago
>Never have I ever heard someone who knows anything about computers describe his systems to have a "big memory card". If I type memory card into google, it shows the things you smash in a digital camera. In the 90s and 2000s you would put it in your Nintendo or Playstation. It's probably a translation issue. Here in my country it's common to refer to RAM as "memory card".

antonzabirko 5y ago

What a mess.. He didn't even do anything malicious to the provider by the looks of it. > Finally, the hacker made a mistake. He skipped the VPN and entered a hacked KPN computer server directly from his home connection. With that, he exposed his home address. Also this part seems like a lie.

iso1210 5y ago
I don't trust a lot of this reporting, it's quite clearly written from an anti-computer anti-nerd slant, with no empathy for the kid involved
- MarcScott 5y ago
  I agree. I found this painful to read. > They let him do whatever he wanted. If he felt like gaming, he’d boot up Windows. But more often he chose Linux, his go-to operating system. Why is this important? This is exactly what I do. I also frequently use a VPN, yet it's treated in the article as if the use of such technologies automatically labels you as some sort of nefarious hacker.
saberdancer 5y ago
It seems that they didn't need that mistake if they were checking connections to the VPN from KPN users. They could do a cross reference by checking his connections to the outside and then times when the hacker was "attacking". They could also drop his internet connection for a bit to see if the hacker gets disconnected. And looking at how it was portrayed, it's doubtful his PC was "clean", especially if they catch him in the act.

iso1210 5y ago

> Edwin’s actions, he charged, had been “malicious and deliberate” and caused “imminent danger to life”. If the script kiddie breaking in was being charged with such serious crimes, what about the people who allowed this to happen > Scanning the rest of the network from the KPN machine he’d accessed, Edwin saw the obsolete software being used in hundreds of places. Almost every computer server in the telecom provider’s vast network had a window open. The kid from Barendrecht strolled around unimpeded, and what he saw astonished him. He could control 514 computer servers. He could even access the core router, the backbone of KPN’s entire network. He could see the data of 2.1 million KPN customers Their seriously negligent actions. This isn't someone exploiting a bug a couple of days after it came out, this is gross negligence of a system that, if hacked, can cause imminent danger to life.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "what about the people who allowed this to happen" If you're expecting agreement, remember that you're on HN. As far as I can tell, most developers have been vocally and fervently against being held liable or even accountable for bugs, design defects, security issues, etc. <sotto voce> probably because, collectively, developers produce so many of them.
- teddyh 5y ago
  “HN” is probably against blaming programmers for bugs, since this would be blaming the lowest-level employees for something which can only realistically be fixed at the top level. Programmers have some blame in producing bugs, but that is mostly because they are not given the time, resources, incentives or training to do things right.
throwawaygh 5y ago
Indeed; Software Engineering and IT Admin need to be professionalized, in the sense that both individual practitioners and institutions take personal legal responsibility for the systems they implement. But also, gross negligence doesn't justify criminal trespass. You can't walk into someone's home and touch all their stuff just because they left their front door open.

dzink 5y ago

His brain clearly developed little to no social reading skills but plenty of abstract and analytical thinking. Kids with brains like that feel incredibly lonely and he clearly need some kind of social interaction with peers with similar mental skills. If he had been given an opportunity to learn and interact with computer problems in a healthy, constructive way with peers, the outcome might have been dramatically different. I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere with nobody to talk to about the things I found truly interesting. Instead I would built things online and looked for ways to compete with my brain to get into communities with peers who were more like me. Physics, CS, Math olympiads, chess, star craft, a competitive high school, and building for the web. I was in poor Eastern Europe, but I still had options. If you don’t have constructive resources around you the path of least resistance is not ideal. Government officials are elected, not picked for their mental skills. They need to recognize they have a naturally occurring resource of mathematically inclined kids and have open resources for those locally. Or you get lonely malicious behaviors occurring naturally instead.

k1rcher 5y ago

Obligatory link to the Hacker Manifesto: http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html “… we’re all alike.” Rest in peace, Edwin.

nonima 5y ago
That was cringe inducing
- k1rcher 5y ago
  Probably so for anyone who didn’t grow up reading the old Hacker zines. Phrack (and the Hacker Manifesto) are iconic in the scene.
cupofcoffee 5y ago
Whoever wrote that and is not 14, it's a clear sign of stunted emotional growth.
- k1rcher 5y ago
  Well, speaking for myself personally, I was around 11-13 when I first joined the scene. Right before the fall of the classical hacker collectives and old school zines. It sounds to me like you were not, so I will give your unsubstantiated opinion the benefit of the doubt of not understanding the context or implications of Phrack and aforementioned Hacker Manifesto.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/g9cOO https://archive.is/g9cOO http://web.archive.org/web/20211017155725/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/14/leave-no-trace-how-a-teenage-hacker-lost-himself-online http://web.archive.org/web/20211017155725/https://www.thegua...

b123400 5y ago

I got into my school's network when I was 10, people were furious for my hacking, nobody questioned why was there a security issue so obvious that even a 10-years-old could break in. Few years later I accidentally found another way to get in. I sent an email to the school's IT department, got ignored. I sent it to the headmaster, he said "Thanks, will fix it". Except it was never fixed. Maybe fixing the child is easier than fixing the software.

watwut 5y ago
In low crime areas, people don't lock the doors. It is obvious security fault, but in fact, the people walking in and messing with their stuff are in the wrong. Of course they were furious at your hacking. And of course you should have not done that regardless of what fault the system had. (They would be in the wrong of they tried to impose serious consequences on 10 years old, which I hope did not happened.)
- vxNsr 5y ago
  No part of the internet can be considered “low crime” least of all a school system. If you have an isolated network that is truly airgapped from any other network then and only then is it remotely acceptable to “leave your doors unlocked”. This doesn’t absolve the criminals who deface/destroy/steal your PII/data but rather you’ve got to adapt to the times.
  - watwut 5y ago
    The point is, the person who went through those front doors really don't get to blame owners for not locking the doors. Sometimes the line is fuzzy, yes. But in situation described above, it sounds like it was not fuzzy at all.
- philprx 5y ago
  Analogy is not about a home but a factory: The infrastructure can be a danger to others, to employees, etc. So yes, it's a mandatory duty for organization owners to secure their infrastructure. There's a problem with the reaction to security issues in most of the countries.

renewiltord 5y ago

Interesting use of the textual equivalent of the Kuleshov Effect (which I’m sure has a name of its own). The text presents: - Kid was troubled hacker - Kid played violent video games - Kid threw game characters off rides he created - Kid played lots of shooters - Kid preferred Linux You associate them all. I, on the other hand, did all these things. I did worse: I crashed cars into others for fun (Demolition Derby 1&2), laughed as I destroyed cities full of people with tornadoes (Simcity), pretended to drown my brother (Mduel), etc. Turns out that people can distinguish play and reality. I love my brother, but in game the point is to kill him. And now I’m a productive member of society. How did that come to pass?

m3kw9 5y ago

“I’m more anxious about computers now,” Ruud admitted. When he fills in his tax returns and can’t get the site to work, he gets stressed out. “Sometimes I’m afraid someone might be using my identity. I’m forced to depend on technologies I can’t understand, and that worries me.” Now try “Web 3.0”

peterkelly 5y ago

Edwin's actions were illegal and wrong, and his punishment was justified. Having said that, it seems to me that once he had served his time in prison, it would have been in KPN's interests to hire him and pay him a large salary to lead what was a clearly necessary internal effort to fix the security flaws that left them so vulnerable in the first place. Directed in the right way, Edwin's skills could have brought substantial benefit to KPN and any other companies he might have consulted with in the future. But instead he's dead now, and KPN has lost an opportunity to hire someone that was likely more capable than anyone on their security team.

franga2000 5y ago

> the public prosecutor was scathing in his condemnation. Edwin’s actions, he charged, had been “malicious and deliberate” and caused “imminent danger to life” The kid got into a network using a known vulnerability and all he did was send an IRC message from it and install a backdoor that probably had better security than the network itself. Deliberate yes, but not malicious and certainly not any kind of danger to anyone. > He could control 514 computer servers. He could even access the core router, the backbone of KPN’s entire network. He could see the data of 2.1 million KPN customers. He could block hundreds of thousands of people from connecting to the national emergency telephone line. He could redirect internet traffic so that people who wanted to visit, say, a news site, would wind up somewhere completely different. Edwin could do whatever he wanted and KPN wouldn’t know a thing. See how the word COULD keeps popping up, but not a single example of something bad he DID. I am currently sitting on a bus and there's a pocket knife in my jacket. I could stab the guy next to me. I have the capability and access. Are they going to send me to prison too? At worst what he did was equivalent to trespassing. He didn't steal or break anything. It's digital urbex - illegal only in principle, not because of any harm done.

Borrible 5y ago

>Edwin was less than a year old when he was taken from his biological mother. She was on her own and unable to care for an infant. For months, she didn’t even touch him. I didn't need to read any further. A long, long time ago, in another hell, I worked as a male nurse in trauma surgery and intensive care in a hospital near a "socially challenged neighborhood". From time to time we had a little one there with a broken arm or leg. Two, three, four years old. No, they were not mistreated or abused, perse. They were just neglected. Shit happens when Kevin is home alone with just his two older siblings. Its not always like in the middle and upper class families in the movies. Fortunately, we didn't specialize in burns. A mother once complained to the doctor that her four-year-old son had gotten much fatter after he was discharged from the hospital and that she now had to buy new clothes. Probably his first healthy diet since its inception. So, how much, do you think, the risk of developing antisocial behavior later in life increases when you rob a child of their most important emotional need in their first year in hell?

happy-go-lucky 5y ago

I was always a bookworm when I was a kid. I hadn't had many friends and even at home had a lack of consistent human contact. Back then, we were going through a rough patch. When I started using computers and the Internet at work in the late '90s, it seemed that the whole world was opening up for me. When I came home after work, my folks and I would catch up with each other, engage in lively and thoughtful conversations over a meal. Once I had a personal computer, I began to spend more time surfing the Net than interacting with my family; they were having a hard time connecting with me, since I seemed out of touch with the real world. They were feeling neglected. Then came the smartphones and things went downhill fast. Now all of us spend our days glued to screens of different sizes, although we realize that social isolation or deprivation is risky for health.

deleted 5y ago

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hjek 5y ago

> I’d wanted to hear the story from Edwin himself. The one time we Skyped, he’d been in a hotel room in South Korea. Eight minutes into our call, he signed off with a smile and a peace sign. After that we chatted sporadically over WhatsApp. His final messages were laced with despair. “I don’t like it here,” he wrote, and “They’ve got guns”, and “I want to get out of here ASAP.” He stopped responding to my questions about KPN. A few days later I was contacted by a source. “Did you hear about Edwin?” He’d been found dead in a hotel bathtub, not far from Seoul’s international airport. The door of his room had been barricaded from the inside with furniture and pillows. Wow, that's intense.