from the price-of-freedom-is-eternal-vigilence dept.
The mastermind behind some of the world's biggest and longest-running botnets has been jailed and his vast criminal infrastructure taken down, in part because of a careless operational security blunder that allowed authorities to identify his anonymous online persona.
Officials from the Republic of Belarus reported Monday they detained a participant in the sprawling Andromeda botnet network, which was made up of 464 separate botnets that spread more than 80 distinct malware families since 2011. On Tuesday, researchers with security firm Recorded Future published a blog post that said the participant was a 33-year-old Belarusian named Sergey Jarets.
To most people, Jarets was known only as "Ar3s," the moniker assigned to a highly respected elder in the criminal underground. In online discussions, Ar3s demonstrated expertise in malware development and the reverse-engineering of software. He also acted as a reputable guarantor of deals that were hashed out online. As it turned out, the ICQ number of the figure he used as one of his primary contact methods was registered in several whitehat discussion forums to one Sergey Jaretz.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday December 08 2017, @02:23PM (3 children)
ICQ. Now there is a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
Oh, and he's a dumb ass.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday December 08 2017, @04:44PM (1 child)
Don't seem to recall every owning a botnet...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @06:32PM
Don't worry, I can't recall every botnet I've owned either.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 08 2017, @11:00PM
So now he's gone, is ANYBODY still using ICQ?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @02:34PM
How come I'm not surprised? I guess he missed a payment to Lukashenko or some shit...
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday December 08 2017, @02:55PM (1 child)
I'm still trying to parse this phrase out. Not that it's greatly important, but does this just mean his ICQ number, or what is, "of the figure," above?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday December 08 2017, @04:47PM
It seems the writer has a strange idea of what "figure" means. I'm guessing they meant alias or account.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 08 2017, @03:11PM (11 children)
ICQ still exists?
It has to be in the same way that AT&T still exists, right? The name was bought by a company and slapped on an existing buisness?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @03:53PM (4 children)
Actually,
few months ago I gave it a try and my ancient username still worked. It looks much better than M$ skype, but using it on my own doesn't make much sense.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday December 08 2017, @04:01PM
Your own? You could have befriended the botnet man, maybe got tossed a couple of bitcoins.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:11AM (2 children)
Holy fucking shit. Not only did I remember my uid, but I remembered my password. (And a good thing, since the email I registered with no longer exists.)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:21AM
Double holy fucking shit: It remembers my contact list. But it is all people I used to game with 16 years ago and have had no contact with since then.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:32AM
And, just like Jarets, it had my real name in the profile. Ahh, the internet of 1997 was such an innocent time.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday December 08 2017, @04:15PM (1 child)
I assume there is a small core of users left, sort of like for almost all old technology. ICQ used to be great tho, it probably still is. It just sort of got replaced by other things. It didn't become bad or anything.
http://www.miranda-im.org/ [miranda-im.org]
I see that my preferred client is still around and kicking.
https://www.miranda-ng.org/en/downloads/ [miranda-ng.org]
it's even forked apparently. looking at the language support one would assume it's fairly popular in eastern Europe.
Miranda was always interesting since it supported so many different chat protocols all in one. I guess it just sort of faded out of existence as more and more people/friends stopped using it and I guess now we just message each other on our phones instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @09:05PM
Bah, I don't need that new-fangled stuff.
Just give me UUNet on CompuServe and I'm fine.
My 14.4 Rockwell modem still works, too.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM
ICQ is an instant messaging client that was first developed and popularized by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You".[1] Ownership of ICQ passed from Mirabilis to AOL in 1998, and from AOL to Mail.Ru Group in 2010.
Or so says wiki.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @11:04PM
It is now owned by some eastern bloc company, I forget who. The most interesting aspect is almost everyone's accounts dating back to the beginning are still there.
I verified by logging in with my old accounts from the 90s a few years back and they *ALL* still worked.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday December 09 2017, @12:10AM (1 child)
Holy the phone, Batman!
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday December 09 2017, @01:28AM
Oops, I meant "Hold the phone." As in "Hold the phone, a car could be blue!"
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4c0ef14d08/mind-match-by-the-state-from-greatest-comedy-sketches [funnyordie.com]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Funny) by NotSanguine on Friday December 08 2017, @03:53PM (3 children)
Against criminal activity!
It's incredibly unfair that law enforcement gets as much time (within any applicable statutes of limitations) as it wants to find and prosecute those engaged in various crimes and can make mistake after boneheaded mistake and still end up with arrests, conviction and prison sentences.
Criminals, on the other hand, if they make just one mistake (leave their DNA at the crime scene, take insufficient precautions against being outed online, make just *one* incriminating statement, etc., etc., etc.) can have such evidence used against them in an effort to cage them.
Disgusting!
Shouldn't this be a meritocracy? If a criminal has shown him or herself to be competent for a certain period of time, and LEOs are too dumb/poorly equipped/disorganized to catch them within that period of time, they should be absolved of any criminal charges and given trophies consisting of a plaque with a broken 45rpm record, CD or USB key with the song I Fought The Law [youtube.com] by the Bobby Fuller Four.
The current situation is such a cluster fuck. We need bold action!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday December 08 2017, @06:35PM (2 children)
Actually the enforcement of computer crimes is selective to the point it's discriminatory. If you'd go to the police saying "Someone hacked my PC!", will they investigate? But how would the police act if you were wealthy or a corporation? And to add insult to injury, who is paying the taxes for the police's salaries doing the investigation in the first place?
So, throw-in enough social injustice (say, those corporation avoiding paying their taxes by buying off politicians), and suddenly the criminals start looking less like the vile scam that they are, and more like Robin Hoods. Better yet, you can flip those corporations' trickle down economy rhetoric and argue that since those criminals aren't as efficient at laundering their cash as corporations are successful at avoiding taxes, all-in-all, more money ends up back in circulation thanks to their criminal endeavors.
p.s. This is a somewhat sarcastic take on Milton Friedman's work. Well, "somewhat sarcastic" since his son does actually makes VERY similar arguments in his talks...
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @10:11PM
I'm just going to leave this here and back away slowly...
https://www.ola.com/auction/992342/BUY-A-SENSE-OF-HUMOR [ola.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @03:15AM
[...] "But how would the police act if you were wealthy or a corporation?" [...]
They'd rob you blind & leave you for dead.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @04:27PM (1 child)
1) It's always Sergey
2) It's hard for people to not brag about doing shit like this. People want credit and adulation. Though in this case it turned out to be incompetence.
I once went through the audurous process of creating 6 virtual identities from scratch in order to register 6 separate MMO accounts using friend-referral program. I made up their birthdays, their likes, their dislikes, their family trees and made basic virtual footprint for all of them, starting with fresh email address. I wrote all the informational in a very detailed form in a physical notebook. In hind-sight I might have gone too far.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2017, @04:54PM
Nope. Wrong two things [youtube.com]:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2017, @07:34PM
they never would have caught him if he had just used his "superanon@gmail.com" account. pity.