A decade after Chris "Commander X" Doyon skipped out on a federal hacking charge and fled the country, the long arm of US law enforcement this week stretched out its hand and plucked him from Mexico City, where he had claimed political asylum. Doyon now faces all of the original charges for coordinating a 2010 High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) DDoS attack on servers belonging to Santa Cruz, California, plus a serious new charge for jumping bail. This has been a surprising turn of events for the homeless hacktivist, who spent his years first in Canada and then in Mexico issuing press releases, hanging out on Twitter, writing a self-published memoir, appearing in documentaries, and meeting up with journalists like me—all without apparent response from the US government.
All that changed on June 11, when Doyon was arrested by Mexican police. This was confirmed by a press release from the US Attorney for the Northern District of California, where Santa Cruz is located, though no details were provided.
(...) The original DDoS incident in Santa Cruz was relatively minor. It was triggered by a new law affecting the homeless community of which Doyon was a part, and it affected Santa Cruz servers for just 30 minutes. The government claimed only a few thousand dollars in damages for investigation and remediation, but the amount was just enough to clear the $5,000 threshold of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, making the DDoS a federal crime.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @05:59PM
He was part of a homeless community, now he'll have a home.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 17 2021, @06:09PM (8 children)
The author seems to think Interpol's involvement is weird when having the Mexican police catch an American fugitive.
But that's Interpol's entire job!
They're not like some international police force with officers investigating crimes and arresting people. They are an information exchange agency. All they do is shuffle arrest warrants around to countries we have extradition treaties with.
So this is how it's supposed to work: FBI want him, they tell Interpol, Interpol tells the Mexican police.
As for the charges, DDoSing government servers even if you are "only" a script kiddie is a crime and I think this is an appropriate use for the often-inappropriately-used CFAA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @09:37PM (7 children)
/me rolls eyes.
it IS a misdemeanor in any reality! disclosing why and how it can become a CRIME is very close to itself being labeled a crime.
it's not like he took a sledgehammer to the server hardware (crime 'cause destruction of property) or dropped a asteroid from orbit ...
it's like sneaking into governmeng property and wedging a piece of cardboard between the fridge door so it cannot close properly and ices over ...
also not a real crime (since language is arbitrarly and interpreted) but no data was destroyed (as in issuing a command "rm" or "del", in which case it's like removing water from a public toilet).
also, that energy drink case ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @09:40PM
Found the guy with a skeletton in his closet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @10:02PM
ah, also "un-authorized computer access" doesn't included "i can reach it without touching it" or else i would be violating every sign that says "do not touch" since i am "touching it" by looking at it.
stop making shitty laws to scary people and encouraging shitty software and computer system w/ laws that encourage and give blanket protection to shitty software and hardware systems!
this is we'll end up like the aliens in "independence day 1"!
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 17 2021, @10:27PM (4 children)
Disagree.
A DDoS is illegal according to the statutes. I don't care if it's a Government server, Amazon, a homeless shelter for kittens, whatever. We need to ensure that anyone who deliberately floods a system for the express purpose of bringing it offline feels consequences for their actions.
Script kiddies will normally start on small fry before working their way up. If we can provide a real consequence earlier in their 'careers', then hopefully they won't grow up to ransomware hospitals (which has happened a bit in the past couple of years).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @11:54PM (2 children)
Hospitals, pipelines, cities and everyone else who uses Windows deserves everything they get. These scum fund the slavemasters and now whine when they find out they are the slaves too? fuck them. They don't give a shit about their customers' data or future generations who are being locked out of all of technology by the likes of MS, google, apple, facebook, etc.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday June 18 2021, @12:32AM (1 child)
And that girl wearing the short skirt when going out at night? Does she deserve it too?
Don't blame the victim, even if they use Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @01:20AM
Just a short skirt, no.
But if she is lying on her back in an alley with her legs in the air and no knickers on and waving a sign at passersby that says "Windows Freebie" then, maybe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @07:27PM
disagree again.
the problem is the double "d" in ddos attacks.
if you can afford the bandwidth as a single user then unfortunately that's what you can do (single "d").
you have the right to report this perceived abuse to whoever is selling the bandwidth tho (and see if ethics wins over $$$, good luck there!)
however if you makes laws that punish distributed (!) denial-of-service attacks (as a criminal act) then there is a real problem of absolving "commandeered" devices, that is people keep making shitty IOT devices (closed-source, needs mothership, etc etc) and people don't get educated (to secure their internet connected devices).
if it's distributed in the sense that it is not from commandeered devices -aka- bot-net, thus real people using their paid-for connection bandwidth to hammer a site then i would compare it to a "unlicensed demonstration" in the real world ... also not really a crime, at least in democrazy-s ^_^
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday June 17 2021, @06:29PM (6 children)
Perhaps it's petty, or a minor offense. Still he is a DDoS:er, so zero sympathy for him and his cause.
I just quickly scanned the article so I could have missed it but how much time or fine is he facing? I guess it's more since the decided to do a runner for Canada and Mexico. Still it's not like he is Assange or Snowden level of care or infamy. Which I guess explains why it took so long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @08:00PM (3 children)
There should be a law:
You can NOT spend more money to apprehend someone than the cost of their crime itself.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 17 2021, @10:33PM (2 children)
What a ridiculous idea. Your idea would basically give free license to all petty shoplifting. Well done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @11:19PM
San Francisco did that and it's going great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @11:57PM
That is the point. Reducing the "danger" of committing petty crimes reduces the attractiveness of the low-hanging fruit of gateway crime for young people, and not having penalties prevents the redeemable from being pushed into criminal lifestyles due to being branded from a young age. Yes, it also treats the homeless and drug-addicted with more mercy than many think they deserve.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 17 2021, @09:12PM
I wouldn't be terribly surprised, if running from the law gets him 2x the time. Then again, if he knows the right people, he might be able to cut a deal. Assuming, he can provide information on bigger fish.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @11:58PM
did you miss the part where he ddos'd the government? are you fucking retarded? you dumb whores are lucky the people are burning them and you sycophantic zombies alive.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @06:52PM (11 children)
DDoS seems the electronic version of creating a picket line to prevent (temporary replacement) employees or patrons entering e.g., a business. And, even where that is illegal, it doesn't garner the insane prison sentences that the CFAA impose.
Not sure about the original anti-homeless law in Santa Cruz that prompted his protest, but there were a rash of anti-poor people laws around that time across the central coast to northern California. In my city, San Luis Obispo (South of Santa Cruz, with Monterey between us), it was made an arrestable offense (with high fines and vehicle impound fees) to be found sleeping in a vehicle-- this was found unconstitutional, and now it is "just" a $150 fine. In San Francisco, the so called, "sit stand law" made it a crime to sit or stand in one place for too long. Rich folks with a complete lack of empathy have taken over. With average rent for an apartment in my city over $2100/mo. (this after rent reductions during the pandemic) a lot of folks cannot afford housing.
The current war on poor people in my small city involves forcing the homeless out of their encampments, seizing their few possessions, and destroying them. But, at least, they are no longer arresting the homeless during these raids. This is the new more "compassionate" program.
This is all to say, the guy was probably justified in his small protest.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday June 17 2021, @07:45PM (6 children)
I guess that is a difference of opinion. If you want to protest then by all means go stand out cityhall or wherever and make your voice heard, more power to you. But once you start to mess or interfere with the service to others my sympathy for you and your actions drop to less then zero.
A lot of these "anti-poor" actions are quite messed up and they don't really work either, at best they are just moving the problem around. It's not like the local police is sanctioned to send out death squads to "solve the problem", like in some third world countries. I'm not advocating that solution. That they don't arrest them is probably just a sign of how cheap they are -- after all if they arrest the poor people they probably have to contact social services etc and offer help, shelter and feed them. If you just move them along at worst perhaps you can give them a sandwich on the bus. But they'll be back again in at most a few days. The war on poverty is just as bad as the war on drugs and more or less the war on anything. They don't work and/or have very poor results. But it's relatively cheap and it shows that you as a politician are a man-of-action or whatever and the homeless rarely vote.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @08:48PM (2 children)
> If you want to protest then by all means go stand out cityhall or wherever and make your voice heard, more power to you. But once you start to mess or interfere with the service to others my sympathy for you and your actions drop to less then zero.
This would mean that folks are allowed to protest as long as their protest, by definition, has no effect. It could be argued that this is not a right to protest, at all.
The "radical" lefties who got young children out of the factories, reduced the workday from 12 hours to 8 hours and the work week from 7 days to 5, ended chattel slavery, got landless whites, black males, and finally women the right to vote, etc., all inconvenienced others in their struggles. If they hadn't it is a near certainty that they would not have been successful. Their ability to cause "inconvenience" by e.g., withdrawing their labor, is their only power in these relations.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday June 17 2021, @11:02PM (1 child)
There's a difference between withdrawing your labour and preventing others from accessing services (particularly when those services have nothing to do with your labour).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 18 2021, @03:34AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @01:27AM
You could make a free speech argument that a DDOS is like getting a lot of people to stand outside cityhall or wherever chanting together. Get enough of them and it becomes difficult to hear anything else but it is still protected speech.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Friday June 18 2021, @03:58AM (1 child)
So, if it inconveniences you, then it's a crime? Great. That's awesome.
How about the trucker protest some years back, where they drove slowly on their* interstate?
https://abc7ny.com/slow-roll-protest-truck-new-york-traffic/5245311/ [abc7ny.com]
That was a protest. It disrupted traffic. They were protesting their pay, by just about everyone, and showing the importance of their jobs. Was their protest a criminal act, or was it a usage of public lands, paid for by public tax dollars? Or was it a felony?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday June 18 2021, @09:16AM
Who said that? I sure as hell didn't. I never said that it was a crime. Kindly stop making things up to suit your needs.
That said it, protesting of some kind, might be a crime depending on where you are and what you do. But what I said was that my sympathy for you and your action drops to zero. If you consider my opinion as legal decrees then that is up to you. My enforcement of your fantasies will be very low.
I am not familiar with the traffic laws of New York state, but it might have been a crime. Disrupting traffic could be illegal. So could driving really slow. There is not just an upper speed limit, there is sometimes also a lower speed limit. It just rarely gets mentioned.
That things are on public land or paid for with tax dollars mean next to nothing. It's not like I can go into whatever government facility I want, start to use their equipment or drink their coffee and then just claim I paid for this with my tax dollars. So while the road was paid for with tax dollars the part of the road you in that regard paid for is quite small and insignificant. Not to mention good luck in trying to find out which part of the road was paid for by your dollar(s).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday June 17 2021, @08:28PM (1 child)
A DDOS attack effects vastly more people than a real world picket line which is completely local and can be easily managed by law enforcment should the picket line use tactics that threaten or physically block access to the site being picketed. The DDOS attacks on the other can not and can potentially interfere with customers/visitors in other states so it becomes a Federal issue since it could impact interstate commerce.
Add to that that most DDOS attacks are not in the name of some noble cause like wanting better working conditions but plain extortion, harassment, vandalism, etc..
So comparing real life picket lines to DDOS attacks is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, they are both fruit, but beyond that the similarity ends.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @07:36PM
you mean: comparing apples to "digital oranges" that "exist" because of electricity and have zero nutritional value?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @08:49PM
Yep, that's pretty much what happens when ノews run your city. Windfarms for thee, not for me! Affordable housing for thee, not for me! Homeless for thee, gated community for me! Immigration for thee, insular segregation for me!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @10:26PM
I lived in Santa Cruz for a while (yeah for college). I never found homeless people to be a problem. If anything the vast number of RVs and vans containing various deadheads was a deterrent to crime. But their cousins, the tweekers, were absolutely a menace. There was also the vast experiment of Tent City which ended in total failure.
The solution to homelessness is obvious enough -- give them homes. Real estate speculation of course makes it more profitable to leave "luxury" apartments empty than to give them out for free or cheap, and real estate tycoons run this damn state, so it's never going to happen.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @07:14PM (1 child)
-nomsg
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 17 2021, @09:15PM
'heh, that provided a slight chuckle. No mod points left, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 17 2021, @07:16PM (1 child)
I remember downloading that HOIC and playing with it. Never did join the ranks and bombard the assigned targets. I just screwed around with it, targeting random IPs. With my bandwidth at the time, no one would have noticed if I hammered away at the target for months. Dropped that useless toy into the toy bin, and never played with it again.
I'd give him fair odds of beating the charges, except, bail jumpers aren't given much understanding, or leniency.
Oh - moral of the story is: If you're going underground, then go WAY UNDERGROUND!! Hanging around in major cities, publishing your memoirs is not very underground. Osama bin Laden would have had some advice for this youngster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17 2021, @10:08PM
you run from in-justice.
someone here said it's what humans are good at, no education or learning required.
it's what mother nature breed us genetically to do ^_^