Word: hackers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Even more surprising than Wall Street's reaction was how much the hackers had done with so little. The kind of software used for the attack is practically public property. You can download it in the form of programs, or scripts, like Trin00, Tribal Flood Network or the nightmarish-sounding Stacheldraht (German for barbed wire). Each program can accept a kind of plug-in to make it even more adaptable, with names like Stream, Spank or Raped. "These tools have been out there for years," says Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of the hacker journal 2600. "Hackers have known about these...
...hard to find a hacker last week who wasn't in full sneer about the so-called script kiddies--newcomers who would dare commit such ignoble attacks with prefab software. "A lot of us hackers feel insulted, because it's a no-brainer," says Val Koseroski, 32, a self-confessed "old-school" hacker with a wife, a child and a mortgage. "When I was growing up, hacking was about learning how a computer operates. You always tried to push it to the edge. Kids these days, they just want to do any damage they...
...took time. About 50 were used for the Yahoo attack; more were employed in later hits. But once they were selected, activation was simply a matter of uploading bits of code called daemons, similar to viruses, which bided their time in dark corners of these remote networks until the hacker decided it was DOS Day. The attacks appeared to come from them, not him (attacks from multiple sites are hard to pin down in any case). When the "master" activates his daemons, his hands remain unseen. Technically, "the Amazons and Yahoos were not hacked into," notes Simon Perry of security...
There were warning signs. Back in December the FBI and a number of private security firms began detecting countless dormant daemons cropping up on servers across the country. Scan yourselves with detection software, urged the hacker trackers. Evidently not enough sites did. That changed after the attack; downloads of the Feds' scanning tool shot up from 170 on Monday to 4,223 on Thursday...
Case in point: John Vranesevich, founder of hacker-watch website AntiOnline.com seen by many hackers as something of a Benedict Arnold. So loathed is he that AntiOnline is an almost constant target for DOS attacks (in one of its more entertaining features, the site lets you see who's attacking it, and how, in real time). While the Feds were still holding press conferences, AntiOnline had already compiled a perp-profile sheet. The attacks, it says, were committed by a cell of three to six hackers--most likely teenagers, most likely male. "All DOS attacks have been perpetrated by more...