|The|Specialist strikes again...

Well, the notorious |The|Specialist has once again wreaked havoc on AO. Well, not really. But he did have a little fun at Katja's expense.

A few days ago, former (and repetitively banned) member |The|Specialist created an account under the name Katja Bergman. Using this account, he requested that Negative ban Katja's account - which he did apparently w/out question. Tsk, tsk Negative... tsk, tsk. ;)

The Katja Bergman account was effectively banned after |The|Specialist posted a negative comment about a tutorial Gore wrote (surprise, surprise)...

Negative was recently 'enlightened' by |The|Specialist. :D

So - what's to keep this from happening again?? Hopefully wiskic10_5 doesn't show up tomorrow and have this account banned :rolleyes:

The original accountholder should have been contacted for confirmation, IMHO. (No offense to Negative - to err is human)

Now, I'm not one to point fingers or bitch about things on AO... I'm generally a lurker and usually only chime in if I've something constructive (or humorous) to say. But this, my friends, is a tad ridiculous. I mean, I never really cared for Katja, anyway - and I really don't care much about how things are run here on AO. But, since it *is* a computer-security site, let's try to practice what we preach guys...
[Mr. Mackey voice]MMMKAY???[/Mr. Mackey voice]

-wiskic10_4

Well he had everyone fooled *almost* I noticed that "katja" was banned rather quickly i mean here one day gone the next... well at first i thought it was the true katja but then i started noticing differences in "her" style... so i figured out there was an imposter! (sp?) but Katja being the reformed post whore that she is, I thought maybe just maybe she pissed someone off enough to be banned immediately.. I didnt know though... anyway the fake Katja is gone and the real Katja is still here, hoping going to contribute good things to this forum from now on :)

Well, after what had happened, I've sent a suggestion that moderators should be allowed to unban every member who they have banned themselves. That way, when a mod makes a mistake, they can easily undo it again. What amazed me more was that that functionality seems to be missing. :)
It's a good example of social engineering tricks, though. I'd prefer to see TheSpecialist impaled on a wooden stake but still, it shows how easy a hacker can fool even the well-informed specialists.

I wasn't fooled by the imposter, btw. He made far more spelling errors than I do, and his punctuation wasn't perfect either. And he used some 4-letter word which I tend not to use. Haven't you noticed? I don't really use any bad language. :D

Now, let's find a long wooden pole and impale TheSpecialist!...

<edit>Btw, is he back as rioter_au now? This guy seems to dislike gore.</edit>

from #lobby @ irc.unerror.com 10/04/05 04:41 EST, regarding this thread:

<|The|Specialist> someone tell this ******* im what you call a "script-kiddie" and Neg is anything but "well informed"

-wiskic10_4

BTW: rioter_au is *not* |The|Specialist... though I believe he's made this point abundantly clear now...

|The|Specialist = rioter_au :rofl:

On the other hand it would involve a rather long swim across the Pacific Ocean?..................get the chum buckets out blokes, we need to mark a path for him?

Quote:

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What amazed me more was that that functionality seems to be missing

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aaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwww......................the naiivete of youth?.................it is a fact of life that after security, error & exception handling is the next most ignored element of applications design/development.

There is a simple solution, that requires no programming:

When you joined you had to give an e-mail address. A lot of members have an e-mail address in their profile. For a member to "resign" they must either use the e-mail they signed up with, or the one in their profile.

Simple? it is up to you to ensure the security of your e-mail and AO account, and to keep your profile up to date.

Problems with that? then just stop visiting the site, I can assure you that you won't be missed.



:cool:

Quote:

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&lt;edit&gt;Btw, is he back as rioter_au now? This guy seems to dislike gore.&lt;/edit&gt;

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What an understatement.

Well...it's my understanding...or so I've been told/read that the Spec and gore are friends so he was probably just trying to yank gore's chain by those remarks...

and rioter_au would not fit the bill..

I suspect the Spec is [the]pootiepoo

Eg ;)

EDIT: Well..it seems pootiepoo's already been banned so the next in line I would suspect would be...

xTristan102x

Hats of to him to him for an awesome bit of social enginering though!!!

Social engineered a Modeator of a Security Web site into banning someone elses account! Now to me thats funny!!

Poor old negative should be bust to the ranks of AO Newbie!! Only Joking neg!

Funny isn't it how it appears that in spite of all the great talent abound on this site there's no way to stop the Spec from making everyone look like amatuers...

at first the Spec was like a comedy-relief sidekick...good to break up a boring day...lately he's just a pain in the a@@..

it's like he's mocking everyone...

you know...' ha ha you can ban me but you can't stop me ha ha '...

if there was a way to ban him for good he'd likely stop being an a@@ out of fear he wouldn't be able to come back...but...

as things stand he knows there's really nothing anyone can do to stop him...so...he'll keep doing this until there is...

if a security site with security specialists can't stop this kind of activity that doesn't bode very well for anyone else...and I'm sure there's probably more than a few newbies who come here and are not impressed that we can't even clean our own house.

Eg ;)

Yes, he "social engineered" me, if you can even call it that.
He didn't have to "enlighten me", though, Wiski... bragging all over IRC is what did it (bragging that he "owned" Katja's account... and then he was ratted out by about 15 people who he probably calls his friends about 2 minutes after I did it). That, and that the kid takes 2 hours to write 1 single sentence, then takes 2 more hours to edit it, and then still has 40 errors in his posts.

There must be a school holiday somewhere... all them IRC kids feeling the need to point out the obvious again....

Neg~

I still say that as the site requires an e-mail confirmation to join, it should take the same to resign?

Johnno

:)

Nah... I simply should have checked.

Hi Neg,

You'd think someone, somewhere, on the net would have figured out a solution to this problem ( unwelcome returning members ) by now...or have come up with a more secure way to weed out members at sign-up...so new accounts couldn't so easily be made by returning members.

Eg ;)

Because of the Internet there is no way to fully prevent someone from returning. As examples...

• IP banning doesn't work if the person is using a proxy or is coming from an IP Block that may represent more than just them (multiple users ... eg. I know there are many users from Canada using Rogers or Sympatico)
  
  email banning isn't worth it since there are a multitude of ways to get free email accounts
  
  credit card payment can be by-passed with fake/stolen credit cards

Short of a DNA sample, there are always ways to get around it. The trick is to not feed the troll. Don't give him the entertainment factor to want to come back. Once that happens and becomes bored, he'll probably move on. A friend of my uncle's wrote this piece on internet trolls. Rather interesting, IMO.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Negative
Nah... I simply should have checked.

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Yep. :D
But that's the problem with social engineering, is it? Someone makes a request that sounds pretty reasonable at first. You're not the first one to fall for such a trick and neither will you be the last one to fall for it. Still, it's a valuable lesson and except for a little embarrassing moments, no harm was done, right?

Now, can we stop spending more time to this topic? The troll is enjoying all this attention. (And trolls should be impaled on a long, wooden pole. Where's Vlad the Impaler when you need him?)

Bleh, it won't happen again.. I can trust that Negative (like most humans) made a mistake and he probably won't make it again. Everything's fine now, and leaving TheSpecialist to just bullshit childish remarks on IRC is just fine to me.. as long as it doesn't pollute the forums.


That's all I ask... :D

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adams (1952-2001)
author, The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy

Not to attack Negative, but he's not the only general moderator. He's also not going to be here forever... I think a more formal process should be considered. Of course, it's an academic discussion here. Jupiter Media would need to say yay or nay and pursue this.

Although I have never read anything of the specialist or of this current affair, I tend to conclude that (after reading al of this) it is likely that he can (read: will) try again. Its just waiting what he will do next.

Just remember that ©® has done nearly everything I've done here. Hell what he did was mainly over green *.gif and this guy remains here today only because he pleaded with a few mods and you people where dumb enought to go with it. Neg knows I won't bend over for anyone though or kiss his ass. Thats pretty much it.

Yeah Katja... your one to talk about being a troll, you useless sack of crap.

"They seek him here
They seek him there
Those moderators seek him everywhere...............
Is he in heaven, or is he pi$$ed?
That damned elusive Specialist"

With apologies to The Scarlet Pimpernel, Charles Dickens et al.


:D :p

Spec,

I always figured that under all the BS you were a smart guy...but recent events of bumping threads and multiple accounts leads me to believe I was very wrong...

at first you were at least amusing, comical, in a sarcastic kind of way...

now you're just pathetic.

Eg

He can't hear you EG~....................he has gone,

again?

:)

I don't think he's gone forever, nihil. Next time, he might return as katje, nlhil, Egaladelst, g0re or some other name that looks real close to that of a real member. I just think it's best that every member just keeps a close eye on the new member list just to check for suspicious new names in this list. Pathetic losers like spec just don't know when to stop.

Katja: I wouldn't consider him a loser. Immature, yes.. annoying, yes. However, like egal pointed out, he is smart underneath all that bullshit.