Welcome to the adult world. I read with interest your change in direction
piece. As a new reader, I've only seen this more recent side of what you
do, but the other you was necessary or you wouldn't have learned all that
you did.



Actually, I thought you were in your mid 40's, a computer engineer, with a
little spare time on your hands.



I'm glad you are on the "Light" side of the Force.



Colonel Dennis Treece, US Army



Not everyone sees it that way. Keep reading....






I agree that most of the website hacks have been done by so-called "script kiddies", but i think Waging war on hackers is still ridiculous. JP has suceeded in dividing hackers on moral/ethical issues and causing older "wiser" hackers to be too unforgiving to their younger counterparts, forgetting that they likely did the same things when they were young, and instead of realizing that these attacks are not causing any real damage, JP has caused them to take sides and fight each other....thus making the job of law enforcement much easier, and I for one, disagree with this stance. Last week's mailbag contained very little in the way of criticism for antionline. I suspect that this was because little constructive criticism was offered, and I hope more will be forthcoming...



d0wntime



So if you label the hacker that broke into a site a "script kiddie", that
means it's not serious? Not serious in who's eyes? I bet if you called the admins that had
to spend dozens, and in some cases, hundreds, of hours cleaning up the messes left behind after
these instances occure, they'd tell you that it was serious.






Just a quick comment on the Defcon proxy server.

It seems to me that a company like this will only offer this type of service if they can in some way make money off of it. I also know that companies will pay good money to know the web surfing patterns of a particular market segment. I did a quick scan of the proxy website and found no legal privacy statement. They do claim that they do not log user access and the websites that you surf to, but not in any legal terms. So in other words, there is nothing in place to keep Allserve from turning around and selling your supposedly "private" information to the highest bidder. If those "legal" privacy statements even do that in the first place.



That's why I use things like The Lucent Personalized Web Assistant.






I noticed that one of your people was a Navy Cryptologic Technician, as I once was, when they were still called Communications Technicians.



After the N. Koreans had captured the Pueblo, security was improved on all similar ships in the form of (I think) C4 "grenades" which were to sit on top of file cabinets containing classified materials. In the event of imminent capture, they could be fired off, and the would burn down through the classified materials. Once ignited, they couldn't be put out, and would burn through metal like a hot knife through butter. (A ship's hull probably wouldn't stop it either, but we never got any first-hand opportunity to find out to what depths security could be taken (pun intended).



What brought this drastic security measures on was reports that the N. Koreans had reassembled shredded documents. Persistent, yes; impossible, no.



Don't assume that a commercial paper shredder is REALLY securing your confidential information. Your CT will probably tell you that to really destroy documents, they have to be burned, their ashes mixed with water, and disposed of properly.



Thanks for your time.

Paul Sutton



Personally, if anyone wants to spend the time it would take to re-assemble a garbage can full of documents that have been shredded into confettie, they're more than welcome to read anything that had to be said in them. Anyone that has the manpower to accomplish such a feat, would probably have other, less tedious, methods of collecting data from within our offices anyway..






well, i was just thinking about the fbi raids, I dont blame the fbi
whatsoever, but when they come to a house with a search warrent, why is it
that they take everything computer related ?, whats the use of taking
someone's monitor, keyboard, etc etc etc, why don't they just take the hard
drives out of the computers, and any cds/disks, isnt taking the cpu, monitor,
keyboard, etc etc a little like taking the clothes, shoes, car, and gun from
a gang banger, instead of only taking the gun.



-Nick



Well, in actuality, in many cases, they do take the clothes, shoes, and car from the gang banger as well. There's this cool field called "trace evidence analysis" and it doesn't just exist as a method to be used against gang bangers ;-)






Was reading some of the information on your web site and I must say that I
really enjoy it.



My question is related to a link at www.thecodex.com which resolved to
206.67.191.54. As I entered a page on their site, I noticed in IE5 that
they were doing a upload of an image of my C: drive. I quickly disconnected
before the upload could continue. Checked again with another computer and
received the same results. Is this actually what the webmaster is doing,
uploading an image file of my C: drive?



Thanks in advance.

Dan



Nope. What the webmaster is actually doing is running a simple java
script which displays that little ditty in the status line of your browser, in order to
scare the *#%! out of people like yourself =)






JP, do you only post mailbag articles that are favorable to you or that do not outright criticise you?



'Tis a funny thing that in two years every article that I ever submitted here has never been posted in your weekly mailbag. Granted I hvae not submitted many letters however the few that I have submitted have been negative.



Please mature and grow thicker skin for Gods sake.



-Sincerely,

kmart



Blue Light Special In
Aisle 4, canned ham. It's not that your letters were critical to me, everyone who reads the mailbag knows that I post a lot of those. It's that your letters never had any point, and weren't worth my reader's bandwidth to post =) But, just to piss you off a little more, keep reading....






Let me begin with the usual kudos: Fantastic job JP...



I think you're taking the exact right stand, joining the "war" against the malicious (h/cr)ackers. I've been following the news from both sides, from AntiOnline as well as from Attrition.org... and I must say I believe you're in the right. As a so-called "white hat" security professional for UMB Bank (http://www.umb.com) myself, I spend much of my time securing mission-critical parts of our web servers, online banking servers, etc. I have always depended upon AntiOnline as a great source for security news as well as updates on the latest exploits. I think it's great that you are willing to put yourself even further on out on the "front lines", no longer just reporting on the "bad guys", but actually taking an active roll helping the "good guys". I know you're taking a lot of flak on this issue from various members of the online press, but I just wanted to send my words of encouragement, and tell you to keep on "fighting the good fight".



Oh, and the other real reason for me writing: on the new "Fight Back" section, it's great that you put on the front page that it's been updated, but it'd be really nice to have some sort of "new" indicator on the actual /fight-back/ page, indicating which of the articles is actually new. Or perhaps a date field by each href, stating the date it was added. That would make it much easier for daily readers such as myself to pickup the new additions, and ensure nothing is missed



Thanks again for a kickass site JP...



Jedinite



Yeah, we've had several people write in asking us to date our Fight-Back section. We'll be starting to use that process this week.






Grim Submitted The Following:



After your response to all the accusations from attrition.org and went and read all the crap including the errata page.



What a bunch of losers. Some of the "proof" they have does look incriminating, but it's just scraps of emails littered with "[snip]"'s. For all we know the missing parts of the email are stuff like "ha ha.. just kidding".



The fact that they cut up every article you publish just proves that they have way too much time on their hands. Sounds to me like they are suffering from an extreme case of jealousy. Their tactics for competition should be to improve their own site instead of wasting time trying to bash your site.



Keep up the good work.



P.S.

Just curious, how many Antionline supporters have you lost because of all this, if any?



None that I know of. It's made the people that hated me before, hate me even more, and the people who liked what I stood for, respect me even more. I think even
the proverbial scarecrow could see right through that libelous hogwash.






Regarding the letter to your readers about the allegations
of funding a couple of hacks....What a load of CRAP !!!



I for one am glad to hear that AntiOnline continues to
be a leader and not a follower in the whole scene, and
will continue to support and be a frequent visitor of this
site.



As for the two losers Brian Martin and Erik Ginorio who
are trying to bash your people and site. They should get
what they deserve for doing stupid things to begin with.
(A nice square block cell with a butt-buddy roommate)
Maybe we could submit them for an honorable mention for a
Darwin award. Heh heh



They know two things.....JACK and ****



Thanks, John, and keep up the GREAT work.

- Geoff Hannam



Wake up and piss, the world is on fire! (told you last week
I'd find someplace to use that line, hahaha).






Hi JP,



I read the article about the smart cards in the DOD. I also have been tracking that for a while now my self. I'm a marine at Camp LeJeune, NC. As it may seem at the first sight it looks like it's a great idea, it sure would replace all this different cards i'm carying around such us meal, weapons, id and so on. But at the same time we know the reality. That would mean almost total control of where one is at or have been. The subject of accounting for every marine even in the samll units such us on squad/team level is important. Some people like to skate(take a break on their own and be somewhere without the higher chain of command's knowledge). What I'm simply trying to say is that there are advantages and disadvantages to this thing. As most people in the military, they won't have a problem accepting it just like the ANTHRAX shots which are not so good after all.



Serving this country proud.

- Marine

KEEP UP THE GOOD JOB MAN.






You really ought to spend a few bucks on a good lawyer and sue Brian Martin for
libel.



Regards,



Chuck Schneider