Student accused of trying to crash school's computer system

[nihil]

al1~

Shows how good school computers are.

That comment is irrelevant. This is a public site that anyone can find and access. If you are open to the public you are very vulnerable to a DoS attack.

Your only real defence is to have sufficient resource to handle the traffic. Even Microsoft's update servers creak when a new security patch comes out.

You don't spend masses of money on that kind of set-up, you just take the site down and deploy the forces of darkness to deal with the little toe-rags causing the problem. That is exactly what they have done here.

[IKnowNot]

I am not seeing this at all .........

The kid set up a web page, set up a link to a school page, then told people to hit the refresh button once there?

Is that correct?

I don't think the news properly reported this, nor did the authorities properly handle this.

If this thinking is correct:

If the Democratic Chair advised all constituents view whitehouse.gov at a certain time of day, on a certain day of the month they would be guilty of a crime?

What about all the people who participated? Wouldn't they be equally guilty, if not more so?

And what about nihil ?????

He posted a link to their site, which will be viewed by thousands, possibly clicked on, causing even more stress on the school systems.

And JM for hosting the site that allowed nihil to post the link publically?

This was not a bot, not something that intruded on other systems to perform a DOS attack, it was a link to a site and a suggestion that they refresh.

Socially Engineered Ddos ? Probably.

But what specific crime did this person commit? What school regulation did they violate?

Playing on the stupidity of others?

< insert comment here >

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know it is not a crime to be stupid!

The poll is irrelevant as it asks opinions based solely on the news accounts and not on actual facts or laws or regulations which pertain to the incident.

.

[pinkocommie]

glad none of my old actions made the news.. Our school was lax on security.. needless to say, it was fun and easy to control the cmos, on every machine in the "library." None would boot for weeks, reformatting ensued, and er0k went scott free, as I volunteered to "help" the admins. idiots. I didn't do anything that a half-assed retard couldn't have done, but, in relation to this article, i feel for the kid. I used to dick around with the school's server constantly, running bzflag servers off of it, etc, and putting up posters around the school to get people to logon, again needless to say, I ran into a bunch of trouble. I think its bullshit that they are prosecuting the kid. OMG computers are crashed for a few hours! Kick the ****er out of school, but jesus christ send him to prison? I doubt very seriously they will.. Anyway im drunk and ranting and hate cops.

[nihil]

IKnowNot

If the Democratic Chair advised all constituents view whitehouse.gov at a certain time of day, on a certain day of the month they would be guilty of a crime?

Yes, conspiracy and incitement to commit a crime

What about all the people who participated? Wouldn't they be equally guilty, if not more so?

Indeed they would This is just a "catch the ringleader" exercise...............I would imagine that there are a few pouting anal sphincters in Ohio right now. The others will doubtless crack under interrogation, and turn state's evidence against him?

He posted a link to their site, which will be viewed by thousands, possibly clicked on, causing even more stress on the school systems.

The site is in the public domain....................so that is their problem. If I had incited a DoS attack, it would be my problem. Anyway, they have a spare server

This was not a bot, not something that intruded on other systems to perform a DOS attack, it was a link to a site and a suggestion that they refresh.

You are actually talking about two distinct crimes there. One to intrude onto a system and turn it into a bot; two to launch a DoS attack (by whatever means).

But what specific crime did this person commit? What school regulation did they violate?

That would obviously depend on your Federal and local legislation, but the Prosecutor's office/DA would not have let it get that far unless there was a very good case to answer. I would also imagine that the accused is a minor (he wasn't named) so they would be especially careful.

As for school regulations, I am not sure that they apply, as the attack appears to have been external, and outside their jurisdiction.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know it is not a crime to be stupid!

Once again, that would depend on your local legislation, but over here (and in most other places) it is a fundamental tenet that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law"

[rapier57]

I voted for throwing the dummass in jail. Point being, system attacked was a publicly owned system. No sympathy from this quarter. Also, talking to mummy just doesn't work. Chances are mummy (or daddums) is the problem. At least, that's been my experience. Ya got a post for a kid, yer probably a post yer'self. (i.e.; post=fencepost; fencepost=dumb as).

jm is a man after me own heart. Small bits to start with. Works for me.

[IKnowNot]

As far as conspiracy goes, who did he conspire with? All those people who viewed his site and followed his instructions?

If the kid had posted a bat file for everyone to download with instructions that everyone run it at the same time my opinion would be different. Or if the URL was specially crafted such as to cause a php error and loop. But from what I read this was not the case.

This is more akin to everyone talking at a public meeting and not allowing a politician to speak. As long as no one does anything out the ordinary and it doesn't get out of hand, everyone is doing what they have a legal right to do.