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A case of poetic justice if I've ever seen one.

I love it how every computer criminal now calls himself "security researcher". Muggers should start calling themselves "personal security researchers" and burglars should be "house security researchers".

Careful. This sentiment has also been used in the other direction, to suggest that people who inspect software for vulnerabilities, including software they've downloaded and run or purchased on hardware, are themselves epsilon from criminals.

There is a world of difference between downloading and testing for bugs and selling "cheap DDoS, bypass DDoS protection". One does not need to be extra careful to see one apart from the other, former is research, latter is lowlife criminal.

One person could do both, but usually people that excel at one rarely also excel at another. There are some "mad scientists", but usually if a person is selling DDoS his "research" benefits only one person - himself, and harms all the rest.

I'm just leery of attempts to redefine "security researcher" into deviance, since that's been a problem for my field for about 20 years now.

I think the legit researchers should be the first ones to take an effort to disassociate themselves from the types like this one. And not only by passively reminding "other types exist too" but by actively excluding criminals from their midst and being intolerant to such behavior. Offtopic for this discussion, I presume, but if we already ventured there...

At some point, it just becomes a matter of which color hat the person feels like wearing at the time.

Is it like saying if you rob somebody yesterday and don't rob anybody today, you're not a criminal anymore - you just wore a "criminal hat" yesterday? I don't think it works this way.

He does, and his service does as it claims.

I manage a school network and despite our ISP provided "DDOS Protected" IPs a single student with a spare $12 was able to keep us down for a week using that service.

Screw that guy.

Yeah. What an asshole. Almost makes me want to hijack his Skype account.

on the one hand. Ouch.

but on the other, I have to salute that clever little anarchist bastard you have over there.

Paying couple of bucks to a criminal to wreak havoc on school network is not really "clever". Not more "clever" than giving some drug addict money to beat up a teacher that was too strict, on his opinion or pooping in a bag, leaving it on a teacher's porch, lighting it on fire and ringing the bell..

This is plain and simple vandalism, and should be treated as such, not congratulating the delinquent-in-making on being clever. If he wanted to be clever, he could build some useful software for the school and opensource it so other schools could use it too. That would be clever, this one is just malicious.

Hmm. All good points.

Wouldn't it be wonderful of kids were actually just responsible adults, only smaller?

Why did that sound so horrible all of a sudden?

I think you hidden your point a little too well. If you tried to say that kids are not adults, I agree, but that makes telling them when they are wrong even more important, instead of encouraging them to be "clever" in such ways. When they make a mistake, it should be recognized as such, not treated as "yet another wonderful expression of their creativity and free spirit".

Kids are going to make trouble. Sure trouble is trouble, and we can sit here and decry how horrible it is, but it's their nature.

Kids need structure, they won't follow it. Sure that's a waste, and we can sit here and decry how short sighted it is, but it's their nature.

Some kids are more rambunctious than others. Sure that needs to be addressed, and we can sit here and decry how difficult that kid is making it on everyone, but it's their nature.

Does there ever come a point where we can just appreciate nature? I don't have to deal with the little shit, so I'm fine just watching the flowers bloom.

Make him sysadmin. That was the only way me and my classmates were reigned in while in high school.

>Make him sysadmin.

Thereby incentivizing this behavior? I think not. Next thing you know, he'll imagegrab each and every mail account belonging to a female student.