
A telescope fan sabotaged an astronomy forum. He ended up in prison (2018) - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/10/18131024/ddos-attack-telescope-forum-cfaa-prison
======
blantonl
While the sentence of 26 months does seem extreme, never underestimate the
lengths a scorned online community member will go to get retribution for being
banned or moderated.

I own and operate a community that specializes in radio communications
technologies, and I've actually had an instance of a member who we banned who
threatened me personally and my family by trawling through property tax
records to find out personal info, photoshopped pictures of my family, and
registered tons of accounts through proxies and VPNs to harass our staff and
moderators. Because of the detailed, targeted threats (like specifically
threatening my wife and children by name) I went to the police. They ended up
simply calling him on the phone to try to get to the bottom of the entire saga
and he strongly apologized (through the police, they told him to not even
think about contacting me). It was as if he finally realized the severity of
his actions, only when law enforcement got involved. But it was actually
pretty scary because of the targeted detailed aspects of how he exacted
retribution.

I think the vast majority of these types of issues are mental health related.
But it seems like an especially acute problem for niche businesses and
communities. The time and effort it caused me to exert made me so upset that I
would have cheered a 26 month prison sentence just to make an example out of
the guy, but law enforcement encouraged me to just move on.

~~~
DoubleGlazing
I experienced something very similar. I was living in the UK and was asked to
help admin a local forum. It only had around 3000 users, but it was very
active. There was one fellow who kept posting long rambling rants about all
sorts, conspiracy theories, espousing racist views, taking pleasure in mocking
members who lost a relative etc. After repeatedly banning him we got a plugin
to make him invisible to everyone bar mods and admins.

He kept posting his long angry rants for a year before he realised what was
going on. To say he was upset would be an understatement. I'm sure he tried to
track down the site owners and admins, but we were very careful to maintain
anonymity. So he went after regular members, he managed to figure out where
some of them lived and worked by analysing their posting. One day he posted
the names and address of a lot of the forums top posters.

Of course at that point the police were called in. The guy was tracked down
via his IP address, he made no attempt to hide his activities. We did send
occasional abuse reports to his ISP before this happened and they were always
ignored.

He was charged with harassment and ended up with 100 hours of community
service and a £150 fine. A pitifully small punishment given the fear he caused
and that he did not show any remorse. If anything he seemed annoyed that he
got caught. Apparently, in his first Police interview he argued that he was
merely exercising his right to freedom of speech and was surprised when the
police told him that such a right did not exist in the UK.

Some people have anger issues, some people have real mean streaks. Forums
attract these kind and can encourage them to act their worst. If someone goes
too far and starts to make people feel personally threatened or tries to ruin
a business then I don't see the problem with them facing a severe penalty when
caught.

~~~
mannykannot
The "freedom of speech" excuse bugs me when it is used in cases like this.
Regardless of what the law is in various jurisdictions, the principle of free
speech does not entitle anyone to an audience, and certainly not to harass
people in order to hijack one.

~~~
Zaak
> the principle of free speech does not entitle anyone to an audience

Indeed. My response in such situations is, you can say what you want, but
you'll need to get your own printing press, you can't use mine.

He had no leg to stand on, using someone else's resources to say things they
didn't want said.

------
filleokus
I think the only case of DDOS attacks resulting in a prosecution and later
sentencing here in Sweden was when a 16 year old took down the websites of our
two biggest banks.

The maximum sentence was apparently 6 months, but since he was a minor he got
140 hours of community service [1].

I'm not saying our legislation is more appropriate, but always fascinating to
see the difference in sentencing between the US and here (and I guess most
European countries). 26 months seems somewhat excessive.

[1]:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dagensjuridik.se%2F2017%2F12%2Ffallande-
dom-i-dataintrangsmal-tonaring-slog-ut-nordeas-och-swedbanks-hemsidor)

~~~
n0mad01
and of course, there is no connection between sentencing and privatized
prisons

~~~
maxxxxx
Only a small percentage of prisons are private so I don’t believe this plays
much of a role. In the end US society just likes to punish people and to be
“tough”.

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lsllc
He obviously wasn't wealthy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H remorseful enough:

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-felicity-
huffman-c...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-felicity-huffman-
college-admissions-scandal-prison-home-20190420-story.html)

IDK, maybe incitement to DDOS is worse than bribery, fraud, tax evasion and
money laundering? (not to mention robbing hard working students from their
well earned college spots).

~~~
mannykannot
These sort of comparisons are not generally very insightful, but for balance:
"[Bieler's] father — the company’s founder — had gone to the hospital with
cardiac problems from the stress."

And if Goodyear was genuinely remorseful, then he made a mistake in trying to
pass off a pattern of abusive behavior, that included threats, as a momentary
lapse.

The Bielers appear to be paragons of forgiveness. Perhaps there is something
about Goodyear that did not come out in the article.

~~~
lsllc
Fair enough, but the general commentary in this thread was about the
excessiveness of the 26 month sentence; I think the comparison is valid since
it illustrates the lack of fairness and obvious influence of wealth &
connections in our justice system.

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phkahler
Why didn't they (also) go after the site he solicited the DDoS attack from? Or
was it just a bunch of people causing problems for them and not a single
person initiating technical measures?

~~~
simonh
The people running the forum probably had nothing to do with he attack, and
there would be no way to know which members of the forum decided to act. The
only way to do it would be to somehow trace back the DDOS traffic and un-pick
the network and people running it, but even then DDOS networks are often
themselves fairly insecure and often taken over by different hackers for
various purposes.

------
NelsonMinar
Cloudy Nights is one of the Good Places on the Internet. An intense, expert-
but-amateur community of enthusiasts sharing a wholesome interest. The
software is kinda old fashioned and unique, they've been around since the year
2000, but that adds to the charm. It is _the_ place to go if you want to
connect to a community and its wisdom and knowledge built up over the years.

I don't know what an appropriate penalty is for vandalizing a place like that,
but I'm glad there is one.

~~~
throw0101a
> _An intense, expert-but-amateur community of enthusiasts sharing a wholesome
> interest._

It regularly happens that 'enthusiasts' are sometimes more knowledgeable about
a subject matter than the 'careerists'.

------
modzu
it's interesting to think about this case from the perspective of the banned
user being right, morally, if not legally. what if?

as our social circles are increasingly connected, being "banished" from them
may not be a trivial matter. what is the cost of this to the individual? well
to be specific here for a moment, cloudynights is the premier amateur
astronomy forum. so for an _astronomer_ , being cut off from that community
may be quite significant. imagine a programmer cut off from google or stack
overflow or github. we have to remember that these communities exist and are
profitable because they are doing something; it's not very easy to quantify
the value they provide to an individual in the same way the owner of the forum
can simply count up the lost revenue in terms of the number of ad clicks. but
that doesn't mean there isn't a value and consequently a cost associated with
losing it.

so our user is banned and it has an impact. intuitively it still seems that it
doesn't justify attacking the platform. you should at least seek remediation
first, right? maybe there is an appeal process. but what if there isnt?
increasingly, there is not. as platforms "scale up" they are increasingly
automated, with dark patterns consciously baked in from the get-go. the
platform can make its own terms. don't like them? go away.

that was ok before the internet became a neccessity to function in modern
society. it's not ok anymore, and we need to recognize that people are going
to fall through the cracks. pretty normal people who matter just as much as
anyone else.

from what i've read, this kid does not deserve to rot in a cell for years.
it's going to get worse before it gets better.

------
0815test
Tl;dr, the "fan" didn't directly "sabotage" anything, but he did post on a
blackhat forum asking for a ddos attack on the site - and things got out of
hand, putting the site owner's small business at risk. The criminal sentence
is harsh but dude's still a huge asshat, he should have been dragged into
court and forced to pay punitive damages to the forum owner. Make him give up
his nice telescope collection, since he doesn't seem to care all that much
about astronomy anyway.

~~~
frosted-flakes
He _was_ forced to pay punitive damages. $27352 in restitution, in addition to
a $2500 fine and the 26 month prison sentence.

~~~
0815test
$30k in total? That's peanuts for the overall harm he caused, either willfully
or recklessly.

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Golfkid2Gadfly
He wanted the website dead, he essentially put a hit out on the website, just
without any monetary rewards and no follow up. He did this because his was
upset at the moderators for not tolerating his inappropriate behavior. While
it doesn’t deal with murder, it’s like some news articles you read about
people posting on Craigslist to have someone take out their ex, for which they
get prison time.

~~~
NullPrefix
>moderators for not tolerating his inappropriate behavior

Going to need a source on that statement.

~~~
notahacker
Try reading the article

'Goodyear had been a regular visitor until 2013 when he was banned for — as he
put it — “mouthing off” to moderators. (Court documents paint a darker
picture, saying he followed up with a threatening message “asking to fight”
one of them.)'

