OT: The FBI Hacked My Computer

[Puke]

heh. i heard an anicdote recently about an englishman visiting one of the southern states and making the faux pas of refering to someone as a 'Yank.'

Some of the good-old-boys are still a bit bent out of shape about the outcome of our civil war, you see. as the story has already degraded to a tertiary account, i will leave details to your imagination.

in any event, our federal agencies have been encouraged to take new measures but, as far as i know they have not been granted any wartime powers. indeed Grazic, your knowledge of US government agencies is commendable. the FBI is responsible for investigating interstate crime, and the CIA is responsible for toppling smaller governments that we dont like.

I myself know next to nothing about the AIC, or NOSIC. although NOSIC has a really cool logo.

[ZeroAdunn]

The FBI isn't above the law? News to me. People seem to think the government worries about "laws"

This report is probably not fake. It is probably a hacker messing with someone. Trust me, me and my friends used to do this kind of stuff all the time. Not to this extent, but still similar things.

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"This hacking of a person’s computer is illegal. To "search" someone’s computer without a search warrant is a clear violation of that persons constitutional rights. So I say he is full of it. Believe him if you want, but understand this, even the FBI isn't above the law."

heh. Sorry, but you might be wrong on this point. There's a bill that was introduced in Congress to let *record companies* do exactly that. If Congress will let RIAA hack into people's computers.. the FBI isn't fare behind.

Phoenix-D

Even if it did pass congress, that doesn't necessarily make it constitutional.

[Growltigga]

Greetings to everybody on this forum. I am 'the guy in Africa' you are referring to (using my cunning alias of 'Growltigga') and if you all wish to send me your money, please do so.

I will accept cheques send to 'The Guy in Africa Appeal' at Bank of Mombasa, 20 Broad Street, Monrovia, Liberia or you can telepgrahically transfer cash to me at SWIFT number 733-435-654, sort code 20-00-03-043

Of course, all the major religions on this planet advocate the joy of giving so if you give to me, your karma will be such that I am sure each of you will get a million

[Trajan]

<Trajan get's out his checkbook and begins filling it in....>

Pay to the order of Growlti......

!Wait a minute...I smell somthing fishy about this. Is the FBI or CIA involved watching me as I write this?

<Trajan rips up the check and goes back to work.>

There is a product called "Overkill" that a chap at my former company developed. It is little more than a huge number of Harddrives run by a old low-rent pentium chip system that simply crawls the internet grunging all information it can find on information security, from BBS's chatting, web pages, and anything else it can find. It stores it all on those numerous harddrives then indexes it so that all of the information is searchable. Before I left the company the data was so enormous that it was unable to be indexed every day. I suspect that it has been upgraded by now though I bet it is still mostly unusable. The company had no idea what to do with it. We used it internally as a research tool but could never really productize it appropriately. THere were just far too many legitamitacy issues surrounding it. I know that when the FBi would come to our office seeking information on some particular hacker we would let them peruse the database to their hearts content.

Keep in mind that this thing only tracked Online conversation (of any form). Nothing on any persons home networks or desktop machine was ever captured. It was a cool tool, but utterly useless for anything other than research.

Cheers!
Trajan

[disabled]

The sad part is, people are taken in by these scams (fortunately this one helps some smaller companies).

I recall that 4 nigerians and an egyptian was arrested recently for convincing like 400 people to turn over thier bank account numbers then they promptly cleaned out thier life savings!

[DirectorTsaarx]

Atrocities: where did the original message come from?

Just a word of warning to everyone - Zero's right, it's likely a hacker (or group of hackers) messing with someone. Given the usual origin of "illegal" software, it should surprise no-one that many warez Boards are run by hackers; it should also surprise no-one that some of those warez Boards are run more to find new victims for those same hackers than to distribute software. There may be a few Robin Hoods out there trying to steal from the rich (software companies) and give to the poor (private citizens), but there are many more "Robbing Hoods" looking to steal from everyone & give to themselves...

So the original post could be some wannabe who talked a good game on the 'Boards, bragging about his "pirated" software, and some real hackers decided to take him down a peg; or it could be a typical naive user who visited the wrong 'warez site to find "no-CD programs" and how to prevent WinXP from calling the mothership.

Or it could just be a scam sent out by a company looking to sell a new program that's intended to prevent these supposed scans. I recently read about something like that, but I forget where...