[Noisebridge-discuss] [DRAMA] Re: ron you are a troll

Ronald Cotoni setient at gmail.com
Mon Apr 23 20:53:26 UTC 2012


So here is what was discussed privately before this went to the list from
me:

Jake,

This is a really strange email from you and completely out of the norm.  I
double and triple check the headers.  It is really you.  What would make
you all of the sudden send an email like this?  This is a pretty
unexcellent email to the noisebridge discuss list since I am sure those
spammers google for that email address, the second yahoo.com one.
 Regardless, I am going to answer your question about my dealings with the
FBI.  I would suggest reading  http://www.reverse.net/operationcyberslam.pdf .
 This is the actual criminal complaint.  The people arrested were the DDOS
mafia see:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ddos+mafia .

Basically some kid on irc was stealing my friends nickname.  I just said
hey can you give it back since it was just a bot.  They responded by
ddosing my shell.  So I went in on another shell and called them a kiddie.
 They did it again.  All in all, they got 5 or so of my shells.  They also
hit my home internet connection.  Total bandwidth towards me and all my
machiens was ~500 mbit which was a lot back then.  Anywho, this continued
on for a month.  At the end, they got arrested like a year later or
something, foonet(the colocation provider/bulletproof hosting that was
partially behidnt his) got raided and I got perma banned from comcast
internet at my parents house for running a server(apparently when they were
ddosing me, they pegged the router for my subnet).  It was a very very
unpleasant experience.

For a quick background if you don't want to click the above links, they
were blackmailing people.  They would ddos people and say HEY WE CAN HOST
YOUR SITE AND HANDLE THESE "DDOS" ATTACKS, because they were the ones doing
the ddos.  I didn't know this at the time but they were just being kiddies.
 The ones that give hackers a bad name.  This email also didn't go to the
noisebridge discuss list, since you cced it.  It is stuck in moderation and
I would hope you would leave it there since it is pretty clear I was a big
victim.  I hope this answers your questions.

And here is his response:


Hi Ron,

I wasn't trying to be unexcellent, i thought you self-identified as a
"troll" and I was handing you the email address of some scammers hoping you
would want to have a little fun at their expense.  The email address I
included in my message would have been changed to kathykulmer
atyahoo.com automatically
by the list server, but even if it hadn't i can't imagine the scammers,
upon finding it in a google search, would decide to take on a whole
hackerspace community if they could just ignore it.

as for my last sentence about talking with the FBI, it was the result of a
quick google search on your name to make sure I was writing to the right
ron.  I was surprised by it and, while I understand what you're telling me
about what went down, I am generally not one to want to do the FBI's job
for them if I can help it, and I thought (and still think) it was a valid
question.

I will leave it to the moderators to decide whether to post my message or
hold it up.  If you are the moderator who is holding it up, I think you
should discuss it with the other moderators and effectively recuse yourself
from the decision because while i'm not trying to go after you for
something that happened in 2003, I think it is an important topic for
people to discuss in the community we're all a part of.  This stuff didn't
stop happening after operation cyberslam and i'm sure if you had been more
prepared at that time by public discussions with more experienced people,
you might have done things differently.

what do you think of that?

-jake

by the way, I have been in the hotseat with cops and three-letter types and
asked to provide names and information on other people, and I held out, so
i'm not speaking from zero experience.

I have nothing to hide here.  The decision I made was not easy.  It was
basically the fact that these individuals that were attacking my friends
machines as well as my own.  I spent considerable time talking to the
sysadmins of the other machines being attacked.  One of them decided to
contact the FBI and I decided I wanted the "hackers"(read as script
kiddies) to stop bugging me.  As far as being a self addressed troll, that
is more in jest.  Ask the people at noisebridge who actually spend time
with me.  They know I am just a nice guy who likes to help.  I try not to
cause harm to anyone emotionally or physically.  It caused financial harm
to some of them and other machines that I went through got evicted from
their colo facilities.   Sometimes, believe it or not, the government and
us hackers have a common enemy (people that made the term hacker have
negative connotations).  They made legitimate people doing cool things look
like bad people.  Finally that is starting to change.  We should be doing
more shunning of these people and purge them from our midst so we can get
back to doing cool things.

This is the second time a valued noisebridge member has been unexcellent to
me, even if you do not think it was.  I do not see how this is relevant at
all to anything noisebridge or hacking related.  If you want to have a
little fun at their expense, figure out who they are and send them a box of
AOL cd's.   I have nothing to hide at all ever from anyone.

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Matt Joyce <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:

> Same reason you did jake.
>
> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 4:41 AM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
> > ron you are a troll
> >
> > now make yourself useful and troll this scammer, below.
> >
> > email them at the reply-to address, not the ****** address (****** is a
> real
> > person who does not need any more hassle)
> >
> > just be like, "oh no Kathy, what can i do to help?"
> >
> > if you need tips, go to 419eater.com
> >
> > by the way, why did you talk to the FBI on March 7, 2003?
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 03:57:29 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: kathy ****** <kathy******@yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: kathykulmer at yahoo.com
> > To: undisclosed recipients:  ;
> > Subject: Philippine Trip : Kathy ******
> >
> > I am writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down here to
> > Manila,Philippine with my Family for a short vacation unfortunately we
> were
> > mugged and robbed at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all
> cash,credit
> > card and cell were stolen off us  but luckily for us we still have our
> lives
> > and passport saved .
> >
> > We've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping
> issues
> > at all and our flight  leaves in less than 5hrs from now but we are
> having
> > problems settling the hotel bills  and the hotel  manager won't let us
> leave
> > until we settle the bills about ($1,950 USD) Can you help us out,Get
> back to
> > immediately to let you know the easiest way to get the fund to us or How
> > much can you help with?
> >
> > We are  freaked out at the moment.
> >
> > Regrads,
> > Kathy
> > _______________________________________________
> > Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> > Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> >
>



-- 
Ronald Cotoni
Systems Engineer
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