To Evil!
by Danny O'Brien

You don't get to where I am today - sole arbiter of good and evil in the open
source world, I know, yes, cheers, thanks - without a sizeable degree of
pompous self-righteousness. That's why the first nomination for evil this
month has to be:

Whoever Hacked SCO This Time Around

Disgusting. These so-called "hackers" - and frankly, these brats aren't true hackers; they're no more than "script kiddies" - are simply playing into SCO's hands. All morality revolves around respect for private property, and this childish action, by invading the inner sanctum of SCO's rackspace, does harm to us all.

Oh yes. I think I've made my opinion very clear on this matter. And if I haven't, I've written a cronjobbed script that posts that very comment, several times, to every Linux discussion forum any time moment SCO gets hacked.

I'm sure whatever perverse pleasure these adolescent pranksters get must be firmly soured by the sharp blast of damaging publicity I give them. Not to mention the disdainful coverage their shameful actions have gathered at Newsforge, Slashdot, The Inquirer, Linux Weekly News, Netcraft and Heise Online. They must be spitting blood at such exposure. [We're guilty too - Ed.]

Thinking about it, I'm actually rather glad that SCO gets hacked so often. It gives me and many others a perfect opportunity to highlight how evil crackers are, with the not unpleasant side-effect of establishing ourselves as the moral paragons.

So, well done, crackers! Punishment withheld!

Candidate Two: The People Who Launch Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attacks

We all know there's only one group worse than a web site defacer, and that's those hackers who conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks against their enemies.

But Not Lycos

Unless, of course, it's Lycos' recent not-denial-of-service screensaver network. Which attacks spammers, and is therefore good.

Ah, if only they all problems could be solved this way. Perhaps, instead they of spammers, they could point it at SCO's website and then...

No, no! What am I saying?

No, they should just stick to stealing spammers' bandwidth.

Well, the bandwidth of spammers, suspected spammers, and everyone providing net connectivity between the screensaver and the spammer.

Hmm.

Candidate Three: Okay, maybe Lycos a bit

Except: wasn't Lycos' own site a target of a script kiddy web defacement? Despicable!

Suddenly, my sympathies are back with Lycos.

Candidate Four: Whoever Hacked The Lycos Site

You know what I think? I think these so-called "hackers" - and frankly, these brats aren't true hackers, they're no more than "script kiddies" - are simply playing into Lycos's hands. All morality revolves -

Hold on - according to Lycos' marketing department, the defacement never happened.

They're reported as saying that screenshots of Lycos' hacked site were fakes generated by the spammers.

Outrageous!

Candidate Five: Spammers Who Fake Hacking The Lycos Site

You know what I think? I think we should support Lycos battling these so-called "script kiddies" - and frankly, these brats aren't true "script kiddies", they're no more than "photoshop operators" -

Wait.

That's odd. If it was faked email, why have all these people seen the same message?

And why has Lycos, guardian of all that is good, now decided to withdraw their
screensaver completely?

What's going on here?

Candidate Six: Lycos, Who Maybe Faked That That They Definitely Knew That

Someone Perhaps Faked Hacking The Lycos Site And Then Stopped doing Anything At All

You know, this is exactly the kind of fuddy-duddy "shades of gray" fiasco that this column despises.

This whole spam/anti-spam thing is an ethical minefield. Until somebody decides to be a man and be definitively despicable, no-one's getting an Ultimate Evil prize from me.

Candidate Seven: The Spammer Who Got A Prison Sentence

Well, this is more bloody like it:

Jeremy D. Jaynes, a Virginia resident who sent out a stream of unsolicited e-mail scams using 16 T-1 lines, was convicted this month on three counts of sending e-mail with fraudulent information.

He's the first spammer to be so unambiguously nasty in the eyes of the law that the the jury recommended nine years' prison time. The judge will decide the true sentence in February.

No defacements or DDoSes, no moral righteousness or silly names. Just a man who broke the ethical rules of the Net and the law of his land, and - it sounds like - will pay the price.

It's evil, but it's evil put in its place. And that's the kind of evil we're happy to reward. Jeremy: you're this month's embodiment of the spirit of bad. For shame, Mr Jaynes, for shame!

Somebody done you wrong? Mail 2evil@osdir.com with names and category of wrong-done-ing, and your assailant could win a valuable punishment gift.

Danny O'Brien is the co-editor of NTK incarnate.

To Evil! appears monthly.