Yeah yeah, I know… I’m late.  So sue me.  I was actually considering skipping this whole thing, and moving right into a different post all together, but instead I decided to just put it up anyway, and move on.

That’s my new way of life.  Something goes wrong, just move on.  It’s what got me to here, and it’s working out well so far. 

So, here we go.  My list of things I learned through 2007.

What have I learned this year?

• Greyhound sucks.  There is a reason it’s so cheap… that’s the only way someone would willingly spend more than 10 minutes on one of their busses.  Personally though, I don’t think it balances out.
• The best relationship is the one that you never really notice is there until it smacks you right in the face.
• Laying Linoleum sucks… especially when you are very limited in your supply and operating under a "learn as you go" method.
• "Home" isn’t always the place you live.  "Home" is the place you feel you belong.
• New Orleans rawks, and yes, Jino, Donna, Tony and Gail really are as cool in person as they are on the board.
• If someone acts like a nut, it’s very likely that the person truly is in need of mental care
• Suicide is nothing more than a cowards escape… which explains why only a coward would try it
• Once someone lies to your face once (be it about where they are, or who they are sleeping with), there is nothing to stop them from turning into nothing more than a pathological liar… the best thing you can do with a pathological liar is to get as far away from them as you can.
• Women with Russian ancestry are hot.  Or at least one of them. 
• Don’t ever replace the toilet.  If one ever requires replacing, just give up and get a new house.
• Being a "gamer" and living in a "gamer house" is probably one of the most expensive hobbies one can come across.  But at least entertainment is always readily available (assuming you can wrestle the controller out of some one’s hand long enough).
• So there’s this guy… Murphy… he’s not cool.
• Sometimes, it’s not about the destination, but in the journey you took to get there.

I’m here.  And I’m happy.  I hope you all are as well.  Take care.

- Me

   So, I’ve been sitting here for a while staring at my blog… not really sure what to write, if anything at all. I don’t want it to fall into neglect, or become a place I only go to when I am angry and in need of venting space, but at the same time, I don’t want it to become a boring spot on the web either.

   As I thought about it, my phone beeped at me. Hmm… could it be getting jealous of the attention the computer has been getting lately?? Nah… likely just some setting I haven’t found yet to make it stop. I went to Rogers Wireless the other day with Tami to check out new phone plans… turns out I was eligible for a new phone as well. Go figure. Got a Blackberry Pearl 8100 “smart” phone free. Not sure how smart it really is though, as it keeps doing what I tell it to and then getting mad when things break. It plays videos and music though, and has the expandable memory so I can fit lots and lots of junk on it, so I suppose it’s all good. I’m happy with it anyway.

   We went and picked up the family Christmas present the other day too. xBox 360 Elite. I’m impressed. I mean, I’m not much of a Console gamer by any standards (or gamer in general at the moment), but even I found myself messing around in xbox Live and thinking “Okay, I could like this”. We picked up a new Wireless Router to go with it, so it’s online right now. Feel free to add me to your friends list on Live (NightStormDraco), and perhaps I might even be able to figure out how to approve the request. Mike is downstairs right now “testing” it. So far, he’s approved of the purchase. In fact, I think he may have genetically bonded with the chair infront of the TV, as that is pretty much where you can find him now, since it’s been set up.

   What else is new in my life?? Well, the year is almost over. Gonna be time soon where I get to reflect on the events that have passed, and think to the Future that has not yet come. It doesn’t mean I live in the past… no, not in the slightest. I just like to spend some time thinking back on the year, and seeing what I can learn from it… so that hopefully certain fuckups won’t be repeated. I’m certain right now that one of them won’t. Trust is a massive factor in any relationship, and it’s nice to have finally found it. Honesty is another major factor, and I don’t think I can even begin to explain how it feels now to have someone that I can both trust and believe.

   Speaking of whom, Tami is gearing up to take on City Council again about opening a location here in town. I think she has a solid case this time, as the exact same center was recently opened near Toronto, and an article about it was posted in the Globe And Mail (she forwarded a copy to all Council members). We also have our sorta-annual LAN coming up sometime in the sorta-near future. Digital Storm Lan 2008 coming soon to Langley… or Vancouver… or, well… the Lower Mainland.

   I am so proud of her. She has such determination that I have never seen… when she meets an obsticle, instead of becoming discouraged, she takes it head-on and beats her way through it so she can proceed with the plan. And, when someoen says no to her idea, instead of just walking away from it, she goes at it from a different angle until they see it her way. I hope she knows how happy I am to be with her, and, as I said, how proud I am of her.

   Anyway… kinda got off on a multi-tangent. I suppose this counts as enough of an update, though. Hope all of you are doing well, and if I don’t make another post beforehand (though I likely will), I hope your Holidays are safe and happy. Take care, everyone.

- Me

I suppose I could start this post with some history.  History of how we first met up with Greg King, or of the first attacks he launched on us, or how we first started the case against him way back in 2004.  I could go into the GB’s worth of logs that I have manually read through, or the (literally) dozens of chats, both on public IRC and in private message, that I have had with Greg.  I could even get into my own non-professional psycho-analysis of his (imo) dysfunctional mind or his obscenity-plagued-and-drug-referenced use of language.

I could… but I’m sure most of that will be released slowly in the coming months as the trial progresses and information reaches the WWW.  Besides, why read here when you can read it in any of the thousands of other sites that are focusing on the arrest (even though they are focusing on a site that was attacked for a week, more than one that was attacked for years, but whatever… an arrest is an arrest).  Instead, I think I’ll focus on a lighter note.

Morale.  What’s that, you say?  Well, when Greg was running free, we were under a constant threat of having our sites attacked again (and again, and again), causing yet more damage to the systems and loss of data and coding.  It makes it hard for anyone to want to actually do anything, when you don’t even know how long it will be there for.  With Greg’s arrest, it’s like a weight has been lifted.  People are more willing to talk openly, and to participate in conversations on the forums again.  The threat has been, shall we say, neutralized… at least for the time being.  I mean, there’s still thousands of botnet kiddies out there… packet monkeys riding on the coat tails of the original gods of the hacking world (read: Mitnick).  Taking one kiddie down hardly puts a dent in the global cause.  But it’s one less threat, and that’s good enough for me.

I guess in a way, I could be thanking Greg.  Not that I will, seeing as fate would have played out one way or another anyway, but just the same, his idiocy and stupid choice of actions did speed things up some.  What would I be referring to?  Well, while I had spoken to Tami some beforehand (one of the groups on my IRC was harassing her and her team on another network, so we had to chat to each other on a few occasions to bring peace to the groups), it was the actions of Greg that caused us to begin speaking to each other regularly.  IM, email, IRC, and the occasional 3 AM wake-up call on the phone (“Greg is on IRC, and the server load is going up..” “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute *yawn*”).  As I said, fate would have eventually played it’s part anyway seeing as I already knew Tami, but the fact that we were sort of thrown into a situation where near-constant communication was necessary was a bit of a silver lining to the dark cloud that was sitting over our community for 4 years.  That silver lining, I suppose, has turned into more of a gold ring. 

Anyway, just wanted to point out that even in the shadows of idiocy, there can always be a good side.  I also want to point out that while he was, in all examples given to the public so far, a few KB short of a MB (heh… computer reference), he was actually a very intelligent kid who held great promise if only he would have focused on something more productive instead of destructive.  On several occasions, he was invited to join Killanet as a productive member of the group, and to use his knowledge to help others instead of causing problems.  He, apparently, decided to choose the latter anyway.

On a side-note, I wanted to make a public display of thanks to the officers who worked on this case (who I am not sure if I can name or not, although one in particular always made me laugh while we were discussing the case on the phone, and I’m sure he knows I mean him), as well as Assistant U.S Attorney Matthew Segal and U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott for the time and effort they have put into this.  You all are, for the record, life savers.  Not to mention sanity savers (is that even a real term?).  Anyway, thanks everyone.  And thanks to those who actually cared enough to read this.

Anyone looking for updates on the case, please visit our home site, http://www.killanet.net, as that is where the updates will be posted.  That’s also where you can get hold of myself, or the other admins and staff, in regards to this whole mess.

Anyhow, take care everyone, and talk to you soon. 

- Me

Before I post the article here, I’d just like to point out that this is the case that Adaera has been working on for 4 years now, and we finally have results. So Congratulations to Killanet Technology, and to Adaera for her hard work on this incident. Adaera’s smile when I came home from work today more than made up for all of the time spent sifting through logs, and talking on the phone with the FBI, and the frustration that I felt in thinking that the case was not going to go anywhere. I love you Tami, and thank you for your perseverance, and in making sure that this kiddie is where he belongs… behind bars.

Source
McGREGOR W. SCOTT
United States Attorney
Eastern District of California
Sacramento
501 I Street, Suite 10-100
Sacramento, CA 95814

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

INDICTMENT AND ARREST FOR COMPUTER HACKING

SACRAMENTO — United States Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced today the arrest of GREG KING, 21, of Fairfield, California, and the unsealing of an Indictment returned on September 27, 2007, charging KING with four counts of electronic transmission of codes to cause damage to protected computers.

This case is the product of an extensive investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to Assistant United States Attorney Matthew D. Segal, a prosecutor with the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office who is handling the case, the Indictment alleges that KING used a “botnet” to attack computer servers. A botnet is a network of infected computers that, unbeknownst to their owners, are compromised by a hacker and programmed to respond to a hacker’s commands. The infected computers are referred to as “bots,” “zombies,” or “drones.” According to documents filed with the court, KING allegedly controlled over seven thousand such “bots” and used them to conduct multiple distributed denial of service attacks against websites of two businesses. In a distributed denial of service attack, a hacker directs a large number of infected computers (“bots”) to flood a victim computer with information and thereby disable the target computer. On the Internet, KING was also known as “Silenz, Silenz420, sZ, GregK, and Gregk707.”

When agents went to arrest KING at his residence this morning, KING went out the back door of the residence carrying a laptop computer, depositing it in the bushes in the backyard. Agents obtained a warrant to search KING’s backyard and seized the computer. KING was arrested and is expected to appear before a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Sacramento at 2:00 p.m. today.

The maximum statutory penalty for a violation of transmission of damaging code to a protected computer is ten years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. However, the actual sentence will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables, and any applicable statutory sentencing factors.

The charges are only allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

You can also read about it Here and Here (You can also download and read a full copy of the Unsealed Indictment at this link).

 Or, if you would prefer to just listen…

The singer is Shawn Hlookoff, and I’m sure the person I’m thinking of as I listen to this song knows that it’s them I am actually thinking of (Assuming they even are aware that this place exists, and have gone through the trouble of actually checking it) , so I’ll just say… I love you Tami (you know, in case there was that small shadow of doubt or something ).

And hey look, there’s lyrics too.  Just for those who are too lazy to listen to the song. 

When I first met you, I was shy
I could not talk, I was toungue tied
You had something that I couldn’t resist
It doesn’t get much better than this

Our first date was long ago
We did not rush, we took it slow
No one guessed we’d be a hit
It doesn’t get much better than this
It doesn’t get much better…

If you want a star, I’ll pull one down
If you need a lift, I’ll get you around
Every day I’m blessed by your kiss
It doesn’t get much better than this

We all share a perfect love
Sometimes it’s smooth, sometimes it’s rough
And we may have our differences
It doesn’t get much better than this
It doesn’t get much better…

If you want a star, I’ll pull one down
If you need a lift, I’ll get you around
Every day I’m blessed by your kiss
It doesn’t get much better than this

If you want a star, I’ll pull one down
If you need a lift, I’ll get you around
Every day I’m blessed by your kiss
It doesn’t get much better
Than this…