How It All Began…

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