News UK police arrest tsunami donations hacker

From VNUNet:

The Metropolitan Police has arrested a 28 year-old man from east London over alleged attempts to hack into the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) tsunami donations website.

The alleged attempt took place on new year's eve and was identified and blocked by BT, which runs the site's secure payment system. Police arrested the man in London's Bishopsgate and stated that they are currently examining his computer equipment for evidence.

More here

However, this may not be a cut and dried case of hacking, according to other sites reporting on it. The Inq picked up on a piece over at BoingBoing that points to the unfortunate guy being raided due to using a non-standard browser...

 

Well that'll teach him not to use Windows and Internet Explorer.

Damn him for being security conscious!!

 

No the article said he used lynx on Sun's Solaris operating system.

 

How the **** could he ? He's kinda monster.
People not using IE and Windows should be put into prison for being like social outcasts... like ... intelligent... like... the good ones.

 

Well done for misreading my post. Read it again and see which important word you glossed over.

I know full well what he was using.

 

How about a translation?

 

In English:

I am stunned at the audacity of this individual? He is, in my eyes, inhuman.

People who refuse to use the Internet Explorer together Windows should be put into prison, as in my eyes they are social outcasts. However they are the intelligent sort of social outcasts.

In 1337 (kinda):

0MFG WTF h3 15 t3h 5ux!! N07 1337 47 4ll!!!
p33p13 wh0 d0n7 u53 13 + \/\/1|\||>0\/\/5 g075 2 8 1/\/ t3h j41l 4 b331n t3h 50<14|_ 0u7c457s!!1!?!?!?!?! l13k t3h ub3r-pr0 1's!!!1!!!OMG WTF LOL

 

indeed

wish they did that to browser zealots.

(side note for quack, solaris 10, and lynx have bugs)

 

Not as many as Windows and Internet Explorer though!

 

You're all being very skeptical to think that BT would get someone arrested for just browsing using an odd browser, I'm sure they checked as thoroughly as possible. Let's wait to see what happens before we all start 'corporation bashing' again.

 

I'm sure.

Never underestimate human stupidity. Especially in the current climate of vague paranoia about terrorist attack.

 

You're kidding right, we are talking about BT here...

EDIT: /raises fist at Nexxo!

I think BT just panicked, imagine the bad press they would have had if someone really did hack the tsunami donations.

 

I don't want to start a flamewar but this sounds like a heap of ****

I use IE and winXP, but you should be able to use the browser/OS of your choice without getting arrested. Please, there's more than Windows and IE out there, and with all due respect stop being so narrow-minded. I don't like Mozilla cos it takes longer to load and IE works for me, but some people just like using non microsoft stuff. For crying out loud, let them.

 

/sarcasm

 

BT are a huuuge company with just about as many years in the industry as there's BEEN an industry. I'm pretty sure they don't arrest people for browsing a website

 

Read the above posts!! I was translating for the guy who posted just above me. GOO then asked for a translation (as a joke), so I translated (poorly).

The contents of my previos post are not my opinion! So I'm not being narrow minded.

PS, Firefox only takes less time to load since IE is already loaded at startup (unless you mean loading pages, which can be speed up with ease).

 

Off Topic: Who cares, it still loads slowly, whatever the reasons are. Besides, Opera loads faster.

On Topic: I can't imagine he being arrested for having a strange OS/Lynx. The only effects that would be differint by using this over a standard browser is that the images wouldn't be loaded, and that the User Agent-string in the HTTP headers would be differint. I'm sure BT wouldn't identify a strange User Agent as a hacking attempt, there are so many unknown search-engine bots crawling over the web with strange User Agents.

 

I refer you again to post #11.

 

last time i used lynx it didn't support SSL, and also only requested the text.

so on their logs they will of seen a few requests, a very few comapired to page hits, i *guess* that could look suspicous to an automated system.

I wish there was a proper news site for UK computer crimes were the corispondents could afford to just go down to police station/public gallery and get awnsers

 

I rearly doubt that this is over a browser. I mean if the police have taken his computer and not yet relesased him they must have found somthing.