Teen Nearly Killed us All

[JustAGuy]

So, a 16 year old kid writes a program that leeches MP3s and "pr0n", as they say, using the big networks' bandwidth and storage capability. I used to do this at college all the time, funny though, I could never find enough goodies to download back then.

So, 16 year old (and his friends) slows down a big network. It just happens that this particular bandwidth was in use by some top-secret U.S. weapons "research" facility as well, and when they notice a drop in network performance, they automatically assume it's a terrorist attack. Tsk tsk. Last time I checked, the terrorists were living in caves?

My favourite part of the article is the judge. He wants to make an example of the kid, but then realizes the poor kid was only trying to download music and porn. What kid doesn't want these things? And don't get it twisted; "McElroy wanted to use the advanced network's power to download and store films and music from the internet." -- "films" = porn.

You know, if there wasn't a "top secret United States weapons laboratory" in the first place, people like the poor 16 year old (now 18 year old) kid wouldn't have to worry about being arrested for downloading porn and MP3s. If downloading porn and MP3s is a crime, take me to jail! I mean, uh ... well... music and "films" that I already own or have paid for electronically... *cough* :)

This kind of reminds me when my friend was working on a networking assignment in MS-DOS. The packet software he wrote was basically a sniffer, a buggy one at that. His sniffer listened to all the packets on the network, and for the DNS server's packets in particular, it would magically re-write and re-route them, causing the Internet for the whole college to magically stop working. This was not intended operation. He didn't know there was a bug in it, but yet he was almost kicked out of our Computer Engineering course because of the panic he caused. A professor had to step in and assure the higher-ups that his student had simply made a mistake in his code and wasn't maliciously attacking the network. I guess people don't like it when their networks stop networking...