Update 6/26/2008: Denven is back! Read about it here.

So tired today, was up way to late chasing the second to last challenge in this class I have been taking.

The reason for this post has to do with the BSDNews site breach. In a previous post I mentioned how I was contacted by an individual I will henceforth be calling “D”. D contacted me for the purposes of threatening me, after which we had a bit of an e-mail exchange which I decided to make public for the purposes of mocking D.

Well, I guess he did not like that treatment, as yesterday I received new contact from D asking me, politely, to stop linking to him and talking about him by name. Honestly, I thought yeah right and started re-engaging him for the purposes of getting more material that might be fun to post up on here. But, after a few e-mails I starting thinking there is a chance this kid was being serious in telling me he is done with the script-kiddie scene and that he has taken his warez site is down. I won’t post what all he sent me, but I get the sense that this is a young kid that did not have the maturity to realize the results of his actions. And now that they are becoming obvious he is scared and shook.

Now, I will admit right off there is a good chance I am being played here. D is asking me to take the post about him down, and he is being polite about it and expressing what could be real regret for what he has done. I know that sounds hokey, and if I was reading this post I would be thinking “Jim is getting social-engineered”, and I might be. But the thing is, I am tired and don’t have time or desire to look into this anymore this weekend, so if I am being played, so be it.

Really, if I am going to make a mistake on this, I would rather make it in giving a confused kid the benefit of the doubt. If I get that wrong, then he and his little warez buddies can laugh that they pulled one over on me. Nothing that would hurt me at all. A mistake the other way however would do nothing other then possibly dismissing an adolescent that is in the process of learning a hard life lesson.

So, I have edited the previous post I had up where I was mocking D, and removed all links I had to his old site.

If I have been played, that’s fine. At the same time, I do hope that D thinks about how uncomfortable it made him having a spotlight shone on such a limited subset of his information. The victims of his previous hack don’t have the luxury of having their more sensitive information removed now that D made it public. Playing around online might be fun, but you can’t forget that real lives can be affected by your actions. Your fun time playing with SQL injection and posting the results online could mean someone is not making a house payment this month. That someones kid is not getting the birthday present they want. Or that the money that was there to buy a new suit for the important job interview is gone.

Just because the victims of your actions don’t have a face to you does not mean they don’t exist.

Just because you did not clean out any ones bank accounts or charge up someones credit card number does not mean you are not responsible for the actions of the person who did. You enabled them by giving them the information they needed to do it.

Script kiddies are not a threat because any single one of them are capable of any significant amount of damage to society. However the sheer number of them makes them our modern day plague of locusts.

And here I wish D the best of luck, and hope that he really is doing the right thing. If not, here is hoping you don’t grow up too hard and harsh kid. And don’t hurt too many people on the way.