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 Link LoggerPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
kudos:3
 ·Shaw
| Max Butler AKA Max Vision, Iceman, Aphex, Now Retired Max was a distant arms length associate long ago as a white hat as he was known and respected by white and black hats and was an expert at developing Snort Signatures and ran a couple of security focused sites (Whitehats and arachNIDS) as well as assisting various law enforcement agencies (in particular the FBI whom at the time he was working as an informant, I suspect that someone in our group had been told or knew about that but I wasn't told until Max was arrested, at which time I was simply told he wasn't going to be available any longer). At that time a number of notable whitehats sent a number of letters to aid Max's case describing the benefits of his whitehat activities, however Max was sentenced to 18 months in jail. When Max was released from jail he had been somewhat forsaken by the whitehat/security community, but looking back I wonder if people were somewhat nervous about his double life and therefore tended to kept their distance from him, which no doubt put some stress on him while he was trying to restart his life on the outside. It would appear from this article that Max started a rather hard slide back into the darkside and now no doubt he is going to be permanently retired and on a Federal vacation till long after his hacking skills and future are gone. This article written by another distant arms length associate and xhacker Kevin Poulsen shows how hacking can become an addiction and how quick and deep the slide into the darkside can become. Max despite all his precautions was caught and considering his priors and history will likely get a record term for hacking (if he thought he lost everything the first time he went to prison, he will find out differently this time as now his future really is gone). I often wondered about Max as he really did have an humanist and altruistic side, but his darkside hacking apparently won control of his life and now he awaits a future void of pretty well anything (he would likely suggest now deservedly so, but that won't change the facts, the history or his future now). If anyone is considering a future in hacking perhaps you should read this article and trust me as good a hacker you think you are Max was likely far better and he still got caught and it can be a very ugly slide into the darkside which certainly isn't the life you think it is as it dark, ugly and lonely. In some ways its strange that law enforcement uses the same hacker weapon of time against hackers, in that over time enough threads can be gathered to capture and convict you given there is no honour among thieves (Max was somewhat a very rare exception to that). Sure you can hack from some fringe sh*t hole country and never be caught, but what sort of life can you have there really, and I can tell you another story about when one notable hacker decided to retire from the business in one of those countries, he really got retired and hung from a tree in Berlin (shot and burnt first), so retirement can be even harsher there in some cases, I mean think about it for a second or two, your dealing with a group that thinks nothing of screwing a huge pile of people, do you really think they care about you and especially if they consider you a potential risk to their 'business', think very carefully.
Now there are a couple of things about Max's slide which make me wonder and likely the biggest issue is Max did a lot of this while still on parole with a probation officer, didn't any warning bells go off? Also this article also serves as a reason why wireless networks should always be secured.
Ultimately hacking is simply wrong and sadly a waste of talent (regardless of how much or how little) and effort as there are so many problems in the world which need solving to the benefit of the human cause, that it really is a crime to waste any talent, ability and effort on such a thing as the darkside of hacking.
»www.wired.com/techbiz/people/mag···age=all#
Blake
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool | |
Link LoggerPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
kudos:3 Reviews:
·Shaw
| Re: Max Butler AKA Max Vision, Iceman, Aphex, Now Retired It would make an interesting movie if they captured all the criminals, paranoia and social/life failure. Not much action really but a lot of tragedy. A movie about something where no one benefited except Hollywood, somewhat ironic.
Blake
--
Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool | |
| Huh? He was an FBI informant yet was arrested? I didn't read the whole "paragraph" but this seems a bit odd. | | |
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| reply to Link Logger
That's quite the story. Sad - the good life that he could have had was destroyed by the addiction to the thrill of the darkside of hacking.
Thanks, Blake. Good read... | |
 BlackbirdBuilt for SpeedPremium
join:2005-01-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:2
 ·Frontier Communi..
| reply to KodiacZiller
said by KodiacZiller:Huh? He was an FBI informant yet was arrested? I didn't read the whole "paragraph" but this seems a bit odd. It happens. An informant is always a questionable factor... his motives, accuracy, and loyalty must continually remain "uncertain" in some degree to the outside entity using his services. There's always the possibility that he's playing both sides against each other, for whatever reasons make sense to him... and it's not always possible to do much to deeply vet an informant. There's a world of difference between a planted agent and an informant.
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If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see... | |
Link LoggerPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
kudos:3 Reviews:
·Shaw
| reply to KodiacZiller
said by KodiacZiller:Huh? He was an FBI informant yet was arrested? I didn't read the whole "paragraph" but this seems a bit odd. What pushed Max over the edge on this is often the Feds know who is doing what, but they know the hacker nick, so they asked Max to point a few people out at a blackhat convention and he refused, which meant all his crimes were back on the table and he was then convicted and jailed. Like I mentioned there is little honour between thieves as these guys rollover all the time to save their own butt or get a reduced sentence, but Max was somewhat the exception to that rule.
Blake
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool | |
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