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Comment by ryanlol | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, while I know for a fact that you're correct. When someone asked about this on #linode the ops immediate reaction was to deny it (as it was every other time they got hacked).

< naqod> alexf: any legitimacy to this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10845619 ?

<@alexf> naqod: again I'm not in ops so I don't have the deets, but my gut reaction is to say No effing Way

You'd imagine that by now they wouldn't be so quick to deny this stuff.

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As a former Linode employee, I find all of your comments very interesting. But if it's true that you're being prosecuted, why are you incriminating yourself here?

All of the people involved have been very open about their identities and what they've been up to. It's sort of their MO. Pure speculation on my part, but I imagine it's basically a giant middle finger to everyone else.

Double jeopardy, I was previously convicted of 50700 counts of unauthorized access to various coldfusion sites. Among those was linode.

This one?

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/08/Finnish-te...

Yeah.

How exactly did you get caught? opsec/comsec violation?

Difficult question to answer. There was a complete lack of "technical" evidence against me (e.g .bash_history files, wiretaps).

The only evidence the prosecution had against me were a list of compromised sites and several coldfusion 0days I had in my possession.

They could never prove that I generated the list of compromised sites, but the judges felt that the possession of said list was enough evidence to convict me.

We would've appealed but there was no point as the sentence was essentially nothing.

> We would've appealed but there was no point as the sentence was essentially nothing.

But you do end up with a record, which is not 'essentially nothing'.

I suppose it depends on what that means for a minor in Finland.

Since I'm not really planning to look for a job, my main worry was potential visa issues. But I haven't had any troubles visiting the few countries I do need a visa for.

How are you in a position where looking for a job in the future is not really necessary?

Bitcoin.

That's an awful lot of faith in virtual currency and its speculative nature to be betting the next 50-60 years of your life.

I can't even tell you how many pen testers I know with criminal records. Somewhere, someone will hire him to do security.

Who is to say xe didn't buy a bunch of it at $1 and sell it off, making millions, when it hit $200-$300?

Diversification is pretty important if you want to keep any kind of currency for 50-60 years.

Talented hackers are not exactly unemployable.

The other side to that is that if you appeal, and lose, you can come off worse. So even though a criminal record is "something", depending where the lawyers feel your chances are, it may be best going along with it.

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