Malware and Hacking Forum Darkode Is Shut Down; Dozens Arrested

Certainly they might try to retaliate, but that would be very foolish.

Many decades ago Don Lancaster said "don't fuck with the eagle". This was because the Federal government's resources are vast compared to any individual. The government has the resources to pay 100 people full-time just to take down a forum. That's probably what they just did with Darkode.

Many of those Federal agents are just 9-to-5 guys, probably not too bright, quite content to make a good middle class living. But there are also undoubtedly a number of smart, ambitious people, who are being paid quite well to pursue, capture, and convict the Darkode actors.

So, lets see, you can either roll over and beg for mercy, like one of Ross Ulbrict's henchmen, and get less than 2 years in jail, or you can be a delusional arrogant twit like "mastermind" Ross and get life in Federal prison, without parole.

The choice is simple.

Is it though? The average salary of a security engineer seems to be lower than that of a software engineer, and there seem to be considerably fewer positions available. Those very high paid positions seem few and far between.

Well, that is if you ignore the far larger elephant in the room of the government running an illegal operation. It reminds me of the times I hear of the FBI taking over some TOR server hosting abusive images and continuing to host it as a honeypot. By their own admission, looking at, hosting, sharing, etc. those images constitutes concrete abuse of a child, yet they directly engage in such. It would be like if the FBI busted up a brothel with children and kept running it to catch more criminals. The ends in no way justify the means.

In this case, the EO exercises rulemaking delegated the President through the IEEPA, and is confined by the powers defined in the IEEPA, which governs foreign transactions.

To be fair, many "burglars tools" laws require possession of the tools WITH INTENT to perform a criminal action. The intent piece is key. Merely possessing lock picks is usually fine. But sulking around masked in bushes outside an office building with a pickset, rope, and an empty duffel bag might get you in trouble.

A good list of Lockpick laws collected and indexed state-by-state at http://toool.us/laws.html. You see that in most jurisdictions intent is required.

While malware laws are still much less mature, I would hope that similarly there'd be an intent requirement. Possessing malware for purposes of reverse engineering to develop protections is obviously important, and clearly an activity we would want to remain lawful (and hopefully unlicensed/regulated).

Conspiracy is probably the easier route to a conviction.

Yeah, I can see how that would be a compelling argument. I wouldn't put it past various government agencies to think of exactly something like that.

IMHO: Unfortunately democracy doesn't work, in practice, as the theory might suggest. What we have in the majority of countries are people in power focused on either: - Preserving their power (status quo), or tangentially the power of those who put them in office - Shifting the power structure, so that they (and their group) can take control

There are few and far between examples of politicians (let alone governments) that act with true altruistic purposes, favoring the interests of "the people". The built-in incentives in our society (and some might argue, our own nature) unfortunately make this a rare occurrence.

By the way... I might argue that the government doesn't sell our information because there is no buyer. It is the user of this information. It is used to control (mainly to control dissent). ;)

Are you saying that they also pretended to be Macedonians?

Do you really think they don't run traps?