Token of Appreciation

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Astronouth7303

The way I took out the site was twofold - flooding the database until any space quotas were filled and taking up bandwidth by requesting the listing page.

...

Understand that at the time I had good interests in mind -- protecting the FIRST community from phishing attacks.

...

Again, none of this excuses the fact that I unknowingly attacked and took down a legitimate site trying to accomplish an honorable goal -- recognizing mentors. Everyone involved (which is almost everyone in FIRST) has a right to dislike me for it.

Wow. Just.... wow. I understand that you realize this was wrong, but do you realize that this action would have been wrong even if it was not a legitimate site? This action is simply never appropriate.

Please, to you and any others reading this. Learn to be a good net citizen and handle things like an adult. Actions like this are unacceptable and are the kinds of things that give smart, computer-savvy students like yourself a bad name.

This is very disappointing. I thought our community was better than that.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

This is very disappointing. I thought our community was better than that.

This member of our community was acting to protect the safety of many other members of our community. While what he did may not be right, it was with good intentions, and for the greater good really. Anyone could take the information from that site, call up these mentors, and say "Hi, I'm calling from FIRST, and it appears that there was an error in processing your Championship registration payment. I need to verify your credit card information or you will be dropped from the event." or any number of other spoofs to sieze the identity of the innocent. He acted in the name of safety, and for that, we shall not punish him.

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

This member of our community was acting to protect the safety of many other members of our community. ... He acted in the name of safety, and for that, we shall not punish him.

No. Good intentions do not excuse completely inappropriate behavior.

Correct action would have been contacting FIRST, contacting the owner of the site, posting here on CD, contacting the senior mentors, any number of things. Many of those things were already being done anyway.

Breaking the law (yes, he broke a federal law doing this!), even if you claim the intentions are valid, is not acceptable!!!

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Dave Flowerday

No. Good intentions do not excuse completely inappropriate behavior.

True, but likewise, good intentions (honoring our mentors) do not excuse pure ignorance (the publicly accessible list).

And in regards to breaking the law, I have about six thousand spam e-mails. I'm not spending tax dollars to investigate every one of those and lock up every one of those senders, and I'm thinking the rest of America wouldn't either.

But, I'm beginning to engage in a one-on-one discussion here, which is against CD rules, so,I'll stop now.

It's the championship folks! Let's leave CD behind, and admire the incredibly awesome artforms about to show their stuff in this oh so magnificent game we play!

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

This member of our community was acting to protect the safety of many other members of our community. While what he did may not be right, it was with good intentions, and for the greater good really. Anyone could take the information from that site, call up these mentors, and say "Hi, I'm calling from FIRST, and it appears that there was an error in processing your Championship registration payment. I need to verify your credit card information or you will be dropped from the event." or any number of other spoofs to sieze the identity of the innocent. He acted in the name of safety, and for that, we shall not punish him.

There's an old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Doing wrong, even while intending to do good, is wrong. The proper thing to have done was to report the possible phishing to the proper people (in this case the webmaster of the site, FIRST, and possibly the FBI {as federal laws may be being broken}).

Vigilanteeism (and thats what this is) is never acceptable, and should not be condoned by any community, especially one that proports itself as being GP.

It is my hope that Astronouth7303 and the rest of the CD community have learned from this experiance that it is better to work within the system than to take it upon oneself to go outside the laws.

[sanddrag]

I've thought about this, and I do have to agree. The creation of the site to recognize the mentors seemed like a rushed effort. The takedown of the site was also a rushed effort. Neither was done properly. Both sides did some wrong here, and everyone has learned something, and I think we can move on. Can I get a thread close?

[meaubry]

All,
I'll try to make this short and sweet, please bear with me though.

Stating the obvious - Mistakes were made.
Anyone reading this, Please - LEARN from these mistakes.

After studying the time line of the posts, it's obvious that Astronouth react very rapidly to the thread initiation, in an attempt to protect - but the approach taken was done in a way that we would ever condone.

His action was executed, prior to confirmation by trusted CD mentors, KathieK and RoboMOM and later by our team leader Mike Martus.

I will be closing this thread, but before I do that I will be deleting the detailed methodology that Astronouth used to accomplish what was done. I do not want anyone reading this and turning around and using it elsewhere. We do not need or want to be associated with such activity.

Thanks for listening, if you want to discuss my actions contact me via message - or look me up in Atlanta.

Mike Aubry
Lead Engineer
Chief Delphi - Team 47