Casualty of 'Bot War

Is Penn student Ryan Goldstein a pawn in an FBI malware sting?

by Rick Valenzuela

The Department of Justice announced Saturday it had indicted several people after an FBI probe into computer-related crimes, including a University of Pennsylvania junior. But it seems that for all the millions lost through fraud and identity theft uncovered by "Operation Bot Roast II," Ryan Goldstein's involvement was borne simply out of revenge. His indictment puts his alleged dirty work as causing just "a loss of more than $5,000."

Goldstein is accused of conspiring with a New Zealand teenager to attack and take down an IRC network that had banned him. He is said to have used Penn-related computers to help accomplish this, and in the process, crashed his school's server.

A spokesperson at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania says the damages would be submitted by the victim and determined by the investigation. The engineering school's senior director of IT, Helen Anderson, said in an e-mail that eight people worked on the server problem, which "degraded" Web service over the course of five days, and rendered it unusable the morning of Feb. 23, 2006.

Bernie S. (aka Ed Cummings), a local writer for hacker magazine 2600 and an organizer of security conferences, expressed skepticism about the real figure: "The only reason the amount is $5,000 is to bring it above a baseline" for charges and sentencing. He also pointed out that Goldstein isn't accused of bringing down a commercial server where business would be lost.

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The Daily Pennsylavnian's take on the indictment.

He said Penn "should be compensated with double or triple damages for the hassle that they had to suffer, but to say it was $5,000 solely to increase the sentencing ... it's wrong."

Bernie, who spent time in prison for having materials that could be used for both legal and illegal ends, points out that computer crimes are among many where punishment often exceeds the charge. "I don't wanna see anybody locked up, unless they cause a danger to the community. This guy's not really a danger to the community. He's a pain in the ass to the community. Locking somebody in a cage for a long time, it's a pretty serious thing. It just doesn't seem to mesh with what he's accused of doing.

"It wasn't five grand," says Bernie. "I'm sure they would love to make that much money, but they ain't making that."