Use a non-standard browser, go to jail.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        Use a non-standard browser, go to jail.
Author: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei () rsasecurity com>
Date:           28th January 2005 10:16:32 am

For IP, if you wish.

A post to boingboing from Cory Doctorow
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow)
whom I generally regard as a reliable
source. However, I have not myself been able to
further confirm the story. It hasn't 
appeared on several British newspaper
sites today, nor has the BBC done a
followup.

Interesting, if true.

Peter Trei

---------------------------
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/27/jailed_for_using_a_n.html


Thursday, January 27, 2005

Jailed for using a nonstandard browser 
A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using 
lynx -- a text-based browser used by the blind, 
Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris operating 
system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" 
event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, 
and the police broke down the donor's door and 
arrested him. From a mailing list: 

        For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx 
   on Solaris 10. BT [British Telecom] who run the 
   donation management system misread an access log 
   and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not 
   identifying it's type and it's doing strange things. 
   Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker. 

        Armed police, a van, a police cell and national 
   news later the police have gone in SWAT styley and 
   arrested someone having their lunch. 

        Out on bail till next week and preparing to make 
   a lot of very bad PR for BT and the Police.... 

        So just goes to show if you use anything other 
   than Firefox or IE and you rely on someone else to 
   interogate access logs or IDS logs you too could be 
   sitting in a paper suit in a cell :( 

BBC article link 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4195339.stm> (Thanks, Patrick!) 

Update:: The source that told me about this has 
corroborated it with more detail in private email, but 
is leery of going public. I hope that more publicly 
available details appear soon, and will post them 
when I have them. 

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:08:00 AM 

----------------------------


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