[StankDawg]

There has been some discussion on "SWATTING" recently. For those who do not know, the act of "SWATTING" involves spoofing callerID (many ways to do this, it is not a new concept) and calling in threats to the police or FBI that would cause them to rush to your house with a SWAT team. There are many threats that you can use to get a SWAT team involved, but we will not discuss them here because we strive to be more responsible in the Binary Revolution.

This topic has been around for years and has resurfaced recently because SWATTING is on the rise again as skiddies are now able to spoof callerId more easily and several incidents have made the news. This is another example of how a technology, like any technology, can be used for bad things. This is not the fault of the technology, but the person who uses it. It is not the car manufacturers fault when a drunk driver kills someone, it is the fault of the drunk driver. Anyone who SWATs or uses a technology for similar goals is committing a crime but the technology is not at fault. The individual is at fault.

Binary Revolution, StankDawg, nor the DDP condone this activity in any way! This is not a challenging form of hacking that you can really learn anything from. Anyone can do it and it takes very little skill. It has only one goal and that goal is destructive in nature and causes people to get in a lot of trouble. It is illegal and we do not approve of this activity in any way!

You are free to discuss the topic here, however. It is interesting in a social context. You can discuss it, debate it, and describe it (without giving actual step-by-step instructions) and there is no problem with this at all and there are some threads that discuss that very topic. Be warned that we will not tolerate or allow anyone to threaten, encourage, or incite others to partake of activities like this. You will be banned and I will gladly turn over my logs to law enforcement because you deserve to get busted. This goes for any threats made against people. Just in case there is any worry, I will not turn over any logs without a court order in any circumstances.

To put it crystal clear: SWATTING IS BAD! Don't do it!

[decoder]

I'd just like to make something clear...

N'er-do-wells have executed successful "SWAT's" in the past without the utilization of Caller ID Spoofing. The reason I point this out is because the two are often linked by the Government and in the media in order to demonize Spoofing.

Prior to the advent of services like Spoofcard, there were only a few ways for the average person - even the average hacker - to spoof Caller ID. Reading selected pre-2004 articles authored by Lucky225 will explain some examples.

Caller ID spoofing merely gives the police slightly more of a reason to believe these harmful and terroristic "pranks," but the practice had surely been going on prior to Spoofcard, etc. Perhaps a bit more social engineering was required in order for the authorities to send officers to the address given, but it surely happened many times. I do not claim to know the procedures of Law Enforcement throughout the country, but I'm going to bet that if you call the police and claim to have just committed some horrifically violent act, the cops aren't just going to sit on their hands.

Swatting is strictly the domain of Telephone Chatline participants, most of whom I wouldn't even offer the compliment of being called a "Skiddie." The vast majority being a few notches below that delineation. That's not to say there isn't anyone in that "scene" who has technical proficiency, or "skills"; there are a few, to be sure. But most of those people are maladjusted miscreants and misfits. In fact, if these chatlines were a town of village, I would compare it to one of the "sinister and ill-regarded" villages from the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft; where the residents all look vaguely inhuman.

This post has been edited by decoder: 29 June 2009 - 03:27 PM

[StankDawg]

With that clarification from decoder, I think I will lock this thread since there is no need to reply. I think we both made it clear that caller id spoofing is not directly related to SWATTING although some people may make it out to be.

DON'T DO IT!