Message from Twitch: DON'T Spambot our channels

[WMGroomAK]

Twitch is in the process of digging out who is behind a series of spambot posting that started on February 24th that was bombarding channels with on average of 34 messages per a minute and at times up to 700 a minute.  These spambots were posting messages that were racists, homophobic and worse that Twitch's Automod tool was unable to keep up with.  According to Ars Technica:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/twitch-unleashes-scorched-earth-attack-to-unveil-malicious-spambot-creator/

Quote

witch, which bills itself as the "leading video platform and community for gamers," says it has traced the attacks to Chatsurge.net, which offers spambot attacks for sale. From there, Twitch investigators believe the perpetrator is associated with the e-mail address of obnoxious@dongcorp.org and a Shaw Communications IP address of 70.68.65.141 located in Coquitlam, British Columbia. In addition, Twitch thinks a PayPal account associated with the e-mail feelmorebirds@gmail.com is connected, according to court documents.

Legal documents: https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/twitch.pdf

 

In total, Twitch is requesting:

Quote

For starters, Twitch wants Shaw to produce any identifying information about the customer associated with the 70.68.65.141 IP address. Twitch also wants an order commanding PayPal to hand over identifying information "of the customer associated with Chatsurge.net, feelmorebirds@gmail.com, or obnoxious@dongcorp.org."

 

As for CloudFlare, which is the server host of Chatsurge.net, Twitch wants it to unmask identifying information associated with the Chatsurge.net domain. Twitch is making the same request to WhoisPrivacy and WhoisGuard to unveil ownership of the Chatsurge.net and Dongcorp.org domains.

 

What's more, Twitch claims that all of these companies "are involved in the Spambot Attacks," including WhoisPrivacy and WhoisGuard for "providing a means for the perpetrator to don the cloak of anonymity to undertake this harmful conduct."

Moral of this story is if you try to mess with Twitch's business, they will track you down.

[Teddy07]

7 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

Moral of this story is if you try to mess with Twitch's business, they will track you down.

 

Not really. It is don't be so stupid and use PayPal and try to hide your IP better

[Centurius]

I really hope the courts throw them out when it comes to Whoisguard and Whois Privacy, as a service that one is pretty effective in protecting those with dissenting opinions, and more practically for regular domain owners prevent mass spam attacks or harassment based on whois info.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, Centurius said:

I really hope the courts throw them out when it comes to Whoisguard and Whois Privacy, as a service that one is pretty effective in protecting those with dissenting opinions, and more practically for regular domain owners prevent mass spam attacks or harassment based on whois info.

Yes, I can understand their will to prosecute those behind the spambots, but the scope of their requests and the claim that "all these companies are behind the attacks" since they provide "anonymity tools" is way out of place. I hope courts quickly dismiss all the unreasonable parts of their demands. 

[79wjd]

I'm really surprised they published that information (IP and emails).

[Tiuqu]

2 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'm really surprised they published that information (IP and emails).

It's not like they have rules literally against such doxing, nope.

 

Spoiler

 

sauce:

Reddit post regarding streamer doxing donator 4 months ago

Twitter announcement from temp-48h-"banned" streamer

 

 

[spartaman64]

5 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

Not really. It is don't be so stupid and use PayPal and try to hide your IP better

there are probably ways around those methods

[spartaman64]

3 hours ago, djdwosk97 said:

I'm really surprised they published that information (IP and emails).

i dont think they published it. its just in the court documents

[Energycore]

Suffice to say whoever sent this attack was not very careful. If only all criminals were like this.

[callum92]

DongCorp "The main website for all your dong needs" 

[Misanthrope]

Dear Twitch: Do you know why we stopped used IRC in a widespread matter since the late 90s and early 2000s? Because it's a shit, unreliable and unmanageable fucking protocol and platform. Not sure what in the fuck were you thinking when you implemented that instead of a proper fucking chat system.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Misanthrope said:

Dear Twitch: Do you know why we stopped used IRC in a widespread matter since the late 90s and early 2000s? Because it's a shit, unreliable and unmanageable fucking protocol and platform. Not sure what in the fuck were you thinking when you implemented that instead of a proper fucking chat system.

The same thing they were thinking when they decided to use Flash for their vide player....I mean, who doesn't like software that's like swiss cheese for hackers and that drives CPU usage up to 150%. 

[Teddy07]

9 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The same thing they were thinking when they decided to use Flash for their vide player....I mean, who doesn't like software that's like swiss cheese for hackers and that drives CPU usage up to 150%. 

 

That was exactly my problem on my older laptop. It had an i3 2350m and i mostly could not watch the streams in 720p because it was to much for my cpu. No problems at all now with the html player.

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Dear Twitch: Do you know why we stopped used IRC in a widespread matter since the late 90s and early 2000s? Because it's a shit, unreliable and unmanageable fucking protocol and platform. Not sure what in the fuck were you thinking when you implemented that instead of a proper fucking chat system.

To be fair, I and a lot of people I know still use IRC on a regular basis.

[jubjub]

2 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

To be fair, I and a lot of people I know still use IRC on a regular basis.

IRC definitely still has its place.

[Bleedingyamato]

On April 7, 2017 at 4:31 PM, djdwosk97 said:

I'm really surprised they published that information (IP and emails).

What does that matter?    It's the info of criminals behind these spam attacks isn't it?

 

Assuming that's the case why should anyone care that their info is being made public regardless of whether it's in court docs or elsewhere?

[79wjd]

3 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

What does that matter?    It's the info of criminals behind these spam attacks isn't it?

 

Assuming that's the case why should anyone care that their info is being made public regardless of whether it's in court docs or elsewhere?

Because it's not something that a company should be doing (not to mention the possible legal ramifications). If it's in publicly available court documents, then it's different. 

[Bleedingyamato]

6 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Because it's not something that a company should be doing (not to mention the possible legal ramifications). If it's in publicly available court documents, then it's different. 

1. Criminals don't deserve that sort of concern.

 

2. There'd be no ramifications.  At least not from the ones responsible for the spam attacks.  To fight Twitch they'd have to identify themselves in court which would allow Twitch the means to directly take legal action against them.   

 

 

So while yes Twitch shouldn't reveal personal info of law abiding users the same should not be true for criminals.

 

If someone breaks the law and in this case Twitch's ToS I'm sure then they deserve to have the book thrown at them.  ?

[79wjd]

5 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

1. Criminals don't deserve that sort of concern.

 

2. There'd be no ramifications.  At least not from the ones responsible for the spam attacks.  To fight Twitch they'd have to identify themselves in court which would allow Twitch the means to directly take legal action against them.   

 

 

So while yes Twitch shouldn't reveal personal info of law abiding users the same should not be true for criminals.

 

If someone breaks the law and in this case Twitch's ToS I'm sure then they deserve to have the book thrown at them.  ?

1. Yes/no. You're innocent until you're proven guilty, but other than that, it's a slippery slope that could lead down a path to where anyone's information could be revealed. 

 

2. They could still sue Twitch (and potentially successfully) -- they might get sued themselves, but they could still sue Twitch. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I don't know why, but I'm not surprised it was allegedly someone from Coquitlam.

[Bleedingyamato]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

1. Yes/no. You have the right until you're proven guilty, but other than that, it's a slippery slope. 

 

2. They could still sue Twitch (and potentially successfully) -- they might get sued themselves, but they could still sue Twitch. 

If Twitch has info that points directly to the name behind it then: wall meet nail.

 

Twitch would crush them though.  It'd be as simple as: criminals did this, Twitch did that, criminals still broke the law first and worse, case closed.

 

 

I agree it's a slippery slope but my main issue I refuse to show sympathy for criminals.  Too many people do stupid and harmful things and aren't punished appropriately for it.  

[Bleedingyamato]

4 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

I don't know why, but I'm not surprised it was allegedly someone from Coquitlam.

What's that?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

3 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

What's that?

One of the cities of the Greater Vancouver area (Metro Vancouver). There seems to be quite a few Koreans living there and pretty much every one I know who lives there is into gaming, Twitch, etc.

 

And there is quite a lot of people in our Computing Science program that live there.

[79wjd]

30 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

If Twitch has info that points directly to the name behind it then: wall meet nail.

 

Twitch would crush them though.  It'd be as simple as: criminals did this, Twitch did that, criminals still broke the law first and worse, case closed.

 

 

I agree it's a slippery slope but my main issue I refuse to show sympathy for criminals.  Too many people do stupid and harmful things and aren't punished appropriately for it.  

That information should be given (from Twitch) to the courts/lawyers, not the general public (again, if the information is in public record/documents, then that's something else entirely).

 

Winning a lawsuit doesn't automatically mean all others get dropped. Twitch could easily win the lawsuit against a spambot, but then lose a different lawsuit for exposing personal details. 

 

I'm all for punishing someone who did something wrong, but exposing their personal information to the internet isn't the way to do it -- that would just be vengeance, not justice. Leave justice to the legal system. 

[Bleedingyamato]

5 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

That information should be given (from Twitch) to the courts/lawyers, not the general public (again, if the information is in public record/documents, then that's something else entirely).

 

Winning a lawsuit doesn't automatically mean all others get dropped. Twitch could easily win the lawsuit against a spambot, but then lose a different lawsuit for exposing personal details. 

 

I'm all for punishing someone who did something wrong, but exposing their personal information to the internet isn't the way to do it -- that would just be vengeance, not justice. Leave justice to the legal system. 

Tell that to Batman.  lol

 

The legal system doesn't always deliver true justice.  Both in comics and IRL.