The Department of Defense and Hacking.

Interesting thing popped up on #GeekList today. Go visit WAB.COM. And you'll see...

WAB.COM is now the property of the United States government.
The domain and web site were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.

Antonio Del Santos, a.k.a "AloneTrio" pled guilty in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on January 25, 2008, to conspiring with others to violate federal copyright laws by illegally releasing copyrighted code illegally circumvent built-in security protections and allow individuals to run "homebrew" software on game consoles, such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo Wii. Del Santos and his co-conspirators used www.wab.com as the exclusive outlet to provide copyrighted code to individuals. As a result, the WAB website is now the property of the United States government. Individuals involved in this conduct face up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $500,000 for each count charged.

Piracy is the unauthorized, willful reproduction or distribution of copyrighted material, such as software, movies, music, and games. People who distribute pirated works over the Internet via IRC, FTP sites, web sites, or file-sharing networks, and people who download or reproduce pirated works are risking criminal prosecution. Piracy is a crime even when the works are distributed over the Internet for free or where the conduct does not involve monetary gain, such as the trading of pirated products for other pirated products.

The Department of Justice and federal law enforcement will continue to investigate and prosecute individuals and groups that violate the federal criminal copyright laws at home and abroad. For more information on these and other federal anti-piracy investigations, visit www.cybercrime.gov.

Now, I suppose you never really know whether this is the hackers themselves or the feds putting up severed heads on poles. Interesting nonetheless. I also noticed a security certificate error when I visited for the first time.

What's going on in the hacking world anyway? Haven't heard any superstar hacking stories for ages? Are these guys just getting snapped up by corporates?

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