I am being blackmailed --NEED HELP

rawdon · 07-23-2003, 11:58 AM

I run a business selling shareware. A couple of months ago I began receiving emails from customers who indicated that another company had stolen my web site. After looking into it I found the company, Huntersoft, had indeed lifted one of my web pages. It was a web page that described a product that competes directly with one of Huntersoft's products. In fact, the lifting was so complete that all they had done was do a search and replace of my program name (WinDriversBackup) with their program name (My Drivers). Even the user comments remained intact --only the program name changed. It was a pretty flagrant copyright. It was so compelling that I had no trouble having this company's merchant account closed down. That is when the trouble started. This company, this guy, now has a vengeance out for me. He signs me up for spam lists and has tried, unsuccessfully, to have my merchant account closed. He also spreads rumors and mistruths about me and my products on Google/Newsgroups. Last night I received about 100 threatening emails from him. I placed a copy at the end of this message. The emails demand that I return his merchant account or else he will sue me (yeah, right) or hack my web server (this I know he has skills to do). It is this last concern that I am most worried about.

The data that I can garner about this guy is that his web site is registered in China.

Administrative Contact:
Zhang Duo
Hunter Software
Dorm 71-102C North Quater, Fudan University
Shanghai Shanghai 200433
cn

He claims to do business in France. The primary name he goes by is Jacques Dubois. Sounds French but, alas, I found a photo of him and his photo clearly shows him as Chinese. Doing a tracert route on his communications with me I can see that he is using a French version of Hotmail and he spells words with a French style. Perhaps he is in France.

Additional datum...

This guy has left a trial of other businesses that he has extracted copyright infringement and, in one case, was able to do a wholesale lift of another person's code base. Of course, he promptly turned the code into his product. This person is a criminal. This is why I never approached them personally about his copyright violation with me.

In short, is there something I can do about this guy? Given his nebulas location it seems my chances for getting this guy out of my life are slim. If this guy shuts down my web site I'm out of business. Is there any recourse here? Are there any newly enacted laws that I can use to my advantage?

He indicates that he will hack my site and bring it down. Hello FutureQuest. Are you ready to help me with this?

Obviously this guy has compromised maturity and brains, but he can comprise my business. Is there recourse?

Jerry Rawdon
JerMar Software Corp.

***************************************************************

Hello Jerald R. Rawdon Jr.,

Send an E-mail to share-it to demand the reactivation of my
account.

Otherwise, your website will be HaCkeD at any time, 3 big
holes, so easy to crack it down. Well, If my share-it account is not resumed
or you have not sent an E-mail to them to request the reactivation of my
account, I have hired a lawyer to file a suit against you for your SLANDER
and VIOLATION of the order of my business.

Rawdon Jr., wait for your response. And I
cannot tolerate your words in Google that I have not yet stolen your
software. Your WinDriversBackup is a trash, which works only with a few
computer OS and hardware. And the interface is nasty, do you have a
restoration function? NO, you never don't know how to install a driver
correctly. And what's more, your WinDriversBackup extracts much fewer
drivers files than my latest software "My Drivers v2.21", don't attempt to
download v2.21 and install onto your computer for a study, once you
installed the software, your computer with certain patterns extracted by
myself, will destroy your whole HardDrive, formatting all partitions of your
HardDrive.

My LAST warning, send an E-mail to share-it to declaire that the
confilict has been solved and request the reactivation of my account.

Hackers at my side and Lawyer are waiting for your response.

Best Regards,
Jacques Dubois

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Messenger 6 http://g.msn.fr/FR1001/866 : dialoguez en son et en image
avec vos amis.

**Terra** · 07-23-2003, 12:45 PM

Quote:

He indicates that he will hack my site and bring it down. Hello FutureQuest. Are you ready to help me with this?

-and-

Otherwise, your website will be HaCkeD at any time, 3 big holes, so easy to crack it down.

The federal laws on cracking are pretty stiff, and since the threats have been made (and documented) the trail leads straight to a smoking gun...

Overall, (I Am Not A Lawyer) so I cannot provide you with any legal specifics, other than:
1) If they crack your site (via exploiting your installed scripts/software) and deface/destroy it, then the legal remedy falls squarely upon you to pursue prosecution...
2) If they crack your site and then proceed to attack the server core, then they enter both of our realms...

The above is just simply the legal economics of it all

Things to do now...

1) Change all of your passwords to long, mixed case, mixed alphanumeric, difficult (cryptic) passwords...
2) Only use secure methods to connect to your website (SSH, Port Forwarding, etc)... You may need to consult with your company's technical support staff for setting this up...
3) Make sure all of your operational (and dormant) scripts are up to date with the latest patches...
4) Do some research on your scripts to see if any are currently exploitable, but without patches... If they are, pull them down...
5) Make sure your home computer, or any computer that connects to your site is not infected with a virus/trojan...
6) Ensure that you keep all correspondence in a safe place, in case it is needed in court..
7) Cease all communication with this individual since bad blood pretty much nullifies any amelioration...

At least you have the benefit of seeing if this Tropical Storm will develop into a Hurricane and have the time to take precautionary measures...

Good luck with your current dilemma...

--
Terra
--we are used to it, we live in Florida--
FutureQuest

rawdon · 07-23-2003, 01:09 PM

Hi Terra,

Many thanks for the response. It is comforting to get a reply on this matter from someone more knowledgeable than I on the matter.

I will immediately change logon credentials based on your suggestions.

I do not run any scripts at my web site. I'm guessing this greatly reduces a hacker's ability to bring me down?

Again, many thanks for the suggestions.

Jerry

**Bob** · 07-23-2003, 01:15 PM

Hi Jerry,

One method that we see probes launched is by viewing uprotected stats and looking for vulnerable areas.

I would suggest visiting this FAQ and following the directions contained as well.
http://service.futurequest.net/tech/...p?&p_faqid=407

Good luck,
Bob

rawdon · 07-23-2003, 01:43 PM

Hi Bob,

Is it safe to password protect all my folders? Will doing so cause any unwanted behavior, i.e. log files can't be written to or who knows what else?

Basically, if it doesn't cause illeffect, I'd like to password protect all of them.

Jerry

**Bob** · 07-23-2003, 01:56 PM

Hi again Jerry,

Password protecting any Directory will simply require the use of a username/password to gain web access. So if you do not require allowing a Browser to access a certain directory without using a username/password then you would be fine password protecting them.

However if the contents of any directory is called by any web page and you have password protected it then the user accessing that page will be prompted for a user/password combination.

If you are not sure then I suggest password protecting what you want and then testing access and having others check access as your browser may cache the username/password.

(What I do is password protect with one browser and then test with another browser to prevent password cache issues)

Hope this helps further,
Bob

rawdon · 07-23-2003, 02:48 PM

OK, now I'm in a quandry! I mistakenly password protected my www folder. Now my whole web site is down and I cannot figure out how to remove the password protection! I can only see how to remove the user I gave access to it. How do I get it back to normal again?!

**Bob** · 07-23-2003, 02:49 PM

Hi again Jerry,

You are not the First

Eiether rename or remove the .htaccess file that was created or remove the user using the CNC, any of thees should do the job

-Bob

*brsett* · 07-24-2003, 11:23 PM

I was actually thinking about security on my futurequest account tonight, and I was wondering if you guys might be willing to provide ssh with key based authentication rather than login based authentication? It really is quite superior from a security perspective.

**Terra** · 07-25-2003, 03:50 AM

Quote:

and I was wondering if you guys might be willing to provide ssh with key based authentication rather than login based authentication?

Huh???

Our OpenSSH offers three types of login abilities...
1) Password
2) RSAAuthentication
3) PubkeyAuthentication

Please read more about this at:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.c...penBSD+Current

Also, if you are concerned about #1, then that is easy - change your shell login password to something incredibly difficult and use the maximum amount of Upper/lower case alpha/numeric characters with a few symbols and spaces sprinkled in... Good luck trying to brute force that password, as most likely our sun will have burned out before a brute force cracker has exhausted the entire keyspace...

--
Terra
--My password keys only need to be strong enough to last until the next SuperNova in our backyard--
FutureQuest