Secure:What The Porn?
From Megaman Mush Wiki
- DATE: 01/05/2220
- AGENTS ASSIGNED: Prismatic Spider, Alloy
Contents |
News Briefs
INTERNET TERRORISM STRIKES AT PORN
A massive hacking attack launched early Friday morning destroyed up to 50 adult-oriented Internet sites, reportedly deleting terabytes of images and video files. SciTech investigators believe that the attacks were ideologically motivated, as only content was targeted. "This was professional," according to a SciTech spokesperson. "No personal information was compromised, and no users were damaged. Only the data was destroyed." Many adult entertainment enthusiasts fear that some older files may be gone forever.
The attack may have been prompted by vigilante action against child pornography. During the SciTech follow-up to the attacks, YouFailIt.com, one of the free "men-oriented" web sites effected, was found to contain "several" instances of underage individuals engaging in "lewd acts". Baldwin "Billy" Wynn, propriator of YouFailIt, denies the allegations of trafficking in child pornography. He has been released on a 100,000z bond.
Opening Investigations
After The Crusader
So someone's rampantly deleting porn. This isn't really something Prismatic cares about, but such widespread cyberspace destruction gets some notice, even if it is things Prismatic wouldn't mind having them gone in the first place. Given porn sites have long had reputations for being either ridiculously poorly secured or ridiculously secure, it begs the questions: Who, why, and how?
Prismatic is going to begin looking into the destruction, checking access logs, see if anyone saw the culprit, maybe poke around to see if there's any rumors going around about it.
Response
Prismatic assesses the sites that were hit by the attack. First, they were all generally ad-supported subscription-optional kind of places. They were the Internet's dumping ground, the virtual equivalent of a convenience store magazine rack. The pay sites were unaffected, since they have pay-for-play content; all of this stuff, while DRMed aggressively to keep you coming back for the ad impressions, is free. Much of it is "found" video, donated or stolen. Most is disturbing or unpleasant to non-perverts.
The potential who is huge, as is the why. The how appears to be a series of brilliantly executed exploits that carved through the outer security of the site completely. They never knew what hit them. Entire libraries were obliterated, but no users were affected. No personal information was compromised. The site architecture continued to run. No theft at all, only destruction. This was someone who had a purpose in mind, and that purpose was to destroy smut, all smut, they came across.
No one saw anything clearly. They knew it was big, they knew it was strong, but that was all. The site logs are trashed and provide you with little immediate help, but surely there must be something here. Something you can use.
Alloy's Investigations
Legal Beagle
Alloy checks into the Conleth and Meyer scandal, with several questions in mind. What /kind/ of 'suspicious traces' were discovered? Which cases were the items in question involved in? Has Conleth and Meyer been involved in any other high-profile cases that may or may not be under threat of challenge as well? Who are the major partners of C&M and what are their histories?
Results - Conleth & Beatty: Situation Overview
The law firm of Conleth Morton and Meyer Beatty (Morton and Beatty is already copyrighted by another firm) generally handle criminal defense cases in the United Kingdom. The major partners are Conleth and Meyer themselves, with a group of associates around them -- generally young, eager lawyers looking to make a name for themselves.
Conleth Morton inherited the firm from his father, Phillip Morton, after graduating from Cambridge a few years ago. He's a young, aggressive hot-shot lawyer who all but radiates arrogance. Conleth was wrapped up in some sort of fraternity sex tape scandal, and was briefly expelled. However, he was able to beat his way back into Cambridge through a series of legal challenges, and eventually finished near the top of his class. He is known in the field for being able to defend the undefendable; the price for his personal services is high. Conleth is married and has a young son.
Meyer Beatty was a school chum of Conleth's, though he was not involved in Conleth's troubles. Meyer is clearly the subordinate partner to Conleth, lacking much of his sheer aggressiveness. However, where Conleth is often brash, Meyer is a patient, competent, hard-working man. Meyer has been involved on the defense of several high profile murder cases. Meyer usually attends to the paperwork and other non-glamourous tasks, while Conleth is the visible face of the firm. Meyer is married with two young children, both daughters.
Presently, nothing is certain about the allegations. Magistrates are carefully examining the accusations and going through the evidence piece by piece to look at it again. No cases presently underway are effected as far as anyone /knows/, but those are also being examined. The entire process has put the firm under a cloud, as the firm had been previously unbesmirched by these kinds of allegations in its 90-year history.
There are two common elements that a cursory examination uncovers. First, all the evidence that has been tampered with is digital; audio and video recordings, forensic traces in emails, and so on. The tampering points appear to have a scattershot nature to them, but always involve key points in the relevant cases. Many of these cases involve murders, though some of them also involve lesser high crimes; manslaughter, drug trafficking, things of that nature. This digital evidence was not the sole kind of evidence used in the majority of the cases, but was often very important.
It's easy to understand how this kind of malfeasance could have been overlooked originally. The nature of the tampering is very professional. Someone paid a lot for this to be done. Were it not for the audit, it may never have been detected.
The other common element in the evidence is that all the cases were headed up by Conleth Morton himself. Morton is presently being questioned "informally" by the police about his role in any alleged tampering. He doesn't have the background to have done this himself, which means he must have gone outside. But who? And why?
Secound Round - There Are No Coincidences
Each of the affected cases was handled by Conleth Morton himself. Conleth went to Cambridge, and was involved in a sex tape scandal. Maddy also went to Cambridge and was the /subject/ of a sex tape scandal. And now, that video has /also/ gone missing, thanks to a recent bout of internet vigilanteism. HMMMM.
Alloy doesn't go looking for the video very hard (figuratively holding his nose while he does so) since that's probably a lost cause, although if there's a description, that's a bonus. He tries to find out what happened in the actual attack itself. Was there any evidence left afterwards to hint at /who/ it might've been?
Alloy casts a wide net, searching for other Cambridge students who were going there when the scandal occurred who have also suddenly fallen on hard times. He already has Baldwin Wynn's name thanks to Erwin, who has suddenly been accused of being in the child porn industry. There's a pattern here.
Results - Pronz and Conleth
The actual Internet assault was a clean piece of work. Alloy's SciTech contacts will remark on it because it is highly unusual. Most Internet terrorists try to wipe out entire sites, but the attacker in this case /only/ targeted content. The code that ran the business side of the operation (the credit card numbers, the usernames, etc.), the forums, the advertising, all of that was left alone. Only the actual product of the sites were destroyed in a surgical strike.
It's too clean to be an uprising from the anti-porn crowd. You've seen more forensic traces on a new pair of medical latex gloves. Further, nobody who has claimed credit for it has been successfully linked to the attacks, though many people have lauded the action as a pro-social good.
The video that involves Conleth and Maddy can't be found anywhere. It's old meme and most people are working on restoring the latest h0t f33ds. It apparently involved several people, but the star was a person titled 'Frat Dude' who apparently did some very scummy things. The video was a favorite of the pervert crowd for a while until they got bored with it and moved on to the latest horrific video. You can't unsee these kinds of things once you see them. Everyone involved is damaged.
Erwin's been doing a lot of work in this area. You could ask him for leads about the people who were involved in the incident; he has extensive data on the subject which you, if you were helping him, would have. Unless you wouldn't. But that would be Erwin making a call.
Conclusions So Far
- Conleth and Maddy were both involved in 'a' scandal at Cambridge. It's impossible to completely verify this, but it seems highly likely it was the same one.
- The porn content was deleted in a precise, surgical strike. This doesn't fit the M.O. of the usual suspects, who would trash everything. It was a highly skilled hacker, who wanted to delete something specific - the Maddy video?
- The tampered evidence was all digital in nature. Conleth may have hired someone to alter it, but someone with an axe to grind could also have broken in and altered it to look like it was tampered with as well.
- Maddy, Daryn and Regal all roll together, for some reason. Maddy hooked up with Daryn not long ago. Dr. Regal is also listed as one of her heroes in her Myspace.
- Hypothesis: Maddy spills her sob story about her college days to Daryn (why?). Daryn tells Regal about it, and says 'we should do something'. Regal cracks his knuckles, and starts deleting large swathes of porn and ruining lives.
