thewayne | Entries tagged with swatting

The guy had been banned from Rainbow Six Siege multiple times, the article doesn't say why, and called in a hostage situation at Ubisoft's office, the game maker, resulting in a SWAT response and several streets in the area being closed. Now, here's the best bit of the article: "After being charged, La Presse reported (via Polygon) that Ouahioune pleaded for Ubisoft to unban his account. "Can you say that I am kindly asking the Ubisoft team to 'unban' my account please," Ouahioune said. "I have put over $1,500 in cosmetic enhancements in my profile."

Yeah. I just scared the ever-loving shit out of your employees, pretty-please unban my account! Oh, he also made threats against Minecraft developers and apparently participated in a DDoS attack against the French government.

At least his conviction includes a psych eval and treatment. And no one was hurt - this happened in Canada where the police aren't quite as eager to shoot as in the USA.

https://www.engadget.com/miffed-rainbow-six-seige-player-sentenced-for-swatting-ubisoft-montreals-offices-201200746.html

Remember that Violence As A Service article that I posted a while back? This is a direct offshoot of that. One of these stains is a "L337 hax0r" who stole over $300,000 in crypto currency via cell phone sim swapping. These twits would hack Yahoo Mail accounts, then see if that same password would unlock a Ring account. If it did, they were gold - goes to show that it's important to use different passwords for different accounts, especially important ones, and critical when privacy issues are at stake!

Then these stains would SWAT the victims, recording and live-streaming the victims. Fortunately no physical injuries were reported from the incidents, though emotional trauma I'm sure was received.

Have fun in prison, ass-wipes!

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/hacked-ring-cams-used-to-record-swatting-victims/

In a variation on swatting, you can now go online, ask if people live in a particular city, and offer money to enact revenge on particular targets. $3,000 for tire slashings, throw bricks through windows, etc. Typically a slogan is shouted so the victim knows why it's being done. You need to arrange for someone to video you doing it so the buyer knows they're getting value for their hard- (and probably illegally-) earned money. Probably need to arrange for a getaway driver, too.

Lovely world we're evolving in to, eh?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/09/violence-as-a-service-brickings-firebombings-shootings-for-hire/

The jerk who called the Wichita cops in December 2017 that prompted the SWAT deployment that resulted in the death of 28 year old Andrew Finch, well, he is serving 20 years. The other man in the argument has probably completed his prison sentence, he gave the jerk his old address.

A couple of things have happened. First, a court has ruled that the City and Police Department of Wichita cannot be sued in the matter, their policies and response were not inappropriate. That is sad, but at least the matter was looked in to by theoretically independent and neutral third parties.

But that's not the biggie.

A court, and held up by a Federal court, has revoked the qualified immunity of the police officer that fired the fatal round that killed Finch! From the KWCH article: "A U.S. appeals court sided with the Kansas district court in denying Officer Rapp qualified immunity in Finch’s death[.] The court said a reasonable jury could believe Finch was unarmed and unthreatening when Rapp fired the shot that killed him."

The family is suing the officer for wrongful death damages and now it looks like that trial will proceed.

https://www.kwch.com/2022/07/05/wichita-officer-face-civil-trial-deadly-shooting-swatting-call/

He was in the middle of a livestream when the police showed up at his door. Fortunately nothing untoward happened and he resumed the livestream shortly after.

Bunch of bat rastards out there.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/3-million-fortnite-winner-and-his-parents-become-latest-swatting-targets/

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1167113.html

The original argument was between Casey Viner, 18, of Ohio, and Shane Gaskill, 19, of Witchita. The dispute was over a $1.50 bet over a Call of Duty game. Ultimately Viner threatened Gaskill with a SWAT call, Gaskill provided an address that he used to live at. Viner called Tyler Barriss, notorious in the SWATting community for calling in such strikes, along with bomb threats and other nonsense.

Police responded to the call made by Barriss and a man died. Andrew Finch, 27, father of 2, was killed by a single shot by a police officer who was cleared of all wrongdoing by the local DA.

Barriss plead guilty and is serving 20 years in the federal pen.

Viner plead guilty to two charges, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, the latter charge from erasing evidence of his calls to Barris and such from his devices.

Gaskill has been placed on deferred prosecution as he wasn't primarily active in the death of Finch. As long as he keeps his nose clean, he'll eventually have the prosecution dropped.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/09/man-who-hired-deadly-swatting-gets-15-months/

(I'm clearing out old browser tabs)

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1166984.html

The Feds don't parole, though apparently he might get time off for good behavior. Even so, there's lots of other jurisdictions looking to press charges against him, including Canada. With a little luck, this guy might never see a free day outside of prison again, and just maybe that will serve as a deterrent to other people who like to pull shit like this.

Considering he hacked a jail phone and made threats via Twitter while he was being held, he hasn't yet undergone sufficient attitude adjustment to make him a likely candidate for 'good behavior'. A few years in prison will perform some adjustment, I'm pretty confident of that.

To recap, two people, not including Barriss, were playing Call of Duty on the Xbox network and had a wager of $1.35. After the match ended, apparently the loser didn't want to pay. An argument ensued, one threatened to have the other SWATted. The other, who lived in Wichita, provided an old address. The address was provided to Barriss, he called the Wichita police department and claimed to have killed his parents and was about to kill others at that address. The SWAT team was dispatched, Andrew Finch answered the door and came out to see what was going on, and shortly the 28 year old and blameless father of two was shot dead by police. He had nothing to do with this Call of Duty argument and was unknown to the three people involved and had made no threatening gestures to the law enforcement officers.

The shooting was investigated by the District Attorney and charges were not filed against the officer who fired the fatal round.

The two Xbox players, from Ohio and Wichita, have also been arrested and are facing charges.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/man-behind-fatal-swatting-gets-20-years/

Sadly, the death of Andrew Finch isn't the worst of it. His niece witnessed his killing, and a year later she took her life. And there's more. Her boyfriend found her, and he also killed himself.

So Barriss killed three people with that phone call.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/2-suicides-directly-related-to-deadly-swatting-hoax-victims-family-says

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1132276.html

From the article: "The U.S. Justice Department has filed criminal charges against three U.S. men accused of swatting, or making hoax reports of bomb threats or murders in a bid to trigger a heavily armed police response to a target’s address. Investigators say the men, aged 19 to 23, all carried out the attacks with the help of Tyler Barriss, a convicted serial swatter whose last stunt in late 2018 cost a Kansas man his life.

FBI agents on Wednesday arrested Neal Patel, 23, of Des Plaines, Ill. and Tyler Stewart, 19 of Gulf Breeze, Fla. The third defendant, Logan Patten, 19, of Greenwood, Mo., agreed to turn himself in. The men are charged in three separate indictments with conspiracy and conveying false information about the use of explosive devices."

Tyler Barris was very well-known, and I expect there's a lot of people around the country who are deleting their social media accounts and reformatting their computers right now. And that won't help them, enough evidence to convict them has already been gathered. I expect some more arrests.

There's a quote that I wish I could find, unfortunately Google has been tainted by Percy Jackson and the Olympians, so I can't find it right now. It's something along the lines of "Zeus is slow to look in his book, but he DOES look."

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/01/three-charged-for-working-with-serial-swatter/

For those not familiar with this incident, take a loot at my SWATting tag and the previous posts on this incident.

Crossposts: https://thewayne.livejournal.com/1116190.html

First, to define the term SWATing, it is to place an anonymous call to local law enforcement, reporting a domestic violence shooting or hostage situation with shooting at an address where nothing has happened to provoke a SWAT or massive police response. All done for the sake of laughs. Frequently it's placed through a VOIP system such as Skype to make it all but impossible to trace the call back to its point of origin.

In this case, two guys were playing Call of Duty and had placed a $1.50 bet on the outcome of the game. One of the people whose Twitter handle was SWAuTistic, threatened to SWAT the other player, who dared him to do it. He then gave SWAuTistic a different address, I don't know how he came up with it. Police responded to that address with vigor, a man opened the front door, and six seconds later a single round was fired and he died. The dead man didn't have a weapon in hand, didn't play Call of Duty or any other video games, and had no connection to the argument.

SWAuTistic renamed his Twitter account, but not before Brian Krebs captured his message history. Krebs later engaged in a direct message interview with the holder of the renamed account, said person admitted to what he did and that he had done other SWATings and similar bomb threats, including shutting down an FCC hearing on net neutrality.

Krebs updated his post this morning to report that police in Los Angeles have arrested a 25 year old man in connection with this incident. I'm hoping it was SWAuTistic, though I'm curious if Kansas officials can charge the other person who provided the false address with a crime, I have no idea what it might be.

SWAuTistic posted on his Twitter feed "I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION". Making a false police report is illegal, in many states it's a misdemeanor but in some states it's a felony, and in such a state you could conceivably be charged with felony manslaughter. Regardless, if he's correctly identified, he can be sued out of existence in civil court by the family of the slain man, just like OJ was. And his future job prospects are nil.

There was an obvious overreaction by the Kansas SWAT department: there's no way one member could evaluate a situation and make a decision to fire in six seconds. What if it was a hostage that had been released. What if it had been a wrong address, as has happened in many SWAT responses. So there's definitely some culpability there, but the main blame is with SWAuTistic.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/

ETA: This Ars Technica article has more information. Apparently the CoD game was between "A" and "B", "A" wanted to get "B" SWATted and contacted SWAuTistic for said services. SWAuTistic then goaded "B" in to providing the address. The Wichita Police said that the dead man had spotlights on him and obeyed commands to raise his hands, then he lowered them before raising them again. An officer thought he was reaching for a gun in his waistband.

Let's take a worst possible case. Night time. Man with one or more spotlights shining directly in his face. Has a handgun. Several police officers with (probably) AR-15 rifles, wearing body armor and protective helmets that are safe against handguns unless you're shot in the throat or neck, in positions that the man can't see because he's blinded by the spotlight(s). His chances of hitting an officer are not much above zero. Yes, it's a non-zero chance of him hitting an officer, but it's pretty damn low. There's definitely going to be some scrutiny of Wichita Police practices. It'll be interesting to see what our Pumpkin-In-Chief and the elf in charge of the Justice Dept. have to say about this incident.

Meanwhile, deaths for law enforcement officers dropped significantly, falling to their lowest number since 2013. Law enforcement has never been "the most dangerous job", I believe deep water fishing has held that record for a while. IIRC, it's not in the top 5, though it may be in the top 10.