The Morgan Doctrine: Hacking the Utah Attorney General's Office

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Hacking the Utah Attorney General's Office

"You're a mean one, Mister Grinch." It would appear to the casual observer that the former Utah Attorney General John Swallow is a crook. Even the Grinch wouldn't beat a legal affidavit out of a guy on his death bed, trying to turn a bribe into an unbribe.* Man, talk about a heart two sizes too small. Sure, Swallow resigned hours ahead of a report on his crookedness, and the wheels of justice are grinding away on his growing litany of shenanigans. But that's not the bad part. The fact is, the Utah Attorney General's office is…well…asleep at the switch. Which is an open invitation for massive miscreant misbehavior.

Merry Christmas to the LGBT community, who was ready to walk into city hall and have their same-sex marriages licensed and performed by none other than Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker just hours after a federal judge declared Utah's same-sex-marriage ban unconstitutional. A moderately competent attorney general's office would have had the paperwork ready to file for a stay of the decision pending appeal.

Don't get me wrong. It's not the purpose of this blog to comment on Judge Shelby's ruling or opine on same-sex marriage. The cause of my indigestion is that Utah politicians ought to be paying more attention to operational competence and less attention to diode output of the FOR SALE signs on their lapel buttons.

So to all you hackers, crackers, and black hats I say, "Come to the Grinch's home state and do some phishing!" U.S. cyber security laws already have us playing with our hands behind our backs. There's not a single person in the U.S. House or Senate that knows a DNS hack from a double hernia. Pay your protection money from a PAC named something like "Decency for the Homeless" and then suck up cash like a Hoover,the vacuum cleaner, not J. Edgar. Heck, if J. Edgar were alive today he'd probably be standing in the marriage license line at the Salt Lake City Hall with his former assistant Clyde Tolson.

*Swallow had the audacity to cajole Richard M. Rawle into signing an affidavit explaining his arrangement with Swallow just days before Rawle died of cancer in December 2012. Swallow distributed the document as proof that he'd done nothing wrong.

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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?

Background: Welcome black hats, white hats and cyber swashbucklers

The Revolutionary War was fought, financed, and pretty well WON by bonded privateers, legalized pirates who were given Letters of Marque and Reprisal by the Continental Congress and authorized to attack, capture and monetize British ships. The purpose of this site is to explore the possibility of a modern-day doctrine much like the Monroe Doctrine, by means of which the U.S. government could legally and, more importantly, effectively stop international hackers. Current cybercrime law is not only ineffective, but downright stupid. My Linux servers are attacked hundreds of times a day (mostly from China and former USSR domains), yet if I retaliate against those servers with some creative technology at my disposal (I know some VERY smart guys), then I am in violation of federal law and subject to some onerous penalties. We need more than a new law. We need a new international doctrine. I call it The Morgan Doctrine, named after Morgan Rapier, a fictional character I've created (hey, this is my way of establishing ownership of the concept, should it ever see the light of day).

Why a new international doctrine? Simply, nothing else will work. Introduced on December 2, 1823, the Monroe Doctrine told the world to keep their hands off the Americas. Combine this with current legal thinking on "hot pursuit" of fugitives. In 1917 the US Army went into Mexico after Pancho Villa. More recently, in 1960 Israeli Mossad agents abducted Adolf Eichmann from Argentina. Granted, much of the world regards the Eichmann adventure as a violation of international law. I don't share that opinion and therefore use it as the third leg of my Monroe-Pancho-Aldof platform for The Morgan Doctrine.

If someone comes into your home and attacks or attempts to rob you, you may shoot them dead. You may do so as long as they expire on your property. But what about cyber criminals? They attack you in your home from their homes. Retaliate in kind, and you go to jail. The Morgan Doctrine states simply that if you attack my computers (or my banking assets held in US-based computers), then under a certain set of well-defined conditions, a licensed and bonded "cyber privateer" may attack you in your home country and split the proceeds with the U.S. government. For the sake of argument, let's call it a 50-50 split (heh heh).

Right now, American law enforcement is completely unequipped to deal with the sheer number international cyber hackers. Sure, I could report each of the thousand daily attacks to the FBI, as could the millions of other attackees in the USA. But the volume of such reports would make any meaningful resolution laughable. Not to mention that the FBI has no jurisdiction outside the USA. Yet to make such "enforcement" profitable to recognized (ie, "bonded" "deputized") privateers, as Heath Ledger's Joker said in his last role, "Now you're talking!" You raid our bank accounts, we raid yours. You make money from off-shore child pornography, we're going to loot your bank accounts and, with some REALLY creative black hat operations, you will be taken off the grid worldwide to the extent that you'll not even complete a cell phone conversation for the remainder of your miserable depraved life. Okay, that last part probably won't fly, but you get my drift.

The purpose of this site is to explore the mechanics, legalities and practicality of The Morgan Doctrine.

And I will be the sole arbiter of whether or not your comments get posted. As Mel Brooks wrote, "It's good to be king."