On 2014-01-08 06:02, Adam Back wrote:
I imagine its all out there on the wikis or interwebs, thats where I read it, so here I am just repeating what was written about extensively at the time. From memory there was some escalation. He was detected, blocked, reacted (mac tumble etc) blocked again,
The reason Aaron Swartz was repeatedly detected and repeatedly blocked was because of the crudity of his attack:(sequential downloads at maximum speed, disrupting JSTOR with excessive load) Had he rate limited his downloads to avoid disrupting the network, and hidden the sequential nature of his downloads through a random permutation, he would have been fine. No one competent to detect him and block him would have cared enough to do so.
then proceed to enter presumably restricted areas, hide equipment to bypass limits the admins had placed only on wifi users
Aaron Swartz entered the closet where the networks were all wired up together, and wired his laptop to the network, in the process bringing JSTOR services to MIT a sudden grinding halt and adversely affecting JSTOR services to the rest of the world.