Mixter is a computer security specialist. Mixter first made the transition out of the computer underground into large-scale public awareness, in 2000, at which time newspapers and magazines worldwide mentioned a link to massively destructive and effective distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks which crippled and shut down major websites (including Yahoo!, Buy.com, eBay, Amazon, E-Trade, MSN.com, Dell, ZDNet and CNN).[1] Early reports stated that the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) was questioning Mixter regarding a tool called Stacheldraht (Barbed Wire).[1] Although Mixter himself was not a suspect, his tool, the Tribe Flood Network (TFN) and an update called TFN2K were ultimately discovered as being the ones used in the attacks, causing an estimated $1.7 billion USD in damages.[2][3][4][5]
In 2002 Mixter returned to the public eye, as the author of Hacktivismo's Six/Four System. The Six/Four System is a censorship resistant network proxy. It works by using "trusted peers" to relay network connections over SSL encrypted links.[6][7][8][9] As an example, the distribution includes a program which will act as a web proxy, but all of the connections will be hidden until they reach the far end trusted peer.[10]
References edit
- ^ a b "Hacker inquiry leads to Germany", BBC News Online, February 13, 2000.
- ^ The "Tribe Flood Network" distributed denial of service attack tool, An Analysis David Dittrich, University of Washington, 1999
- ^ Lemos, Robert. "Author of Web Attack Tool speaks Archived 2007-08-11 at archive.today", ZDNet news, February 9, 2000.
- ^ Wallack, Todd. "Probe Focuses on Prime Hacking Suspects - Investigation hampered by bogus attack bragging," San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 2000.
- ^ "'Mafiaboy' hacker jailed", BBC news, September 13, 2001.
- ^ Schachtman, Noah. "A New Code for Anonymous Web Use," Wired online, July 12, 2000.
- ^ "Hackers release software to battle censorship," Houston Chronicle/Reuters, July 15, 2002.
- ^ "Hackers Take Aim" CBS News, July 15, 2002.
- ^ Mixter. "Six/Four System Protocol Specs," 2003. mixter@hacktivismo.com.
- ^ Mixter. "The Six/Four System; A Decentralized Anonymous Peer-To-Peer Network Infrastructure With Trust," README file in Six/Four distribution, 2003.