[VLM]

"because you know, that's a good target to burn registrar access on and all"

No, nearly ideal use. Its like a strategic nuclear weapon. You don't use it sneakily, that's the opposite of the whole point. Always intimidate as publicly as possible and in the tech community messing with linode is about as public as it gets.

The other part is showing off, its like declaring "we have access to them all but we don't care about name.com". Maybe they do...

[tiredofcareer]

They didn't utilize the access to go after Linode. They intended to utilize it to go after SwiftIRC, which nobody gives a shit about. That's where my comments came from. Linode just happened to be a nice prize on the way.

[jrochkind1]

Yeah, I mean, it's supposed to come off as showing off, right? "Sure, we're so crazy good, that we can take out name.com and linode just cause some script kiddies pissed us off, no sweat. Don't mess with us. And we're so in it for the lulz, that' SURE we'd take out linode and name.com just to get some script kiddies, and not bother trying to sell the CCs or anything."

Or, they're lying. I mean, they could be lying about the whole damn story, who knows (not me).

[meowface]

You hit the nail on the head right here.

Assuming the account is completely true though, I would say they succeeded in showing off. It's pretty impressive that they took over name.com and discovered a CF 0-day just to get into Linode, all just to fuck with one IRC network no one cares about.