I haven’t been following this, and I imagine others already have similar thoughts on this, but this article raised my hackles on this Louie dude.
When Rossmann searched for Luan Tahiraj, he was stunned.
News articles revealed that in 2013, Tahiraj had been jailed in Australia for offences against two girls, aged 13 and 14. In total, he served an eight-year sentence, with parole after four.
Court records show that Tahiraj sent the 13-year-old a file while chatting to her on MSN Messenger. He promised he would help her get more friends on MySpace, but it was, in fact, a remote administration tool (RAT).
Using the RAT, Tahiraj took over the girl’s computer and threatened to destroy it and hack her social media if she didn’t perform certain sexual acts for him.
He then recorded these acts via her webcam and shared the video online.
Jesus Christ. What a fucking monster. Only 8 years and served half that? Unbelievable.
McEwen says the AFP found evidence that Tahiraj had hacked 133 people using the RAT technology.
“They prosecuted on two matters, but there were many more out there that they did not prosecute, because it’s about the quality of cases that you bring to court,” he says.
There is no suggestion that these other people were underage.
“But it shows that the appetite didn’t stop at two,” McEwen says.
“It went far broader than that.”
A serial psychopath. Unbelievable they could only get him on 2 counts.
My spidey senses are tingling, I wonder if he couldn’t help himself and was doing the same thing again with his PS5 diagnostic software.
But she had repeatedly told him she was not trying to pirate his software, and also that she thought one of his security systems, called Digital Rights Management (DRM), was invasive and beyond the norm.
Other people were saying the same thing, pointing out that Louie’s DRM system could identify if you were running competitors’ software.
Some voiced concerns about the risk of malware or spyware if you did as Louie suggested on his website and turned off your anti-virus to run his software.
Alarm bells.
“There is no actual proof that I hack my customers, spy on my customers, breach any laws, or even go outside my own terms and conditions,” he wrote on the Better Way Electronics website.
“The fact that nobody has proven otherwise […]”
There it is. One of these brazen unremorseful psychos that didn’t learn shit from his imprisonment. They only got him on 2 of 135 crimes in which he did heinous shit to people after all, so now he thinks he can keep doing the same thing. He thinks he is such a genius, he is outright daring people in front of their faces. It’s a game to him.
Jones paid about $300 to buy a licence for the software, which at first worked perfectly. “It was maybe two weeks later, after we were like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be so great,’ that we started to have problems,” she says.
I bet it took about 2 weeks for him to get around to remoting into their PS5 diagnostics computer where the software was installed. The software does have to work of course, to be a tasty enough bait.
Access revoked
Better Way Electronics’s owner, Louie, fired off an email as a warning: Jones would be banned from the software she just bought if she kept running it “in a modified state”.
She had no idea what he meant, and told him she had only used it as advertised — to fix PlayStations. But Louie was unmoved, pointing to his terms and conditions, which stated he could revoke access at any time, even without providing a reason.
The pair went around in circles, Jones assuring him she wasn’t trying to pirate anything and suggesting the problem must be at his end, and Louie not having a bar of it, until things got heated on both sides.
Their interaction ended with Jones being banned from using the software.
But Jones soon saw she was not the only one having problems; other people were saying online they were getting banned without cause, and without a refund.
My speculative take is, these repair folks were running this software on clean-room machines used only for PS5 diagnostics, in a DMZ (or something similar), especially if the advice was to disable antivirus in order to use the software. I speculate when he eventually remoted in and snooped around, this would either a) look like a reverse engineering environment, or b) piss him off because he couldn’t get into anything else, or it was boring compared to his expectations/whatever his intent was.
Presumably, when he couldn’t get what he was looking for, he’d just jump right to fucking with them plainly over email instead of some other m.o. we’re unaware of, perhaps because this blew up too soon. I mean, why not, he’s already got their money and the terms let him do it; he set it up that way. And “stopping piracy” is the perfect smokescreen.
It makes sense when the primary goal isn’t actually money. Any business that isn’t “interesting” is competition to another business that actually is interesting, therefore the competition for them should be culled, so that the “interesting” business pool is stronger. Perfect psycho logic.
This is some weird power trip on many levels. Just like his previous 135 victims were subjected to his power. Disgusting.
This is all speculation on my part, of course.
“I feel you don’t understand me and my business goals.”
I fucking bet.
rekabis@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
On a personal level, I have never liked Louis Rossmann. There is something about him that I have never been able to define - his cockiness, or brashness or the way he carries himself, IDK - that has always rubbed me the wrong way. If we meet IRL, I am not sure if we could ever be friends.
And yet…
I will always be a staunch supporter of him. I will always watch and promote his videos. I will always be behind him 100%.
Because he fights the good fight. Because he fights the right fight.
And because he is careful in his research, points out where he is unsure, qualifies where there is nuance, and doesn’t pull any punches when faces need punching. His content is invariably not just correct and detailed, but also accurate and precise.
And most of all: despite his career success, he still fights for the little guy. That one of my favourite videos was a detailed rant about how the very career path he had taken was no longer available to other young people because of how restricted individual parts have become, and how in many cases you can now only obtain assemblies that are much more expensive.
jagungal@aussie.zone 11 hours ago
I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds his personality annoying in some way I can’t quite put my finger on. I suspect it’s just the culture clash between my quiet Australian upbringing and his bold and brash New York personality. I also strongly agree with you that he fights the good fight and he fights it well.