SHORTBUS TURF WAR

[Pi]

I'm sure WYS would have found out by themselves, so that raises the question of why he told them.

I think that for all their tooting about being internet detective fandom police, they couldn't figure this one out on their own, and needed handouts from Dragoneer. Fits in with the whole grade-school mentality of that place.

[Jim Demintia]

I'm sure WYS would have found out by themselves, so that raises the question of why he told them.

I think that for all their tooting about being internet detective fandom police, they couldn't figure this one out on their own, and needed handouts from Dragoneer. Fits in with the whole grade-school mentality of that place.

I guess I'm surprised/didn't know that they didn't know before now.

[a pigeon]

The host of the WYS forums/tech admin is a 12 year old boy.

Well, on October the 24th 2010 he was 13:

henriw started researching exploits in FA when dragoneer placed out a 50 dollar bounty per exploit.

At the time, henriw was 12 years old, he just turned 13 today.

http://cl.ly/2rnu

As you can see, Henri found many exploits, this was before lexyeevee released a list of exploits on his livejournal page.

Exploiting FurAffinity is so easy, a twelve year old can do it!

Does this mean InkBunny is more secure than FurAffinity? No.
Would I recommend migrating to InkBunny? Hell no.
Is FurAffinity an awesome site to connect with other furries? Yeah!

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1809276/

Now, if you go and look at henriw's FA account (He says in his profile that he's WYS's tech admin):

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/henriw

you can see that it was made on January 10th, 2010. So he was running around on FA for 9 months as a 12 year old. The FA terms of service say:

"This site is not intended for use by individuals under the age of 13. Accounts created by underage users will be closed without warning, and the user will be responsible to provide verification that they are of sufficient legal age to continue use of the site. "

If you look on IK's FA journal you can see Dragoneer and yak were posting on it. So, given that Henriw was in contact with the FA staff over bugs and hosting WYS (where several FA admins post) all when he was 12, I find it hard to believe that no one knew he was a literal child. It's curious how the WYS people kept so quiet about it.

[Conan]

you can see that it was made on January 10th, 2010. So he was running around on FA for 9 months as a 12 year old. The FA terms of service say:

"This site is not intended for use by individuals under the age of 13. Accounts created by underage users will be closed without warning, and the user will be responsible to provide verification that they are of sufficient legal age to continue use of the site. "

If you look on IK's FA journal you can see Dragoneer and yak were posting on it. So, given that Henriw was in contact with the FA staff over bugs and hosting WYS (where several FA admins post) all when he was 12, I find it hard to believe that no one knew he was a literal child. It's curious how the WYS people kept so quiet about it.

And of course FA will do nothing, and if called out on it Dragoneer will pull the usual "We all make mistakes" or some shit about "forgiving" Henriw.

Also, anyone else notice WYS Forums have been locked down? It's a super secret club, guyz.

[Pi]

And of course FA will do nothing, and if called out on it Dragoneer will pull the usual "We all make mistakes" or some shit about "forgiving" Henriw.

Also, anyone else notice WYS Forums have been locked down? It's a super secret club, guyz.

Of course. The words in the AUP and TOS don't mean anything as such, they're just a convenient stick to beat the users with when they're not too busy sucking on Dragoneer.

Also rumor has it (somewhere on one of my gazillion IRC channels) that the WYS forums crashed under the extremely heavy load of 15 simultaneous users. Not sure how much truth there is to that, though.

[a pigeon]

And of course FA will do nothing, and if called out on it Dragoneer will pull the usual "We all make mistakes" or some shit about "forgiving" Henriw.

Exactly right. It seems that Henriw lied about his age, but It's apparently Ok because he pointed out some bugs that FA had. He might get told not to do it again. Likewise WYS is rather supine about the whole matter. They're more concerned with what lead them to lock down their forums: the person who has been leaking threads from their hidden forums.

Someone on lulz.net posted screencaps of various drama threads from WYS:

http://lulz.net/furi/res/1307165.html
http://lulz.net/furi/res/1302861.html

(Note for people who don't read lulz.net: it's a chan board and so after a while the topic will drop off the board and be gone. It's also NSFW)

I looked through the screencaps. I didn't see anything particularly interesting, except for Synhowl boasting about digging up scads of personal information on one Sniff Heinkal and claiming to have seriously considered sending them a pipe-bomb, they also rant about shooting him if he turns up at their house:

http://i55.tinypic.com/2iufbz9.jpg

They were given a one week ban from WYS for that, and a week from FA for making threats over there as well apparently. Dragoneer said that he thought she meant well but let her emotions carry her away.
Sniff claims to have reported WYS and Synhowl to the FBI over the post: http://i53.tinypic.com/2lsi71j.jpg

Anyhow, the real business on WYS is rooting out the traitor and they were so enthusiastic about it that they managed to collaterally ban various people:

http://i53.tinypic.com/2r4pdg6.png

However that doesn't seemed to have stopped the leaking at the time of posting.

[Jim Demintia]

HenriW's twitter has said he's in eighth grade for as long as I've ever seen it. How is this news to people? Oh, right FA admins. The sun coming up is news to them.

Anyway, I guess I had some level of doubt in my mind seeing as he was running around like he was much older. He's from the Dominican Republic or some such, I figured maybe "eighth grade" meant something different there, or that it was some kind of joke, or something, I don't know.

The 13-year-old thing in the TOS is boilerplate for any site that requires registration. Thank the U.S. Congress and the Chris Hansen crowd (not the ironic 4chan one) for that, whatever you think of it.

They're more concerned with what lead them to lock down their forums: the person who has been leaking threads from their hidden forums.

As someone on lulz points out, you make a quorum of posts, wait and you can get into their secret treehouse. And the fact that it exists is widely known, so yeah.

Grade school.

[Pi]

I had no idea that he was, in fact, 12 years old. I only found out. We had thought the dude was 14. I looked into that.

And no, I will not take action against HenriW. Normally, in a situation like this, I would ban the individual until they were 13. However, given HenriW has been helping and assisting FA in a matter of ways, I think a warning to abide by the site rules and policies will suffice.

They'll gladly take unspecified "help" from a 12-year-old dominican accessing the site in contravention of their AUP, but people who know what they're doing are considered too politically hot to consider listening to. Wonderful.

[a pigeon]

HenriW's twitter has said he's in eighth grade for as long as I've ever seen it. How is this news to people? Oh, right FA admins. The sun coming up is news to them.

I asked Silver Automatic about that. He said (despite following Henriw on twitter, regularly exchanging tweets with him and appointing him an admin on WYS) that he'd never looked at HenriW's twitter page and so had no idea. I suppose the sun coming up really is news when you're that unobservant, or else he's just being dishonest.

[Pi]

So, I kicked the kid from that world-headquarters of the anti-fa rumor mill irc channel, and he demands to know why:

/*/ Apollo [~Apollo@henriwatson.com]
/*/  ircname  : Henri Watson
<Pi> because I typed '/kb apollo' into my irc client
<Apollo> Okay, but what did I do this time.
<Pi> I don't know, and don't particularly care, but as far as I know you're both prepubescent and trading handjobs with  dragoneer
<Pi> none of which is particularly endearing
<Apollo> The only time I talked with dragoneer was when I told him about the CSRF holes in FA.
<Pi> that's nice, now leave me alone
<Apollo> Alright, have a nice rest of a day.

So, apparently, even his pet underage kid doesn't get listened to about FA security issues. Of course, the kid's words don't really jive with Dragoneer's, so I suspect one or both of them are lying.

[Conan]

I had no idea that he was, in fact, 12 years old. I only found out. We had thought the dude was 14. I looked into that.

And no, I will not take action against HenriW. Normally, in a situation like this, I would ban the individual until they were 13. However, given HenriW has been helping and assisting FA in a matter of ways, I think a warning to abide by the site rules and policies will suffice.

Nailed it!

They'll gladly take unspecified "help" from a 12-year-old dominican accessing the site in contravention of their AUP, but people who know what they're doing are considered too politically hot to consider listening to. Wonderful.

I like how this kid is running around saying he'll wait a month before publishing the exploits. How much do you want to bet that, in a month when nothing's fixed, he'll sit on them until they are? Wouldn't want to have to make Dragoneer do damage control now.
If that's the case, I really hope someone else publishes them once the month is up.

[a pigeon]

WYS have been reduced to such a paranoid state that they're trying to police what their forum members do outside of the forum; anyone who contacts people who they banned from their forums will be suspended without appeal:

http://i51.tinypic.com/28i5407.png

[MazelTovCocktail]

HenriW's twitter has said he's in eighth grade for as long as I've ever seen it. How is this news to people? Oh, right FA admins. The sun coming up is news to them.

I asked Silver Automatic about that. He said (despite following Henriw on twitter, regularly exchanging tweets with him and appointing him an admin on WYS) that he'd never looked at HenriW's twitter page and so had no idea. I suppose the sun coming up really is news when you're that unobservant, or else he's just being dishonest.

It's not so much that the sun coming up is news to them, it's that they're stuck in windowless basements and feel comforted by making themselves believe that the sun doesn't come up, even despite the realization that it does.

Funny how that works on two levels...

[ProvincialTwit]

I like how this kid is running around saying he'll wait a month before publishing the exploits. How much do you want to bet that, in a month when nothing's fixed, he'll sit on them until they are? Wouldn't want to have to make Dragoneer do damage control now.
If that's the case, I really hope someone else publishes them once the month is up.

And of course if he -does- publish them in a months' time when nothing's been fixed, even money says he'll go from 'golden boy' to 'enemy of the state' faster than a metaphorical fast thing. 

Which would be fun to watch tbqh.

[Pi]

WYSF will be temporarily closed for a revamp, rewrite, review, and restructure of the site. During this time, we will also be evaluating several user accounts as well. WYSF will not be back online until a complete revamp is completed. This may take a few weeks. Keep tabs on the WYS twitter account for updates.

See, kids? This is what you get for being secretive grade-school asswipes. You have to shut down operations for weeks to flush out the moles.

[Conan]

WYSF will be temporarily closed for a revamp, rewrite, review, and restructure of the site. During this time, we will also be evaluating several user accounts as well. WYSF will not be back online until a complete revamp is completed. This may take a few weeks. Keep tabs on the WYS twitter account for updates.

See, kids? This is what you get for being secretive grade-school asswipes. You have to shut down operations for weeks to flush out the moles.

lolwut. What are they doing? Writing a new bulletin board software? And as for evaluating user accounts, earlier this year I manually evaluated 2000+ user accounts for the forum I run (was checking emails). It took me a day.

Who knows, maybe they're also going to move the site off that ungodly long domain it's on.

[Pi]

So I noticed today that WYS isn't resolving any more - the host name is gone from the DNS. According to SilverAutomatic's twitter they're "down for a bit". Thanks. We'd have never noticed. Maybe they decided that having an eighth-grade 13-year-old hosting their forum wasn't the brightest of ideas? I have no fucking idea, because in an FA-derived fashion, there's no communication going on except among the power base.

[Conan]

So I noticed today that WYS isn't resolving any more - the host name is gone from the DNS. According to SilverAutomatic's twitter they're "down for a bit". Thanks. We'd have never noticed. Maybe they decided that having an eighth-grade 13-year-old hosting their forum wasn't the brightest of ideas? I have no fucking idea, because in an FA-derived fashion, there's no communication going on except among the power base.

Maybe they just bought a new domain for it or something? They were using that ridiculous subdomain before.

Though Dragoneer recently said he wasn't going to be hanging with them anymore. Maybe they gave up because their only member with any sort of push left?

[Pi]

So I noticed today that WYS isn't resolving any more - the host name is gone from the DNS.

Maybe they just bought a new domain for it or something? They were using that ridiculous subdomain before.

Though Dragoneer recently said he wasn't going to be hanging with them anymore. Maybe they gave up because their only member with any sort of push left?

It's totally grade-school (oh wait) to be changing DNS without at least leaving the old one up for a while. Especially since 30 seconds with mod_rewrite will make the changeover seamless. But they probably aren't interested in functionality; instead they'll be wanting the new URL to leak out through the gossip channels.

[Conan]

Since we're coming up on the 1 month deadline where Henri claimed he'd spill the beans, I decided to see if he's been up to anything.

His site is gone. Henriwatson.com now goes to his Tumblr page (which again proves he was underage the entire time) and not his personal site/Wordpress install. His Twitter hasn't been used all month up until earlier today when he complained his water was out. Additionally, his FA faves are somewhat active but he seems to be ignoring people commenting on his page.

I wonder if his parents found out their money was being used to pay for the animal people to threaten each other and took away his internets?