#ALSO this is now my updated longest para ever

[fmdjoosungarchive]

location: 2 many

date: jan 2016-sept 2020

word count: 2113

tldr; verification for sung’s song seoul. full credits for lyrics, composition, and production. sung takes almost five years to write this song, and with time, it changed as sung’s opinions on seoul and himself changed. also talks about how the general productional sound of the album started w seoul here

journalling had helped a lot, in the first couple months of every move. joosung had picked it up a while after the first move, and it stuck with every move up to seoul. at first, it was a way for sung to express how he was feeling without causing trouble to his parents. making friends was even harder than it was in gwangju. relearning the styles and expectations of a new set of school teachers was another task sung wasn’t sure he was up to taking on well. but, he had to. despite the resentment that built up in him, the feeling was wrong. he needed to be a good son, and not make the situation harder for his parents who were struggling too.

so, whenever sung started to sit in these horrible feelings, when all he could think of was the home left behind in gwangju, the people he’d left, the memories and experiences he would miss out on, he sat down, and wrote about it.

when the chois moved to seoul, for their final homestead, sung wrote then, too. he wrote more than he had for any other town. his bitterness came out in scribbles that left imprints on the next page about pollution and sketchy travellers.

seoul was so different to him. gwangju wasn’t small by any means, but it was no seoul. for a while, sung felt out of his element. that was, until he found element. or, until he found gold star who took him under their wing, and took a chance on him, to keep him until he was ready to be someone that kid who had first moved to seoul could never have imagined. that kid was someone who found solace in journalling, while a future version was one who could bring those feelings to others in music.

around late 2015 was when sung started training for songwriting. mostly, it was sitting in on songwriting to take notes, but there were more structural classes too, like tests to write songs. back then, the focus was on lyrics. he’d had different music theory classes over the years, which helped, but every test consisted of sung being given a beat to write a rap to for evaluation.

one of the last evaluations he’d had came from reading back over his diary, when he’d had no other ideas. he’d been too busy to sit down and think of it at the time, but reading over those old entries, sung could feel how deeply those feelings still sat within him. for as dynamic as the city was, for as much as he should have been starry eyed at the expanse of existence in seoul, his heart had a hole in it, wherever he looked.

he wrote about this contrasting nature, about the distinct smells of seoul city that feel familiar and yet cause a scrunch on his nose, and the gorgeous expanse of han rivers that open a gaping mouth to swallow him whole into its abyss, and the growth of those around him, the ever changing trainee lineup, and him, who still lays in wait.

his evaluator didn’t care for it as much as sung did. but, he’d kept it nonetheless, towards the end of that first ever journal he’d started in seoul.

in 2019, in early days preparation for what would come to be known as in sensitivity, those lyrics came back around. he’d been looking for anything he’d written previously that could be reworked, given the short time constraint he was under if he wanted to write his own songs. this little ditty... peaked his interest.

it’d been about three years since sung had written it, eleven since he’d moved to seoul, and his feelings had shifted, with time and age. in the diary, sung could read the deep set bitterness that had overwhelmed him. over and over again, he’d written how much he hated seoul. in the little daily annoyances of living in a big city, but also in its mere existence, for having been the place his parents said would keep sung from ever going back to living in gwangju as he’d dreamed so often. the lyrics that came from it were softer than the outpour of pain upon the original pages. and yet still, three years on, sung’s opinion on seoul was continuing to change.

he took that in stride, when he started trying to rework the song. the best way to describe where he’d ended up was a love and hate relationship. sung didn’t want to admit that he hated anything, even a city with no true feelings, nor did he want to admit that he’d grown strangely fond of the things he so desperately hated at the same time. the feelings had become interconnected in a way that made defining the relationship difficult.

at his piano, sung didn’t want to make others feel the difficulty of the relationship, but rather, to hear him, to listen, and to agree, if they’ve had similar feelings.

his thoughts came out as vocal stylings -which only registered as unhelpful a few minutes in. for those collection of seconds turned minutes, long, simplistic chords backed a dichotomy, stuck between states of feeling: hate, and love. momentary cynicism had sung wondering if people had been right all along, and the two feelings weren’t all that different after all. it could have been the case, there. trouble was, there was no way sung was going to sing. even if gold star for some reason let him, sung wasn’t sure if he felt ready to sing more, for fear of, at best, embarrassing himself, and at worst, bursting the eardrums of anyone who listened to the album. he tried reworking the line to something that could be more rap-centric, using the usual compositional formula he’d found himself comfort in. some brass instruments, a more bright and popping piano, even a violin, but it didn’t feel... right.

enough disappointment eating up his white blood cells, and sung decided to call it quits.

that was, until sung was given the go ahead to begin working on music for another album, in the next year. he hadn’t been expecting the company to want to give him more chances, after in sensitivity didn’t have the kind of commercial success that gold star expected of their artists and element never managed to reach on their own.

again, in following his comfort zones, sung turned to old pieces he never ended up sending off to anyone. in his tracks, one stood out, for strange reasons. “hate/love” had a composition that contrasted what lyrics there were in all the wrong ways. rather than emphasizing the in between the lyrics came from, which could have been a good use of opposite sound, it sounded more like a different song all together. that, and the vocals were... sung really needed to get some vocal lessons in his own time.

he moved the backtrack onto its own file, and focused on the melodic lines. first things first, if this was going to be something he wanted to sell gold star on, the vocal capabilities needed had to be paired down. sung couldn’t pretend he was an actual singer, not for his own album, just in the shower. he kept the vocal lines within a few note ranges, a decently comfortable place he didn’t think he sounded too bad in. sung could remember vaguely, when he’d started the piece, that he’d begun with an unsually piano line, and tried again there, after. this song could be simple, and let the lyrics take it along for the ride.

or, the production.

sung’s fingertips rubbed along the piano keys as he thought. there was more that could be done to enhance a sound than just the notes being played. he tried out a few different variations of those dragging piano notes, and then shifted fully to his computer to play around with effects, which, pulled sung even further from his comfort zone.

the thing about seoul, what was the heart of his dilemma, was that it felt like an old soul wrapped in a new packaging. there were positives and negatives to being a city so filled with history and constant emotion of the bustling landscape, and there was the same for a city priding itself on innovation and being in the know for the up and coming breakthroughs of the country.

it made sense, to use that as a basis for where to go from there. something using influence from the old, to create something new. sung wrote down his thoughts as they came about, but by the time he finished, had another schedule to attend to, leaving the ideas untapped, until a couple of weeks later. even further down the line, sung would have been grateful for life getting in the way, there. having the break meant he came back to the song with fresh eyes, and a mood more fitting for writing the song.

80s electronic, synth-like sound was one of the first places sung started, and what ended up sticking, in the end. it was old age, but something that could be reinvented to a modern sound. western pop girls did it all the time.

the song itself started coming together as something retro pop inspired, mid tempo, with a kind of brightness that felt teetering on fake. he liked it. though, not enough. despite the little birdy in the back of his mind telling him to make a vocally based song, he couldn’t, and the composition wasn’t fit for rap yet.

rather than dumping the idea for another day, like he had last time, sung took another break. although, the song didn’t leave his mind easily. -not just in the creative thoughts continuing to flow, but, gosh darn it if that probable chorus melody didn’t stick in his head for ages. his members and daisuke must have gotten quite tired of hearing that same short melody hummed across their homes.

and, weirdly enough, it was when the sound finally left sung’s brain that he came back around to the song. when his mind had emptied itself of the sound, it had the chance to come back, and with it, being renewed energy to finish what he started.

well, that, and having written enough potential songs for the album that he had an idea of what he wanted from it. and this song was exactly what he was looking for. similar to the thoughts he’d had over to course of trying to write the song, he wanted to talk about feelings, but not have a need to resolve them, just to share them. if all of the songs he wrote specifically for the album followed that theme, they should have similar feelings and soundscapes too.

working on lyrics again felt more like updating than writing, despite having maybe a quarter of the lyrics written coming into the session. really, it was an update, of how sung felt about seoul, and the concept of love and hate, through the changes he himself had made in his life the last few months. that was something he’d have to come to terms with, that it was possible his feelings could continue to evolve even before the song came out. it needed to be a capsule. and so, the lyrics widened, less than just about a city, but about the person that had started this song so many years back, and who he had come to be. people were ever changing. his soul had changed tremendously since coming to seoul.

souls, as a concept, spurred sung’s continuation of the rest of the song. like a lightbulb had been clicked on, sung knew that whatever songs he was writing, for them to sound similar, it would be less about his usual style of composing. he’d have to work much more closely on production with this album than he had before... if the company let him.

he’d been recording with other idols more lately, but mixing had to be the area he was least experienced in at this point. in the best of terms, it was a chance to grow, and continue to figure out how he feels about who he was.

-

that initial first draft was rejected, even with fine tuning of the english lines done by the company. it was too simple, they’d said, too personal to connect to an audience. but, like sung never gave up on figuring out the answers to his questions, he never gave up on this song, not until its five year journey could come to an end.

it sounded better as one body of work, anyway.

[bending-sickle]

@icarus-suraki tagged me to chit-chat about 90s music and list some stuff i've been listening to lately, so hi

but first, a caveat: i have not updated my playlist in literally over a year (the shuffle and skip buttons, we know them)

also i haven't listened to the radio in...decades. even though i grew up literally always listening to it, the stations i later had access to would play the same five songs all the time. even my beloved classic rock station - chom 97.7 fm - eventually wore me down. i still miss my fave dj - now filmaker - olallo rubio (spanish wiki). when his shift changed, or he went behind the scenes of the radiostation, my evenings just weren't the same, man. (omggg there's youtube audio of him presenting the top hits of 2003 aaaah nostalgiaaaa. and aaaw here he is talking about his career during press for his documentary)

also, mostly lately i've been listening...ten hours of "epic thunder and rain" white noise. otherwise, i have not hit skip on the national, the longest johns, and stars.

but here, let's watch me spiral into nostalgia in real time :D

finley quaye - sunday shining

jamiroquai - virtual insanity

all saints - never ever

bon jovi - always

el general - muévelo, muévelo

mighty bosstones - royal oil

no doubt - spiderwebs

bersuit vergarabat - sr. cobranza

la mosca tsé-tsé - para no verte mas

los fabulosos cadillacs - mal bicho

[fmdsooaharchive]

CHO SOOAH — SELF-PARA #15 & PLAYLIST #9 (CAFE ENTRY)

SUMMARY: Sooah didn’t use the café to communicate with fans with the longest time and now that she has more updates to give and more things to talk about, sounds like perfect moment to catch up with people. She talks about cooking for herself, Secret Sibling and her trip to Seattle, really briefly before dropping a list of recommended songs that she has been listening to during these past few months. WC: 437 + 456

Fusions, hello!

It has been a while since the last time we have spoken I believe, so how’s everyone? Are you healthy? Feeding well and living a good life? I hope you all are. I’ve been doing well these past few months. I know that some of you are a bit worried because you’re seeing me around more often than not these days, but there’s no need to preoccupy yourselves. I’m doing fine, and I’m living healthily.

Recently I started cooking more often. Nothing complicated because I can’t possibly do complicated dishes, and I’m under the impression you guys know that too. I’m trying to eat breakfast more often at home, too. I usually leave early but not that early, so I can’t have eggs and coffee or rice. I feel people my age would come across problems like this often nowadays because we’re always rushing places and don’t have that much time to eat. But I don’t want to keep doing things like that. Don't you think the food tastes less tasty when you’re rushing? And the food is so good to be eaten in a rush.

(I’m accepting easy recipes to try out at home, by the way. I promise not to burn my apartment down. Yes, it’s an induction cooktop, but you never know with these things.)

What are you guys doing that is new for you? New experiences are always nice, and you can learn a lot of things if you want to. Just make sure you’re enjoying yourself.

Talking about new things, have you guys watched Secret Sibling? Did you all enjoy it? I think it was a very fun experience. And it’s not only because I’ve been able to meet with one of my seniors from an iconic group such as Lipstick. Besides spending time with Sia unnie, I also managed to visit many places in Korea and abroad, and that was amazing by itself. I didn’t know we had such pretty places in Korea, so check out other people’s parts as well because I highly recommend that.

Since I went to Seattle recently because of the show, I’ve been listening to a lot of songs in English. I’m not sure why, but I think the language stuck with me and I keep listening to songs that I didn’t before. In my defense, I only listened to the songs my brothers listened, and that has always been early 2000′ songs. But now, I’ve been listening to more recent stuff and I want to recommend a few for you.

I want to see all of you Fusions, soon again. I want to thank you all for all the support you have been giving me and my unnies. Let's see each other soon, okay?

off the table — ariana grande, the weeknd

I've been listening to Ariana Grande's newest album since it came out, and I like all the songs in that album, but I like this song in particular mainly because of the way their voices blend in together. This song ended up on my playlist of songs to listen to when it's raining. Do you listen to sad songs when it rains too?

ring — selena gomez

If off the table is a song I listen to when it's raining or when the mood seems to be gloomier, Ring is my to-go song when I want to move around and follow the beat. Is it weird that I listen to it when I have to do chores? It just sounds like the most appropriate pick for when you need the energy to do things around the house.

dance monkey — tones and i

I've been listening to this song a lot in the car as we go from schedule to schedule, and I'm almost certain Hyejin unnie is sick of listening to it at this point. But it's a song that puts me in the right mood, especially if we're off to do some photoshoot or something like that. If you never listened to it, I highly recommend it. But don't listen to it repeatedly.

my oasis — sam smith feat. burna boy

Fusions, I can't recommend Sam Smith's songs enough to you. The lyrics for this song are a little bit sad, but the melody and their voices together just make this song so beautiful and pleasing to listen to. If you ever have problems sleeping, I think you'll be able to find your way to dreamland while listening to his songs, but as of now, I'll recommend this to you.

cardigan — taylor swift

Folklore is another album that I have been listening to a lot as of recently, and I enjoy every song of that album. I think it is done with so much care, and I think I learn a lot while listening to the songs. The style also pleases me a lot, and it is a song that I enjoy singing a lot, especially if I get stuck while working and need a break from everything else and properly focus.

7 days — alessia cara

Alessia Cara is another artist that I want to recommend to you Fusions. She's great. Her voice is deep and nice to listen to. This song is from an album released in 2018, I think. But it's worth a listen, and I promise you won't regret it. Pinky promise.

lovely — billie eilish with khalid

Last but not least, I couldn't finish this list and not add this song. You've probably heard it before, of course. It's very popular, but can I point out how simple the whole song is. Makes me wonder if you'd like to listen to more songs like this. Would be a nice bet, right.

[arisu-artnfics]

by Arisu-ArtnFics

Nota: mensaje en español estará después. Note: for those wondering, that sentence only mean that the Spanish message will be afterwards. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello everyone 👋🏻👋🏻 Well I have not a clue if any of you read or not the status, but I promised to try to give you a small update before the end of this year. For those wondering how my year was so far, its easy to say that busy as I said as well in those last status. I also said that I had with the longest art block that I could ever ask for - not that I ever, but you know. Anyway, I have been busy but I also even with art block I miraculously have been able to write. I have been writing a lot, and I mean it. I have like 28k words long fic on my drafts. This new and unexpecting long piece is for the #Lucifer fandom.

Read more on Deviant or

I'm so focus on that fic right now. Well, right now in this precise moment, I working on my secret santa interchange that is hold on tumblr. After that, I will keep writing that particular fic because that's what I want to focus more. I also want to finally finish my promised requests and such. Those drawings that I own to deliver as promised I would do when I have my focus on those. Probably as soon as I finish the Lucifer fic and create an 'looking for a beta reader' post, I'll draw again like crazy. For now, Christmas is almost around the corner and well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. ^^ ^^ I'll try to do another update after the new year, maybe one of the first things I post on the 2020. For now, that's all that it came to mind that I believe need to be say. Now, you know that I haven't... I don't know, I don't what any of you have in mind - I don't read minds, do I? Anyway, I'll just remind you that I'm always checking all my social media, some more than others - especially those that actually works nice on my phone. So, if you want to have a conversation with me and have a fast reply I do recommend you look for me on facebook/messenger for pages or discord. I'm on all those as @ Arisu-ArtsnFics or Arisu#8007 is specific for discord. So, now you know I do have those more handly. Oh, one last thing before I finish; I'm planning to schedule the secret santa interchange gift on tumblr considering that it's hold there. That means that my #MiraculousLadybug piece for this year will appear here later on. A̶t̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶d̶o̶. Well, now I have nothing else to say for now. Maybe just keep an eye on those status as I mentioned before I had done a couple of those with updates. Have a great break and see you next year or just this Christmas or just right after when I post my piece. 

Cheers, @arisu-artnfics

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hola a todos 👋🏻👋🏻 Bueno no tengo ni idea si alguno de ustedes lee o no los estados, pero prometí que intentaría darles una pequeña actualización antes del final del año. Para aquellos que se preguntan cómo ha estado mi año hasta ahora, es fácil decir que ocupado tal como dije en esos estados. También dije que he tenido el bloqueo artístico más largo que nunca antes pude pedir - no como si hubiese pedido uno, pero ya saben. De todas formas, he estado ocupada pero también incluso con el bloqueo artístico milagrosamente he sido capáz de escribir. He estado escribiendo demasiado, y de verdad digo. Tengo como 28k palabras de largo en un fic en mis borradores. Esta nueva e inesperada larga pieza es para el fandom de #Lucifer.   Estoy bien enfocada en ese fic en este momento. Bueno, en este preciso momento, estoy trabajando en mi amigo secreto que se realiza en tumblr. Después de eso, seguiré escribiendo ese fic en particular porque es lo que quiero enfocarme más. Además quiero finalmente terminar los pedidos prometidos y demás. Esos dibujos que debo de entregar como prometí los haré cuando me enfoque en ellos. Posiblemente tan pronto como acabe el fic de Lucifer y cree la publicación 'buscando lector beta', volveré a dibujar como loca. Por ahora, Navidad está casi a la vuelta de la esquina y bueno, Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo. ^^ ^^ Intentaré hacer otra actualización después del año nuevo, quizás sea la primera publicación del 2020. Por ahora, eso es todo que viene a la mente que creo que necesita ser dicho. Ahora, ya saben que no... no lo sé, no sé que tienen en mente - no leo mentes, o sí? De todas formas, sólo les recordaré que siempre estoy chequeando todas mis redes sociales, unas más que otras - especialmente aquellas que funcionan correctamente en mi celular.   Asi que, si alguno quiere tener una conversación conmigo y tener una respuesta rápida les recomiendo que me busquen en facebook/messenger para páginas o discord. Estoy en esos como @ Arisu-ArtsnFics o Arisu#8007 es especifico para discord. Así que, ahora ya saben tengo esos más a la mano. Oh, una última cosa antes de que acabe; estoy planeando en programar el regalo del amigo secreto en tumblr considerando que se realiza allí. Eso significa que la pieza de este año para #MiraculousLadybug aparecerá aquí después. A̶l̶ ̶m̶e̶n̶o̶s̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶g̶u̶i̶e̶n̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶e̶r̶a̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶a̶l̶a̶r̶m̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶ ̶m̶e̶m̶b̶r̶e̶s̶í̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶r̶ ̶u̶n̶ ̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶m̶i̶t̶i̶r̶í̶a̶ ̶h̶a̶c̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶z̶á̶s̶ ̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶g̶a̶ ̶u̶n̶ ̶p̶e̶d̶i̶d̶o̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶t̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶i̶ ̶l̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶c̶e̶n̶.̶ Bueno, ahora no tengo nada más que decir por ahora. Quizás sólo mantengan un ojo en esos estados como mencioné antes he hecho un par de ellos con actualizaciones. Tengan un buen descanso y nos vemos el próximo año o en está navidad o justo después cuando publique mi pieza. Saludos, @arisu-artnfics

[halfthebattle]

Why I was gone for 3 months

Hello!

First of all, Happy New Year!! Allow me to begin this blog post by welcoming my new readers. Here’s a hug for all of youuuu. >:D< I am in shock that I still gain followers despite being inactive for the last couple of months. Nevertheless, I am deeply grateful and appreciative for the messages I’ve been receiving from both of my old and new readers. Thank you all so much for the concern. I know my last post was very alarming. It was wrong of me to leave you guys hanging without any explanation. But here I am. I hope you are ready for another life update from me and I also hope that you forgive me for not replying. I promise that I’ll reply, please just give me some more time. I rarely open my Tumblr app, and if I do, I just want to stay quiet for a while.

You see, I just couldn’t bring myself to blog for the last three to four months even though I really wanted to. I guess I was waiting for all the frustrations, anger, and pain to subside a little bit before I could share what happened. When I first started my Tumblog, I wanted it to be platform for my mental condition – you know, how I break down occasionally, how I have depressive and manic episodes so that others will be aware of the life that people who are mentally ill are experiencing. I didn’t want to share too much about anything from my personal life – family life and love life (haha!). But right now, I feel like I need to share some so that you would know why I was gone for months.

I was busy healing, and I am still busy healing now. I just got out of an almost 5-year relationship with my first love last October 27, 2018. I want to share the reason why we broke up, but I don’t want my first ever blog post about him to be so negative so that you guys won’t have an ugly or bad impression on him. For him, the reason of the break-up is “just a big misunderstanding”, but to me, it was so much more than that. After a week or two, I still fought for the relationship, but I guess he just saw how stubborn and hard-headed I was for begging him to talk things out with me. I admit that this is not the first break-up that the two of us had, but damn, if I knew it would be this serious and difficult this time, I would’ve prevented the small break-ups from the past. Kasi sa totoo lang, sisiw lang pala ‘yung mga ‘yun. I think I was so foolish before to say, “Pagod na ako. Ayoko na.” kasi kung tutuusin, looking back ha, mas kaya ko pa pala ‘yung mga ‘yun kaysa sa ngayon. Noon na sinabi kong pagod na ‘ko, na hindi ko na kaya, parang gusto kong i-take back lahat, kasi walang wala pala ‘yung mga ‘yun kumpara sa ngayon. Gusto kong ibalik yung oras para sabihin na, “Hindi, kaya ko pa. Kaya pa natin ‘to eh. Tara, ayusin natin ‘to. Pagsubok lang ‘to.” Pero ayun, tama nga ang sabi nila, nasa huli ang pagsisisi.

I couldn’t say that I have no one to blame but me, because in my perspective, he was the one who made the wrong choice or wrong move that led us to the break-up – I was only one of the factors that influenced his choice. I guess it’s safe to say that we both screwed and messed up so bad that we were left with no other choice but to end the relationship. We were already toxic to each other, and we weren’t growing anymore. Maybe, right now, we need some time and space away from each other so that we would be able to find ourselves and be whole again. We need to heal. We need to grow apart so that if ever there will come a time when we’ll get back with each other, we’ve already become matured enough for a serious, committed, loving and responsible relationship.

It took us a lot of twists and turns and hurtful failures to make me realize that I’m still not ready to be in a relationship because I, alone, don’t even know how to love myself. But what bothers me about it is that, even before we became a couple, I already warned him that I am not whole, that I am broken, that I do not like myself and when we were already a couple, he told me that he’d love me enough for the both of us, and that love is still aside from the love he alone has for me. Kumbaga, siya ang magpupunan ng kulang na pagmamahal ko para sa sarili ko at dagdag pa roon yung pagmamahal na mayroon siya para sa akin. We were both young and I believed him back then. But it was wrong. I shouldn’t have relied on to his words. I shouldn’t have relied on to him for a love that I cannot give myself. I shouldn’t have ‘obligated’ him or ‘made him responsible’ for the love that I owe to myself.

Another thing that hurts me is that after the break-up, I felt like I was hard to love, na walang tatagal na relationship sa akin kasi mentally ill ako. It pains me to see myself as someone who’s hard to be with that the thought of it made me want to ready myself for growing old alone. You know, tatandang dalaga. Haha.

After the break-up, I did all sorts of things to distract myself and while I know that blogging must be one of those things, I felt like it would only make me remember about what happened. Don’t get me wrong – I want to write about him because it helps but being finally able to write about him in a long post like this gives me all sorts of emotion that I didn’t want to add up to what I’ve already been feeling.

Last November 03, 2018, it was his first birthday in years that I didn’t get to celebrate with him. I wanted to surprise him, because I’m that type of girl – full of ideas and surprises, but I grew weak already. I thought, “What for?”. That’s why I only wrote him a letter instead. A long one. A twelve-page letter to be specific. I poured my heart out to it, but I feel like there’s so much more to tell him.

We still see each other at church and there was this one time before the year ended that his family invited me over dinner because his mom went home from Saudi. I joined them for dinner, but we were not talking to each other the whole time. His family felt like my second home, but damn, that night, my heart was breaking. Napamahal na ako sa pamilya niya at tinuring ko ng mga kapatid ko mga kapatid niya kaya ang hirap.

This year’s New Year celebration was also the first time in years that we are not together anymore. I can still remember that we’d always send each other long and sweet messages during New Year, but while waiting for 2019, I told myself that I won’t greet him anymore because it’s better off to not include him in the year I’m about to face. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, “Ako naman.” But on 12:26 A.M. of January 01, he texted me, “Happy New Year po..”, to which I replied 20 minutes after, “Happy New Year din po.” He responded, “Salamat po.” And that was it.

Like I said, we still see each other at church every week so I got used already to the pain of seeing him from time to time. I can still remember that there were times when I felt nothing but anger, and there were times when I completely felt nothing. As in zero nothing. I became numb.

But right now, I can honestly say that I am proud that I overcame those moments. Knowing myself, I am not strong when it comes to the both of us. He’s like my strength and weakness combined into one. If I were Superman, he’d be my kryptonite. We would always see each other every day no matter how busy we were, and we’d go to church for our devotional prayer every night. During fights, I couldn’t heighten my pride for him, and I couldn’t stand not talking to him and bugging him because I loved him so dearly, so much. That’s why the pain is that strong on me, because the love I have for him is that immense. I can honestly say that this is the longest break-up I’ve survived. It was not easy. It is never easy. Pero kinakaya ko naman. At kakayanin ko pa.

Aside from the break-up, I’ve been busy with school work. This is my last semester in college and I’m hoping to graduate this March. I have a lot on my plate because we have our Strategic Financial Plan which is basically our thesis. Hindi siya ganun kadali kasi real company ang involved dito at gagawan namin sila ng 5-year financial plan based sa mga inputs na binigay nila sa amin, mainly their financial statements from 2013 to 2017.

Busy rin ako kakagala. Share ko lang: After the break-up, saka lang ako natuto mag-inom o ‘maglasing’. Oo, late bloomer na ako, pero nadiscover ko na hindi pala ako ‘yung tipo na kapag nalasing eh umiiyak. Ako yung tipo na lasing na matapang, yung walang nararamdaman, pero ako rin yung tipo na nag-eEnglish o nagiging conyo. Hahaha! Ayun, maraming ganap nung naghiwalay kami. In-enjoy ko sarili ko. I’ve also been busy taking care of myself because I believe that I owe me an apology. May mga times na sobrang sinisisi ko pa rin talaga sarili ko more than I blame my ex (it took me weeks or even a month before masanay na tawagin na siyang “ex” because I was like, “OMG, for real na ba ‘to?!” Haha). I’ve been doing all that I can so that I wouldn’t self-harm or fall into a bottomless pit of despair.

Hindi ko ma-enumerate lahat ng pinagdaanan ko. Ang alam ko lang, I’m still busy healing.

Ikaw? Kumusta ka na? Tara, kwentuhan tayo. 😊

[keinart]

Secondary events are also cool

Almost forgot about this week update. Sorry for the delay, I’ve been busy!

This week we have been working on the game tutorials (for the battle system!), which are a lot harder I ever expected but I managed to reduce the entire tutorial to four turns in-game. It is a system that will teach you everything you need pretty quickly so I'm pretty proud of it. Right now it looks like diarrhea however so you will have to wait until I show a bit of it.

Apart from that I've been scripting secondary scenes and focusing on translation.

Secondary events are pretty nice, I ended up liking them more than I expected. These scenes are usually really short, no more than 1500 words the longest ones, the average would be around 600-900 words, and there are some really short ones being the record in 132 words!

Secondary events in this game will help you out to get to know better the characters, learn about their daily lives or different eccentricities, or just give you more details about the world and its lore. They are all optional so you don't have to read them, but I would recommend spending some time in at least the scenes of the characters you like the most. I had lots of fun making some of them since I can be a bit more "free" doing comedy with them. A lot of them feel like short sketches or 4-Koma if it was a manga. I think these scenes will help a lot for the game pacing, and mixing them with main events will let you enjoy the game more.

There are 31 secondary events, some of them with characters alone and some others mixing a few characters together. In total every character gets 7 total secondary scenes apparitions (no favoritism in this game, I love all my children). The point is, however, that you most likely won't be able to see all of them in one single playthrough, so you will have to choose and give priority to those you think are more worth your time.

So much work for content that most people won't see! It's a bit frustrating, but I enjoy at the same time seeing my boys and girls being silly at the very end of the world.

Until the next update!

Casi se me olvidó la actualización de esta semana. He estado muy ocupado.

Esta semana hemos estado trabajando sobre todo en los tutoriales del juego (¡para el sistema de combate!), que han resultado ser mucho más difíciles de lo que esperaba pero al final he conseguido reducir todo el tutorial a solo cuatro turnos del juego. Es un sistema que te enseñará todo lo que necesitas bastante rápido así que estoy bastante orgulloso. Ahora mismo funciona y pinta como diarrea así que prefiero esperar antes de mostraros nada.

Aparte de eso he estado trabajando en las escenas secundarias y las diferentes traducciones.

Las escenas secundarias son muy entretenidas, me han acabado gustando mucho más de lo que esperaba. Estas escenas son muy cortas, no superan las 1500 palabras las más largas, la media estaría en torno las 600 o 900 palabras, y hay algunas muy cortas teniendo el récord una con 132 palabras.

Los eventos secundarios en este juego te ayudarán a conocer mejor a los personajes, aprender sobre sus vidas, sus excentricidades, o simplemente darte más detalles sobre el mundo y su trasfondo. Todas son opcionales por lo que no tienes por qué leerlas, pero recomendaría pasar cierto tiempo con ellas al menos para las de los personajes que te gusten más. Me lo paso muy bien trabajando en ellas ya que puedo ser un poco más "libre" debido a que son opcionales y desmelenarme en cuanto a comedia se refiere. Muchas se sienten como si fueran sketches cortos o 4-Koma si pudiera compararlos con manga. Por lo que creo que estas escenas ayudarán mucho con el ritmo del juego, y mezclarlas con los eventos principales harán que disfrutes más del juego.

Hay un total de 31 eventos secundarios, algunos con personajes a solas y otras con varios a la vez. En total cada personaje tiene 7 escenas secundarias en total (no me ando con favoritismos, quiero a todos mis niños). Aunque el problema con las escenas secundarias es que no deberías de ser capaz de ver todas las escenas en una sola partida, así que tendrás que elegir y darle prioridad a aquellas que pienses que merecen más la pena.

¡Tanto trabajo para contenido que la mayoría de la gente no verá! Me da un poco de pena pero por otro lado disfruto viendo a mis chicos y chicas haciendo el idiota en el mismísmo fin del mundo.

¡Hasta la próxima!

[brxknbxnes]

♧, ♡, ♔, ☀, ☁, ღ (Questions for the Mun)

♧ Is there an RP partner(s) that you credit for becoming a better writer? 

oh god this is probably going to sound really??? cliche/totally expected of me, but i think... @seesgood is going to have to take this one? and I KNOW i always include lia somewhere when i’m answering mun memes, but in all honesty i think she is the second person i ever wrote multi-para threads with when i broke into indie, and the first person i don’t TOTALLY count, because she (sam) was someone i actually met in an rp and we did multi-paras there, and then when the rp flopped, we sort of migrated to indie. BUT i will also include sam ( @donutcryforme ) just bc sam is the FIRST one i got into multi-paras in when it came to indie, even if it started in rpgs.

♡ Would you ever write a poly ship? 

FUCK YES PLEASE

i mean. i used to write one but that thread just completely died out and fell into an abyss, but i’m 100% down for poly ships? i think it’s hard to get right though. some of my muses get pretty jealous, but if it was written as a healthy relationship i can 100% be down for it.

♔ What's your opinion on teacher/student verses? Do you have any of these as threads? 

*cough* let me point you towards @castcwcys, and the OTP TO END ALL OTPS, ashwen. aka a ship that started forever ago in what i now refer to as the roleplay from hell bc of how toxic and shitty it was, but they were originally a teacher/student relationship. no joke. they were. and they are LEGITIMATELY my first ship. ever. my longest running ship. i ACTUALLY think we both wanted to write plots (i believe it was??? adoption??? having ashton’s sister be a surrogate?) that the rp wouldn’t let us write (this is after ashton had graduated and he and owen had gotten married, too) and that’s one of the reasons i even got into indie in the first place. so we could write it. i’m not joking.

but i also think student/teacher as a whole can be written really badly - it has to be written legitimately, honestly. like. paying attention to the character’s emotions and feelings and definitely not playing into the toxic abuse of it all. as long as you’re knowledgeable of it and don’t abuse it - hands down, one of my favorite things to write.

☀ What's an FC that you desperately want to play with? Why? 

THERE ARE SO MANY, OKAY??? i can’t even begin to list all of them. and it’s 100% because i’ve never gotten the opportunity to write with them and i think they’re amazing. but just a FEW: chris evans, sebastian stan, robbie amell, mark ruffalo...

☁ What's an FC that you refuse to play with? Why? 

dove cameron bc seeing her face makes me angry. i mean - literally any of the fcs on my banned list??? their banned status is SOLELY because seeing their face makes me angry. honestly??? i don’t give a shit what a celebrity has done. i don’t care if they’re problematic - i’ll write against them, because i can separate a character’s face from who the character is, and just because you write with them/use them as an fc does not mean you condone what the celebrity has done, and i feel like a lot of people in the rpc forget that. BUT. like. yeah. if a person’s face makes me angry, i won’t write with them.

ღ Do you have a personal blog? Do you share it with your followers or do you keep it private? 

LISTEN. i have a personal blog, ig? but i literally haven’t gone on it in YEARS. i’m not even exaggerating. i can’t remember the last time i updated it/logged on. but i DO also have an rph? it’s @summerofrps. follow me if you want? but idk like i’m not private about any of my blogs, i have so many that honestly sometimes i forget which ones i have.

also i have a porn blog but i will never tell anyone what it is, that shit stays private.

[jennifersnyderca90]

Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called “Internet of Things” devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video recorders for use in large scale attacks designed to knock Web sites and entire networks offline (including multiple major attacks against this site).

Entering guilty pleas for their roles in developing and using Mirai are 21-year-old Paras Jha from Fanwood, N.J. and Josiah White, 20, from Washington, Pennsylvania.

Jha and White were co-founders of Protraf Solutions LLC, a company that specialized in mitigating large-scale DDoS attacks. Like firemen getting paid to put out the fires they started, Jha and White would target organizations with DDoS attacks and then either extort them for money to call off the attacks, or try to sell those companies services they claimed could uniquely help fend off the attacks.

CLICK FRAUD BOTNET

In addition, the Mirai co-creators pleaded guilty to charges of using their botnet to conduct click fraud — a form of online advertising fraud that will cost Internet advertisers more than $16 billion this year, according to estimates from ad verification company Adloox. 

The plea agreements state that Jha, White and another person who also pleaded guilty to click fraud conspiracy charges — a New Orleans man named Dalton Norman — leased access to their botnet for the purposes of earning fraudulent advertising revenue through click fraud activity and renting out their botnet to other cybercriminals.

As part of this scheme, victim devices were used to transmit high volumes of requests to view web addresses associated with affiliate advertising content. Because the victim activity resembled legitimate views of these websites, the activity generated fraudulent profits through the sites hosting the advertising content, at the expense of online advertising companies.

Jha and his co-conspirators admitted receiving as part of the click fraud scheme approximately two hundred bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at over $180,000.

Prosecutors say Norman personally earned over 30 bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at approximately $27,000. The documents show that Norman helped Jha and White discover new, previously unknown vulnerabilities in IoT devices that could be used to beef up their Mirai botnet, which at its height grew to more than 300,000 hacked devices.

MASSIVE ATTACKS

The Mirai malware is responsible for coordinating some of the largest and most disruptive online attacks the Internet has ever witnessed. The biggest and first to gain widespread media attention began on Sept. 20, 2016, when KrebsOnSecurity came under a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack from more than 175,000 IoT devices (the size estimates come from this Usenix paper (PDF) on the Mirai botnet evolution).

That September 2016 digital siege maxed out at 620 Gbps, almost twice the size of the next-largest attack that Akamai — my DDoS mitigation provider at the time — had ever seen.

The attack continued for several days, prompting Akamai to force my site off of their network (they were providing the service pro bono, and the attack was starting to cause real problems for their paying customers). For several frustrating days this Web site went dark, until it was brought under the auspices of Google’s Project Shield, a program that protects journalists, dissidents and others who might face withering DDoS attacks and other forms of digital censorship because of their publications.

At the end of September 2016, just days after the attack on this site, the authors of Mirai — who collectively used the nickname “Anna Senpai” — released the source code for their botnet. Within days of its release there were multiple Mirai botnets all competing for the same pool of vulnerable IoT devices.

The Hackforums post that includes links to the Mirai source code.

Some of those Mirai botnets grew quite large and were used to launch hugely damaging attacks, including the Oct. 21, 2016 assault against Internet infrastructure firm Dyn that disrupted Twitter, Netflix, Reddit and a host of other sites for much of that day.

A depiction of the outages caused by the Mirai attacks on Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company. Source: Downdetector.com.

The leak of the Mirai source code led to the creation of dozens of copycat Mirai botnets, all of which were competing to commandeer the same finite number of vulnerable IoT devices. One particularly disruptive Mirai variant was used in extortion attacks against a number of banks and Internet service providers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

In July 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published a story following digital clues that pointed to a U.K. man named Daniel Kaye as the apparent perpetrator of those Mirai attacks. Kaye, who went by the hacker nickname “Bestbuy,” was found guilty in Germany of launching failed Mirai attacks that nevertheless knocked out Internet service for almost a million Deutsche Telekom customers, for which he was given a suspended sentence. Kaye is now on trial in the U.K. for allegedly extorting banks in exchange for calling off targeted DDoS attacks against them.

Not long after the Mirai source code was leaked, I began scouring cybercrime forums and interviewing people to see if there were any clues that might point to the real-life identities of Mirai’s creators.

On Jan 18, 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published the results of that four-month inquiry, Who is Anna Senpai, the Mirai Worm Author? The story is easily the longest in this site’s history, and it cited a bounty of clues pointing back to Jha and White — two of the men whose guilty pleas were announced today.

A tweet from the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, stating the intended target of the Sept. 2016 Mirai DDoS on his company.

According to my reporting, Jha and White primarily used their botnet to target online gaming servers — particularly those tied to the hugely popular game Minecraft. Around the same time as the attack on my site, French hosting provider OVH was hit with a much larger attack from the same Mirai botnet (see image above), and the CTO of OVH confirmed that the target of that attack was a Minecraft server hosted on his company’s network.

My January 2017 investigation also cited evidence and quotes from associates of Jha who said they suspected he was responsible for a series of DDoS attacks against Rutgers University: During the same year that Jha began studying at the university for a bachelor’s degree in computer science, the school’s servers came under repeated, massive attacks from Mirai.

With each DDoS against Rutgers, the attacker — using the nicknames “og_richard_stallman,” “exfocus” and “ogexfocus,” — would taunt the university in online posts and media interviews, encouraging the school to spend the money to purchase some kind of DDoS mitigation service.

It remains unclear if Jha (and possibly others) may face separate charges in New Jersey related to his apparent Mirai attacks on Rutgers. According to a sparsely-detailed press release issued Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department is slated to hold a media conference at 2 p.m. today with officials from Alaska (where these cases originate) to “discuss significant cybercrime cases.”

Update: 11:43 a.m. ET: The New Jersey Ledger just published a story confirming that Jha also has pleaded guilty to the Rutgers DDoS attacks, as part of a separate case lodged by prosecutors in New Jersey.

PAYBACK

Under the terms of his guilty plea in the click fraud conspiracy, Jha agreed to give up 13 bitcoin, which at current market value of bitcoin (~$17,000 apiece) is nearly USD $225,000.

Jha will also waive all rights to appeal the conviction and whatever sentence gets imposed as a result of the plea. For the click fraud conspiracy charges, Jha, White and Norman each face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In connection with their roles in creating and ultimately unleashing the Mirai botnet code, Jha and White each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(5)(A). That is, to “causing intentional damage to a protected computer, to knowingly causing the transmission of a program, code, or command to a computer with the intention of impairing without authorization the integrity or availability of data, a program, system, or information.”

For the conspiracy charges related to their authorship and use of Mirai, Jha and White likewise face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.

This is a developing story. Check back later in the day for updates from the DOJ press conference, and later in the week for a follow-up piece on some of the lesser-known details of these investigations.

The Justice Department unsealed the documents related to these cases late in the day on Tuesday. Here they are:

Jha click fraud complaint (PDF) Jha click fraud plea (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai complaint (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai plea (PDF) White DDoS complaint (PDF) White DDoS/Mirai Plea (PDF) Norman click fraud complaint (PDF) Norman click fraud plea (PDF)

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/mirai-iot-botnet-co-authors-plead-guilty/

[nedsvallesny]

Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called “Internet of Things” devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video recorders for use in large scale attacks designed to knock Web sites and entire networks offline (including multiple major attacks against this site).

Entering guilty pleas for their roles in developing and using Mirai are 21-year-old Paras Jha from Fanwood, N.J. and Josiah White, 20, from Washington, Pennsylvania.

Jha and White were co-founders of Protraf Solutions LLC, a company that specialized in mitigating large-scale DDoS attacks. Like firemen getting paid to put out the fires they started, Jha and White would target organizations with DDoS attacks and then either extort them for money to call off the attacks, or try to sell those companies services they claimed could uniquely help fend off the attacks.

CLICK FRAUD BOTNET

In addition, the Mirai co-creators pleaded guilty to charges of using their botnet to conduct click fraud — a form of online advertising fraud that will cost Internet advertisers more than $16 billion this year, according to estimates from ad verification company Adloox. 

The plea agreements state that Jha, White and another person who also pleaded guilty to click fraud conspiracy charges — a New Orleans man named Dalton Norman — leased access to their botnet for the purposes of earning fraudulent advertising revenue through click fraud activity and renting out their botnet to other cybercriminals.

As part of this scheme, victim devices were used to transmit high volumes of requests to view web addresses associated with affiliate advertising content. Because the victim activity resembled legitimate views of these websites, the activity generated fraudulent profits through the sites hosting the advertising content, at the expense of online advertising companies.

Jha and his co-conspirators admitted receiving as part of the click fraud scheme approximately two hundred bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at over $180,000.

Prosecutors say Norman personally earned over 30 bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at over $60,000. The documents show that Norman helped Jha and White discover new, previously unknown vulnerabilities in IoT devices that could be used to beef up their Mirai botnet, which at its height grew to more than 300,000 hacked devices.

MASSIVE ATTACKS

The Mirai malware is responsible for coordinating some of the largest and most disruptive online attacks the Internet has ever witnessed. The biggest and first to gain widespread media attention began on Sept. 20, 2016, when KrebsOnSecurity came under a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack from more than 175,000 IoT devices (the size estimates come from this Usenix paper (PDF) on the Mirai botnet evolution).

That September 2016 digital siege maxed out at 620 Gbps, almost twice the size of the next-largest attack that Akamai — my DDoS mitigation provider at the time — had ever seen before.

The attack continued for several days, prompting Akamai to force my site off of their network (they were providing the service pro bono, and the attack was starting to cause real problems for their paying customers). For several frustrating days this Web site went dark, until it was brought under the auspices of Google’s Project Shield, a program that protects journalists, dissidents and others who might face withering DDoS attacks and other forms of digital censorship because of their publications.

At the end of September 2016, just days after the attack on this site, the authors of Mirai — who collectively used the nickname “Anna Senpai” — released the source code for their botnet. Within days of its release there were multiple Mirai botnets all competing for the same pool of vulnerable IoT devices.

The Hackforums post that includes links to the Mirai source code.

Some of those Mirai botnets grew quite large and were used to launch hugely damaging attacks, including the Oct. 21, 2016 assault against Internet infrastructure firm Dyn that disrupted Twitter, Netflix, Reddit and a host of other sites for much of that day.

A depiction of the outages caused by the Mirai attacks on Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company. Source: Downdetector.com.

The leak of the Mirai source code led to the creation of dozens of copycat Mirai botnets, all of which were competing to commandeer the same finite number of vulnerable IoT devices. One particularly disruptive Mirai variant was used in extortion attacks against a number of banks and Internet service providers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

In July 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published a story following digital clues that pointed to a U.K. man named Daniel Kaye as the apparent perpetrator of those Mirai attacks. Kaye, who went by the hacker nickname “Bestbuy,” was found guilty in Germany of launching failed Mirai attacks that nevertheless knocked out Internet service for almost a million Deutsche Telekom customers, for which he was given a suspended sentence. Kaye is now on trial in the U.K. for allegedly extorting banks in exchange for calling off targeted DDoS attacks against them.

Not long after the Mirai source code was leaked, I began scouring cybercrime forums and interviewing people to see if there were any clues that might point to the real-life identities of Mirai’s creators.

On Jan 18, 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published the results of that four-month inquiry, Who is Anna Senpai, the Mirai Worm Author? The story is easily the longest in this site’s history, and it cited a bounty of clues pointing back to Jha and White — two of the men whose guilty pleas were announced today.

A tweet from the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, stating the intended target of the Sept. 2016 Mirai DDoS on his company.

According to my reporting, Jha and White primarily used their botnet to target online gaming servers — particularly those tied to the hugely popular game Minecraft. Around the same time as the attack on my site, French hosting provider OVH was hit a much larger attack from the same Mirai botnet (see image above), and the CTO of OVH confirmed that the target of that attack was a Minecraft server hosted on his company’s network.

My January 2017 investigation also cited evidence and quotes from associates of Jha who said they suspected he was responsible for a series of DDoS attacks against Rutgers University: During the same year that Jha began studying at the university for a bachelor’s degree in computer science the school’s servers came under repeated, massive attacks from Mirai.

With each DDoS against Rutgers, the attacker — using the nicknamesUsing the nicknames  “og_richard_stallman,” “exfocus” and “ogexfocus,” — would taunt the university in online posts and media interviews, encouraging the school to spend the money to purchase some kind of DDoS mitigation service.

It remains unclear if Jha (and possibly others) may face separate charges in New Jersey related to his apparent Mirai attacks on Rutgers. According to a sparsely-detailed press release issued Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department is slated to hold a media conference at 2 p.m. today with officials from Alaska (where these cases originate) to “discuss significant cybercrime cases.”

PAYBACK

Under the terms of his guilty plea in the click fraud conspiracy, Jha agreed to give up 13 bitcoin, which at current market value of bitcoin (~$17,000 apiece) is nearly USD $225,000.

Jha will also waive all rights to appear the conviction and whatever sentence gets imposed as a result of the plea. For the click fraud conspiracy charges, Jha, White and Norman each face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss of the offense.

In connection with their roles in creating and ultimately unleashing the Mirai botnet code, Jha and White each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(S)(A). Specifically, to “causing intentional damage to a protected computer, to knowingly causing the transmission of a program, code, or command to a computer with the intention of impairing without authorization the integrity or availability of data, a program, system, or information.”

For the conspiracy charges related to their authorship and use of Mirai, Jha and White likewise face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.

This is a developing story. Check back later in the day for updates from the DOJ press conference, and later in the week for a follow-up piece on some of the lesser-known details of these investigations.

The Justice Department unsealed the documents related to these cases late in the day on Tuesday. Here they are:

Jha click fraud complaint (PDF) Jha click fraud plea (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai complaint (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai plea (PDF) White DDoS complaint (PDF) White DDoS/Mirai Plea (PDF) Norman click fraud complaint (PDF) Norman click fraud plea (PDF)

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/mirai-iot-botnet-co-authors-plead-guilty/

[amberdscott2]

Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty

The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called “Internet of Things” devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video recorders for use in large scale attacks designed to knock Web sites and entire networks offline (including multiple major attacks against this site).

Entering guilty pleas for their roles in developing and using Mirai are 21-year-old Paras Jha from Fanwood, N.J. and Josiah White, 20, from Washington, Pennsylvania.

Jha and White were co-founders of Protraf Solutions LLC, a company that specialized in mitigating large-scale DDoS attacks. Like firemen getting paid to put out the fires they started, Jha and White would target organizations with DDoS attacks and then either extort them for money to call off the attacks, or try to sell those companies services they claimed could uniquely help fend off the attacks.

CLICK FRAUD BOTNET

In addition, the Mirai co-creators pleaded guilty to charges of using their botnet to conduct click fraud — a form of online advertising fraud that will cost Internet advertisers more than $16 billion this year, according to estimates from ad verification company Adloox. 

The plea agreements state that Jha, White and another person who also pleaded guilty to click fraud conspiracy charges — a New Orleans man named Dalton Norman — leased access to their botnet for the purposes of earning fraudulent advertising revenue through click fraud activity and renting out their botnet to other cybercriminals.

As part of this scheme, victim devices were used to transmit high volumes of requests to view web addresses associated with affiliate advertising content. Because the victim activity resembled legitimate views of these websites, the activity generated fraudulent profits through the sites hosting the advertising content, at the expense of online advertising companies.

Jha and his co-conspirators admitted receiving as part of the click fraud scheme approximately two hundred bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at over $180,000.

Prosecutors say Norman personally earned over 30 bitcoin, valued on January 29, 2017 at over $60,000. The documents show that Norman helped Jha and White discover new, previously unknown vulnerabilities in IoT devices that could be used to beef up their Mirai botnet, which at its height grew to more than 300,000 hacked devices.

MASSIVE ATTACKS

The Mirai malware is responsible for coordinating some of the largest and most disruptive online attacks the Internet has ever witnessed. The biggest and first to gain widespread media attention began on Sept. 20, 2016, when KrebsOnSecurity came under a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack from more than 175,000 IoT devices (the size estimates come from this Usenix paper (PDF) on the Mirai botnet evolution).

That September 2016 digital siege maxed out at 620 Gbps, almost twice the size of the next-largest attack that Akamai — my DDoS mitigation provider at the time — had ever seen before.

The attack continued for several days, prompting Akamai to force my site off of their network (they were providing the service pro bono, and the attack was starting to cause real problems for their paying customers). For several frustrating days this Web site went dark, until it was brought under the auspices of Google’s Project Shield, a program that protects journalists, dissidents and others who might face withering DDoS attacks and other forms of digital censorship because of their publications.

At the end of September 2016, just days after the attack on this site, the authors of Mirai — who collectively used the nickname “Anna Senpai” — released the source code for their botnet. Within days of its release there were multiple Mirai botnets all competing for the same pool of vulnerable IoT devices.

The Hackforums post that includes links to the Mirai source code.

Some of those Mirai botnets grew quite large and were used to launch hugely damaging attacks, including the Oct. 21, 2016 assault against Internet infrastructure firm Dyn that disrupted Twitter, Netflix, Reddit and a host of other sites for much of that day.

A depiction of the outages caused by the Mirai attacks on Dyn, an Internet infrastructure company. Source: Downdetector.com.

The leak of the Mirai source code led to the creation of dozens of copycat Mirai botnets, all of which were competing to commandeer the same finite number of vulnerable IoT devices. One particularly disruptive Mirai variant was used in extortion attacks against a number of banks and Internet service providers in the United Kingdom and Germany.

In July 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published a story following digital clues that pointed to a U.K. man named Daniel Kaye as the apparent perpetrator of those Mirai attacks. Kaye, who went by the hacker nickname “Bestbuy,” was found guilty in Germany of launching failed Mirai attacks that nevertheless knocked out Internet service for almost a million Deutsche Telekom customers, for which he was given a suspended sentence. Kaye is now on trial in the U.K. for allegedly extorting banks in exchange for calling off targeted DDoS attacks against them.

Not long after the Mirai source code was leaked, I began scouring cybercrime forums and interviewing people to see if there were any clues that might point to the real-life identities of Mirai’s creators.

On Jan 18, 2017, KrebsOnSecurity published the results of that four-month inquiry, Who is Anna Senpai, the Mirai Worm Author? The story is easily the longest in this site’s history, and it cited a bounty of clues pointing back to Jha and White — two of the men whose guilty pleas were announced today.

A tweet from the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, stating the intended target of the Sept. 2016 Mirai DDoS on his company.

According to my reporting, Jha and White primarily used their botnet to target online gaming servers — particularly those tied to the hugely popular game Minecraft. Around the same time as the attack on my site, French hosting provider OVH was hit a much larger attack from the same Mirai botnet (see image above), and the CTO of OVH confirmed that the target of that attack was a Minecraft server hosted on his company’s network.

My January 2017 investigation also cited evidence and quotes from associates of Jha who said they suspected he was responsible for a series of DDoS attacks against Rutgers University: During the same year that Jha began studying at the university for a bachelor’s degree in computer science the school’s servers came under repeated, massive attacks from Mirai.

With each DDoS against Rutgers, the attacker — using the nicknamesUsing the nicknames  “og_richard_stallman,” “exfocus” and “ogexfocus,” — would taunt the university in online posts and media interviews, encouraging the school to spend the money to purchase some kind of DDoS mitigation service.

It remains unclear if Jha (and possibly others) may face separate charges in New Jersey related to his apparent Mirai attacks on Rutgers. According to a sparsely-detailed press release issued Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department is slated to hold a media conference at 2 p.m. today with officials from Alaska (where these cases originate) to “discuss significant cybercrime cases.”

PAYBACK

Under the terms of his guilty plea in the click fraud conspiracy, Jha agreed to give up 13 bitcoin, which at current market value of bitcoin (~$17,000 apiece) is nearly USD $225,000.

Jha will also waive all rights to appear the conviction and whatever sentence gets imposed as a result of the plea. For the click fraud conspiracy charges, Jha, White and Norman each face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss of the offense.

In connection with their roles in creating and ultimately unleashing the Mirai botnet code, Jha and White each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(S)(A). Specifically, to “causing intentional damage to a protected computer, to knowingly causing the transmission of a program, code, or command to a computer with the intention of impairing without authorization the integrity or availability of data, a program, system, or information.”

For the conspiracy charges related to their authorship and use of Mirai, Jha and White likewise face up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release.

This is a developing story. Check back later in the day for updates from the DOJ press conference, and later in the week for a follow-up piece on some of the lesser-known details of these investigations.

The Justice Department unsealed the documents related to these cases late in the day on Tuesday. Here they are:

Jha click fraud complaint (PDF) Jha click fraud plea (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai complaint (PDF) Jha DDoS/Mirai plea (PDF) White DDoS complaint (PDF) White DDoS/Mirai Plea (PDF) Norman click fraud complaint (PDF) Norman click fraud plea (PDF)

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/mirai-iot-botnet-co-authors-plead-guilty/

[littlelioneyes]

Regarding the future;

To all the 14 people who are following me (bless you !!), pls read this

I want to start by saying that the roleplay community has changed so much from when I started, and I’ve loved watching it grow. One thing hasn’t changed, however, is my absolute love and adoration for Louis/Leo – my actual son. I’ve been a part of roleplay for four and a half years, but Leo was only active for the first year of that. I’ve had other blogs – characters I’ve loved dearly – but Leo was the one that was always always in the back of my mind. 

Something i’ve realized is that Leo isn’t just a character to me. He’s a part of me. My time with him holds both some of my absolute best memories and some of my worst. When I started, I wasn’t in a good mindspace, but Leo genuinely helped me. I owe him my teen years, basically. 

And the friends!!! I made!!! When I was writing him!!! Holy shit, you guys. You don’t understand. I remember each and every one of you. I remember all the nicknames, all the weird Skype statues, all the long nights, all the small things – I remember. To date, I don’t believe I’ve had as much fun as I did when I was in the height of my rp career, writing with all you guys. I wouldn’t trade those memories for the absolute world.

And that brings me to that word – memories. That’s what I’ve had the hardest time coming to terms with. Nearly all of my original partners have left rp. I’ll never have those times again. I can’t go back. I don’t even know how to get in touch with most of them, and it hurts like hell because there’s no closure in that. Please please believe me when I say I feel terrible for ever leaving. I should’ve stayed, I should’ve worked things out, but at that time, where my mind was, I honestly don’t think I could have. But I do feel awful about the whole situation.

While I’ve be gone, ya girl’s been doing some soul searching. That’s one of the reasons I’m making this post. Leo is my character, my baby, the one who I’ve invested time and emotion into. And for the longest time, I wasn’t writing for myself. I based my being here on how others felt and if others wanted me. That’s shit. The first time I left because I didn’t belong anymore. I felt like nobody wanted me around for some reason or another. In the back of my mind, I knew that wasn’t true, but at the time, that’s all I could think about. It overwhelmed me. (And also someone had stolen my character nearly word for word. I didn’t know what to do, and I felt useless in the whole ordeal. I’m the definition of “running away from your problems” ... There was actually a lot that was happening at that time, now that I think about it, but I won’t bore you with it here.) The second time I left (this blog, like a year ago) was because I felt terribly out of place. I knew like three people, and I hate being an outcast. It got to the point where I was so intimidated by my dash, so scared by it, that I couldn’t bring myself to log on. 

When I started Leo, it wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a cute ask blog. But it grew. It grew into so much more, and Lord, I didn’t expect it. But it changed my life so much. I just literally can’t put it into words. For the longest time, I thought of Leo as The One That Got Away™. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t come back before now. But last week, by some small fate and inkling, I realized that it didn’t have to be that way. The only thing keeping it that way was my own stupid mind.

SO HERE GOES LEO V3

This is stil going to be a rp blog, but a private one. That means if we follow each other, cool, LET’S P L O T. But also, I want meaningful storylines. I don’t want just one liners that don’t go anywhere (even though I may be okay with them sometimes because it can be hard to para). I want something where we’re always coming up with ideas – even if they’re never written.

I will reblog and make things for Leo. Yeah, this is a normalcy in the rp community, but I mean like, even if I don’t have any threads, I’m still going to use this blog when I see something that reminds me of Leo. I’m also going to write drabbles or short stories that I can imagine happening in Leo’s life.

I may not update like 20 times a day due to my carrying a full college schedule, a job, and irl responsibilities, but I’m not coming back to feel rushed or anything like that. I want to enjoy Leo on my own time, and I think that’s how every rp blog is. It just took me a billion years to figure that out and accept it.

The thing is, I don’t want to abandon Leo on such a sour note. He hasn’t lived out his potential, I don’t believe. And when that fateful day comes, that day when I leave, I want him to have a legacy of sorts. I want to feel like he’s lived his life, because he gave me mine when I needed it the most. 

I love you so much, my kitten. Even though I can’t relive old memories, I’m so ready to make some new ones!

IMPORTANT NOTE: If we had threads you want to continue, I WANT TO CONTINUE THEM TOO HOLY SHIT PLS HMU I’M STILL LONELY AF AND I STILL LOVE YOU GUYS SO FREAKIN MUCH