Emerald-gate as it has come to be known, is the DDoS attack implemented by Fractured Crystal (formerly) the head of Modular Systems. The problem is, before this turned into the public storm it has become, it was indicated to me that a much larger portion of Emerald team actually knew what Fractured was up to, and were likely accomplices. Of course, it seems more plausible in the wake of the aftermath seeing as it never once occurred to me that Fractured was a "lone gun" in this.
It has been shown that a large part of the team actually were aware of what Fractured was doing, and we can leave the plausible deniability at that point, since the original blog postings from Modular Systems (which at that point came down to Arabella) implied that:
- The team did not have prior knowledge of the planning or incident
- It was not a DDoS attack
- Was simply a "prank"
However, for the sake of argument, we'll let those two attempts to cover up what was done and side step the issue slide for the moment.
"Another YouTube video recording reveals that the entire Emerald dev team knew Fractured had been planning on adding the DDoS code, but did nothing to stop him until it was discovered. Arabella herself didn’t want to “scare the users”, so she made up the story about traffic." - Nelson Jenkins: via Alphaville HeraldWell son of a... ok so she definitely knew all along, as well as a number of the Emerald team developers, and not a single one of them lifted a finger or opened their mouth to stop it. But why would they stop him? By Arabella's own contempt for Hazim Gazov when being asked very legitimate questions about what happened and why, I believe I've lost even more respect for Arabella.
Considering she more than likely knew all of the details about the DDoS attack, and quite honestly how could she not have known if she was close enough to Fractured to get him to turn over the entire project to her in his leaving, I find it a slap in the face that when confronted by the man who has every right to press Federal Charges (or maybe International depending on where she is) and very easily link her to the incident as an accomplice, she brazenly tells him the equivalent of "f**k off, I don't owe you any answers".
Is she actually sorry that Hazim was the target of the attack? Not at all, she's actually glad about it. The only thing she and many of the devs are sorry about is that they were caught red handed. Regardless of whether Hazim is not respectable as a person or whatever exploits or damages he may have done, it still doesn't make it ok to launch a DDoS attack using the 170,000+ Emerald viewer users as your botnet to attack him. It isn't funny, it isn't excusable, and it wasn't done entirely by a single person.
Hazim Gazov questions Arabella Steadham's "Shennanigans" blog post.
Therein is a point I am making here and now in this post. Fractured Crystal may have been the highest profile in that group to have been involved, but I find it highly doubtful that he acted on his own when implementing the DDoS attack. Based on the relationship between Fractured and other devs acting in a close-knit fashion for prior acts:
"Phox and Fractured both conspire to get the third party’s ISP to cancel their service because of the leak, which they also did numerous times to the creator of the NeilLife viewer, but were ultimately unsuccessful. However, Phox still claims he was successful, and brags regularly about it." - Nelson Jenkins: via Alphaville Herald
Emerald Point April 10th 2010
Ok, now we have precedence for collaboration, and after watching and listening to the conversations, I can safely say there is much higher chance that a number of the devs were involved, and that the ones who weren't directly involved were fully aware of what was planned and being implemented. I'll give a number of exceptions, however, because I cannot possibly say that they all knew about it. We can surmise, however, that this wasn't the act of a lone developer in the team.
Whether or not Fractured Crystal has left the team is of zero consequence. There is nothing stopping him from jumping back into the development team using a new alt, not to mention that we're overlooking the very likely aspect that there were others involved who are remaining in the team unnoticed.
More importantly, the person most likely to have been in a position to speak up and stop it, not only did not speak up, but instead chose to attempt to cover it up or downplay the importance of what had happened. This person is now in charge...
Point blank: I do not trust Arabella, nor a number of the Emerald team which still exist today. I do not believe I will trust them at any point in the future, or anything they say in public. As far as I'm concerned, every word that comes out of that camp is suspect at best.
Short of a miracle, there has been entirely too much damage done not just with Emerald-gate, but before as well, to warrant my support for Emerald as a viewer.
Why Would Anyone Trust These Emerald Guys? Nelson Jenkins
After listening to the conversations, and doing a bit of backtracking to see what else has been done on behalf of that team, I can safely say that there is no amount of convincing that can be offered to sway me to use Emerald for the foreseeable future. If you are still able to convince yourself, after reading this, and subsequent materials contained, that it's still alright to use Emerald, then more power to you and I wish you the best.
Blindly remaining faithful to Emerald, despite very seedy dealings and now outright illegal dealings, is what managed to give them the ability to use 170,000 lemmings at their whim. I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to continue being a lemming... you never know when it'll lead you right off a cliff.
- Aeonix Aeon
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