# Why was Kyberneticist banned? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [September 21, 2001, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045 "2001-09-21T17:20:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![k.os](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e0b2c6/32.png) [@k.os](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k.os)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/1 "2001-09-21T17:20:48Z")
Not that I’m second-guessing the mods (that would go in the Pit ;)), just that usually, it’s pretty obvious why, but this time, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a Sock, since he had been registered since 1999. When I clicked on the profile, there was a mention that his last post was to a thread called ‘Little graph of SDMB lag, for the curious’ but it doesn’t exist. I’m not asking this to argue. I’m just curious as to what happened there. ---
**Author:** ![Mu\_Mu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Mu\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mu_Mu)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/2 "2001-09-21T17:57:39Z")
He published some code. I think it was how to find out stats on # of posts. After his posts were edited a couple of times he refused to take the hint. ---
**Author:** ![Mu\_Mu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Mu\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mu_Mu)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/3 "2001-09-21T18:17:53Z")
BTW, he went into detail on a couple of threads. **[Kyberneticist tries to gather stats about SDMB’s slowness; 3 mods jump him](http://fff.fathom.org/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000271.html)** (Oddly, the search lists Arnold Winkelried as the author, but it looks like RTFirefly started the thread.) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/4 "2001-09-21T18:45:50Z")
Specifically: Before Jerry the Tech God did some futzing, the board was running remarkably slow. Kyber decided to figure out _how_ slow, and _when_, and so he wrote a program to automatically ping the MB every few minutes, and get a response time. The problem was two-fold: first, said program was therefore taking up MB resources (by having to respond to the ping every few minutes), and Kyber posted the specific code for the program in ATMB (along with his report, stating that during regular American business hours, the board got slower, and in non-business hours was faster, which was not particularly shocking news). It was pointed out to Kyb that said code could be used to launch a Denial of Service attack upon us, and that we really didn’t appreciate him posting code that was pretty much a how-to guide for hackers. Kyber then attempted to defend himself by stating ‘no, if you wanted to launch a DoS attack, you’d have to make these specific changes to the code, and here’s the step-by-step…’ This was the second time Kyber had posted code to the board which could be used to deletorious effect upon the board, and it was decided to ban Kyber. ---
**Author:** ![k.os](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e0b2c6/32.png) [@k.os](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k.os)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/5 "2001-09-21T18:52:47Z")
OK, Now I understand. That was pretty dumb of him, and probably deserved banning. I’m reading the thread provided by **Mu Mu** and I’m shocked that so many people seem to be into SDMB-Bashing over there. I Didn’t know of that Forum before. ---
**Author:** ![k.os](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e0b2c6/32.png) [@k.os](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k.os)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/6 "2001-09-21T18:54:09Z")
Ooops, there goes **Mu Mu**. Could a Mod please close this thread. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2001, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-kyberneticist-banned/83045/7 "2001-09-21T18:55:05Z")
At the OP’s request, this thread is closed.