FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own #323

Closed Thorin-Oakenpants closed 2 years ago

edit: Oct 2108, he was banned from GitHub (may not be permanent) - FYI: he also is on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/CHEF-KOCH

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 1: See second post re https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/Firefox-prefs.js-cleaner

See https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/29/automation-comes-to-the-ghacks-user-js-configuration-for-firefox/#comment-4325581

My reply if it gets published

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/pull/311 - the first PR by claustromaniac 18 days ago, and that was after a week of talking about it and sample scripts

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/commit/fbd9f344af3cb6d0fb320de57497278887cc4b83 - v1.0 commit 15 days ago

https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/Firefox-prefs.js-cleaner/commit/1f77f541bdd5cfbda52eecf9c7d3435c771fe4a9 - your version committed 14 days ago. Except for a few word changes such as the author, it's IDENTICAL

I call BS. This is not the first time you've been caught passing off other people's hard work as your own. Where is this reddit link that predates claustromaniac's work? I can show you the changes and discussions that claustromaniac and earthlng had and how the script changed to its final version. Yours is a single commit and IDENTICAL .. come on, where's your proof

CHEF-KOCH has not provided any proof to back up his denial

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 2: His ASN-blocking repo is a direct ripoff of ASN_IPFire_Script , and he has been called out on it, but refuses to acknowledge or do anything about it.

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 3: read this -> https://github.com/Lanchon/REPIT/blob/master/README-CHEF-KOCH.md and this -> https://github.com/Lanchon/REPIT/issues/37 ( WebArchive ) where he STOLE Lanchon's REPIT and Flashize code: removed his (Lanchon's) name from it, removed the copyright notice, removed the GPL license, added himself as the author, and published it as his own work

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 4: He even copies other people's PAID work and livelihood. His blog entry about the show Legion is plagiarized from this original article written by a professional critic

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 5 his https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/BarbBlock-filter-list is direct rip off from the original at https://github.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/ without attribution

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 6, 7, and 8: his modal filter list on day of list creation (Dec 2 2018) at commit 5ecf7ee on Dec 2, 2018 is 100% copied line-for-line from @yourduskquibbles 's modal filter list provided at commit 8d57b6b on Nov 30, 2018

@CHEF-KOCH's social filter list on day of list creation at commit 5ecf7ee on Dec 2, 2018 is 100% copied line-for-line (1670 lines) from my social filter list provided at commit 8d57b6b on Nov 30, 2018

@CHEF-KOCH's social filter list on day of list creation at commit 5ecf7ee on Dec 2, 2018 is 100% copied line-for-line (2025 lines) from my generic filter list provided at commit b5aa7d3 on Nov 30, 2018

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

:large_blue_circle: PROOF 9

from @crazy-max : As this thread is a complete report on the actions of @CHEF-KOCH, I contribute to it with the violation of the license for my WindowsSpyBlocker repository.

The CKs-FilterList repository of CHEF-KOCH violates the MIT license of WindowsSpyBlocker repository : A copy of the license and copyright notice must be included.

https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/CKs-FilterList/blob/master/HOSTS/Windows%2010.txt

is a verbatim copy of :

https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/blob/master/data/hosts/extra.txt https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/blob/master/data/hosts/spy.txt https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/blob/master/data/hosts/update.txt

And here are the compare reports :

end of message from crazy-max

:exclamation: FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own

original post

https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/FFCK/blob/master/anti-ghacks%20user.js

I guess he can't read

e.g. he disables all cookies but suggest/recommed in their own wiki to use a cookie black/whitelist addon - why when Firefox can native do this via 'settings' - history - cookies [exceptions]?! The addon he suggest also lowers the security and you might run into possible addon fakes, besides this each addon rises memory consumptation.

quote from user.js "You can set exceptions under site permissions or use an extension" - What part of OR does he not understand
also, quote from wiki extensions "While we believe these are the very best of the best, this can be subjective depending on your needs. We are also not saying you have to use all these extensions."
How does a cookie manager lower security? Our wiki points to a reputable well-known extension. If anything, the fact they are not auto-updated enhances this - see his next point
running into possible addon fakes? huh? We can't make people use a particular extension, but by recommending some at least we're vetting it and linking to the real thing
memory consumption? really? .. a few hundred kb's .. OMG .. the world is ending.

Disabling automatically addon-updates is also horrible, you lower your security point and not increase it because in fact 99% of all people never review addons or understanding the source code.

This is clearly worded in the user.js and the wiki implementation page. Users STILL get notifications. The whole point of not auto-installing them actually INCREASES security if done in a timely manner, as it allows vetting of changes - especially now AMO auto approves new releases. Users have the option to turn it back on .. because .. TEMPLATE

There are a lot of more examples but this guy does not know what he is doing or talking about....

Nice one. I'll just let the community decide for themselves. CHEF-KOCH has already been shown up to be a plagiarizing, hypocritical SoB with no verbal reasoning skills.

This example, the anti ghacks user.js .. contains 102 prefs for undoing the settings - apparently, to undo prefs with no "security" aspect. Fair enough, no one ever claimed the ghacks user.js is just about security.

Of these 102 prefs, he resets 93 of them. Of these 93, 22 are inactive in our user.js, and of the remaining 71, he even reuses the same values as us on a few. Of these 71 odd, some of the decisions are really whack. For someone who is always harping on about "SECURITY", he allows all the DRM (widevine, eme, cdm etc) which even the EFF says undermines security. And a lot of them have nothing to with "security"

Wot a f**king dork.

Class, discuss!

Oooh look .. https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/Firefox-prefs.js-cleaner - created 12 days ago

The project is created original by CHEF-KOCH under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

@earthlng .. doesn't that look VERY familiar

chef-koch-plagiarizer

..and here I was thinking I don't have a life.

Plagiarising batch scripts... that must be a new kind of low.

LOL check out his profile:

I worked for @Microsoft and @NVIDIA over 15 years.

Assuming that's true (not trying to imply that it doesn't have credibility or anything 🤣 ), we can easily guess why he's not working for them anymore.

Thanks, Pants.

I don't really care too much about getting credit for the scripts. I just hate that kind of behaviour, like most people do, I guess.

Yikes, that's pathetic :grimacing:

If there's interest, I'd be happy to submit a DMCA takedown notice on your guys' behalf:

https://github.com/contact/dmca-notice

Edit: Part of the form requires the following:

Type (or copy and paste) the following statement: "I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner, or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

So I would need permission from Pants and/or @claustromaniac before I could do so :)

@Thorin-Oakenpants just add %20 instead of space in the link on the first post and it should work without needing to copy/paste. ;)

No doubt that the CH is a schmack with multiple personality disorder where he is calling himself as a "we". Like the saying: once I have been schizophrenic, but now we are OK. At least he has a lot of company. lol Or the second one that is coming to my mind is: he is an attention bitch, but doing it wrong

I would tend to agree with IPv6... this shit should be disabled on the OS level anyway. The protocol which has integrated the MITM possibilities by default without even needing to do the ARP spoofing and hard to detect, is not a safe one.

@claustromaniac and @earthlng. really great job with the scripts you are making. As once already said, hats down to geniusly crafted one.

Cheers and happy new year

LOL that's pretty pathetic. If it makes him feel good to take someone else' work and put his own name on it then so be it, I couldn't care less. Not worth my energy to get upset about it.

FYI: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/29/automation-comes-to-the-ghacks-user-js-configuration-for-firefox/

^^ yeah sorry claustro and dactyl .. yur world famous now... you're gonna need a bigger tinfoil :grinning: you've been marked and the NSA is sweeping all your traffic

you've been marked and the NSA is sweeping all your traffic

LOL

I suspect I've been marked for a long time, considering they pretty much treat everyone using underwear as extremists. Remember: we're all guilty until proven innocent.

wot? you use underwear? I thought everyone knew not to do that - exhibit a: my avatar

Yup, I sometimes use underwear. Sorry to disappoint.

No need to apologize! Pretty cool to get mentioned on the article :)

The additional NSA surveillance is worth it lol

What a fucking pathetic troll! He's just pushing your buttons, Pants. Don't feed the trolls, guys.

I concur. A waste of time and energy.

There are other projects he copied from. For example: ASN_IPFire_Script He "forked" the project, renamed it and removed the original authors: ASN-blocking

How many more of "his" 73 repositories are just copies? We don't know...

This guy is truly a waste of time and energy.

More or less everything. One man just can't do so many projects and maintain them. He is making damage to users, when someone is relying to stuff in his repository which is not maintaned then. The guy should be reported to some github authorities, if such exists. Other opinion and words I will not write here, due to inappropriate language.

His BarbBlock filter list is just a copy of the real thing from https://github.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/ and serves absolutely no purpose. He just copies the changes from paulgb's repo and thinks he's doing the world a service

His FFCK js commits often/mostly mirror ours: Example 1:

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/commit/c83670f7081c70da4b06e91b04d1974d585afb9c - I removed all the e10s stuff
https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/FFCK/commit/fb93be690c7c965b68351203d5bc762903f2777f - he removes all the e10s stuff, same day
https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/FFCK/commit/86e33040fac99f01edc978ed25ec2e7515dfc176 - and here he realizes he took out an item from the e10s section that we kept

Example 2:

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/commit/14c1620994f10e4a4d34f515a6ba22b5b725e058 - here I came across a FF59 hidden pref (21 days ago) & https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/commit/0da73d606bd95ac946d1020491f73cbace43113a - here is the new crashReports (22 days ago)
https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/FFCK/commit/d4d8e641638b9da18af807314bc121b70c158112 - and he copies it here, same day
tons more but why waste my time

He's just watching what we do here and copying it all. Almost every single edit comes from here - the timing is very telling.

I personally don't think he has an original bone in his spineless body. It would not surprise me if the vast bulk of his repos are all copies. Totally pathetic.

Copyright claims (DMCA)?

Our "friend" latest "activity": https://github.com/Synzvato/decentraleyes/issues/34

He confuses privacy and security again. The last comment of him made me giggle, he gonna "patch" DCE if it's implement fonts.

its now 2 months exactly and still no FUD

Man... does time fly. I must be growing older.

He must be growing older too.

At least the word is spreading a little...

Well, those other two cases were before ours

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/08/identifying_pro.html

Their work could be useful in a plagiarism dispute, for instance ....

hey :cat2: .. are you sure that was you coding all that stuff?

are you sure that was you coding all that stuff?

I think you should be asking that to the :hankey: instead.

No, wait. We already know the answer. Nevermind.

Anyway, that's an interesting article. I can see other potential legitimate uses for that, like identifying crackers and such. It still kinda sucks, though... At some point I will have to stop sharing the little code I that I share, until someone develops an AI counter-measure that standarizes code to the structural level, or something of the sort. The.. Codenonimizer... Because privacy first, mothertrucker.

gotta think up a better slogan...

ID'ing viruses etc, esp at a state level, via snippets of reused code has been going on for many years - some are very telling

edit: by ID'ing, I don't mean virus protection - I mean by ID'ing the source of the hack, usually zero-day specially crafted like a Stuxnet

pic for posterity: Note: 8th time he's been banned/shutdown. He has an issue with gorhill (holy fuk, gorhill is awesome) but then I suspect he has an issue with everyone (you're not special gorhill, sorry). He says he can't switch to other platforms because he's already "censored" there (way to twist words CK). And the old fallback re lawyers.

lets-hope-its-forever

I hope he's locked out forever. MS finally doing something good :trollface:

That's what happens when you don't even make sure the shit is legal before you plagiarize it.

It's almost as if he doesn't know his material ... wonder why that is

Late but sweet :smile:

And i was wondering why one of my DNSBL feeds for pfBlockerNG was not updating, until i checked the URL:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CHEF-KOCH/NSABlocklist/master/HOSTS

This was my way to discover that CK got finally what he deserves!

Links at the top are dead now. This is what I could salvage from Google's cache (backed up in the Wayback Machine and archive.is by me):

his profile https://web.archive.org/web/20180930165152/https://github.com/CHEF-KOCH/
prefsCleaner https://archive.is/grQDL
- http://archive.is/AtQv0
ASN-blocking https://archive.is/y3vzw
BarbBlock-filter-list http://archive.is/Qh0W8
REPIT (issue 37) https://archive.is/MHo7P

EDIT: updated links. EDIT (2018-11-14): He's back. All the original links are working again.

FYI: This is the current top referal from reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/9p9d3p/chef_koch_github_account_deleted/

Also, for some reason (I guess it makes logical sense), CK seems to think I'm behind this. Here he has posted a comment on a near year old article. Draw your own conclusion - but I hardly ever post any comments at ghacks anymore (I would be struggling to reach double figures this year).

I will state this, for the record: I have nothing to do with CK being blocked/banned on GitHub, both this incident and all other previous occasions. I actually go out of my way to avoid CK (banning him from this repo, stopped making comments at ghacks, etc) because in my life, I try to cut out the negativity, the time-wasting, and the bullies/abusers/loud-mouthed and the unreliable (you only ever get to let me down once). That's in real life, but I extend this to the web in general. And, I have never posted any comments on reddit (and probably never will). I am not crssi or SkcusYllaerTidder or anyone else.

Just to help your statement, I will come out and say I know for a fact you're not SkcusYllaerTidder, because that's actually me. I was not going to disclose it, but you could probably infer it from the timing of my posts anyway. I didn't state who I was in those posts because I was trying to make my point: who I am is irrelevant. My followers (like... 5 people ATM :sweat_smile:) don't make my arguments more valid or invalid in any way, and the same goes for him and his arguments (if you can call them that).

... AND I am also not behind any of his bans. So far I've ignored the guy as best as I could, but as I was reading that shit on reddit I couldn't help myself and I let that out. It was the first time I ever said anything to him, and will likely be the last. That's if I can keep my fingers under control, but I'm usually busy researching stuff or coding half useless junk, so I don't think I'll have much trouble with that.

I know I try to avoid him as well. But he keeps popping up on my radar from time to time. I've never done anything to him (it's all his own making). First, years ago, he was very hard to deal with in PK's repo (it felt personal, but that's just his style), so much so that I stopped contributing anything there. Then came the attack on me (and it was directly at ME as far as I'm concerned) at ghacks in this article's comments, where he was called out by numerous people. This set him off or something, because then he starts upping the anti, with an anti-ghacks-user.js and rants about FUD etc, and then plagiarizes your work (which then turns out to be more common than you think). It's all his own doing.

PS: totally agree that number of followers has zero to do with quality

Of course you are not crssi there. It was me. It's a shame, but I also just couldn't resist. This guy boils my brain into even more stupidity level than normal mine is. The level of damage he is doing to other people just make me nuts and I don't mean only the people he is plagiarizing, but his followers also. I was also fooled by him a long time ago, until I realized that almost every project he had, was committed once and no much more activity after, which triggered my suspicions.

He has an issue with gorhill (holy fuk, gorhill is awesome)

I think I found it by semi-accident:

https://archive.is/y6GXR https://archive.is/WlYht

He seriously tried to shutdown uBO because one of his "friends" got banned for self-promotion?! WTF!!

Plagiarizing other peoples work, trying to get people and projects banned for made up allegations, constantly threatening people with lawyers for the dumbest things and now linking to explicit content with minors???!!!! How fucking more cancer can one guy get?! Did he get himself permanently banned from github because he plagiarized something without looking at it in detail? hahaha oh the irony. Finally got what he deserved. Take that to your lawyers you fucking loser!

Nah, I was quite pleased to see him get what he deserved too. He's not coming back either, the admins made that very clear. He might be able to re-register with the same name if or when github releases the name for reuse. Unless someone else takes the name first and makes it into some kind of anti-plagiarizing place like "here used to live a troll who shamelessly stole other people's work and claimed it as his own ..." ;)

I miss CK a little, does that make me a bad person?

right down to attacking me (after crssi draws attention to us, thanks crssi :trollface: )

What? In the last few days? Sorry if that made some troubles to you. Actually my intentions was to draw attention of others... first to get them to know this project and second to open their eyes about CK I really don't care about CK. He has got what he deserved for a too long time and I hope it will stay so... and I don't miss him a bit. End of story.

Finally this stupid shit is gone. I hope permanently.

How fucking more cancer can one guy get?!

What I found during my 10-minute delving session today: the guy also seems to have some personal experience in writing fake news...

his review of XPrivacyLua https://archive.is/JQseu
the developer's response: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=76162737&postcount=2455
his response to the dev's response, where he contradicts what he said in the initial review: https://archive.is/6uhpo

Don't forget to check out all the love he gets in the comments section...

Addendum: has also been seen trolling in WildersSecurity (just search "chefkoch" site:www.wilderssecurity.com). Surprisingly, it seems he hasn't been banned from that one yet. However, that didn't stop him from calling it the troll forum number #1 here on GitHub.

Let's just all agree that CK's style is very abrasive and abusive and threatening. And he is a troll. He deliberately goes out of his way to blindside people. He is an unpleasant human being who uses almost any method to "fight" back when he is called out (changing the topic, threatening lawyers, lying, making up facts, etc). It's impossible to ever reason with him - surely he can't lack that much in verbal reasoning skills, so I can only surmise that he does it deliberately.

We all know this by now. Stop wasting your time over him, everyone. Let's just "retire" this thread. I'll leave it open for visibility for now, but I'll lock it (although most of you are collaborators anyway). We all have better things to do with our lives (e.g claustromaniac needs to work on getting his followers count up from 5 :grinning: )

Soz you couldn't reply @claustromaniac - only collaborators with write permissions can comment, and because I run a tight :ship: , all collaborators are restricted to read only :grinning:

Closing this

Please stop locking conversations. If someone has something to say let them say it. claustromaniac was forced to reply in another repo FFS

Thanks @claustromaniac for all the links btw :kissing:

I agree that we should lay this to rest now since we hopefully raised a bit of awareness about CK. But there are still a few things I want to say ... When you first brought this up I said if it makes him happy to steal other people's work and put his name on it so be it. But at that time I thought he's just a pathetic teenage scriptkiddie. I've since learned that he allegedly worked for MS and NVidia for 15 years so he must be at least in his thirties which is just sad. As sad and pathetic as that may be, what's even worse is that he asks for donations for other people's work while having the audacity to put this sentence in the same README where he's asking for said donations:

It's cool that some people add my lists into their own projects and I in general allow it but it's not cool that several people now make money via donations with my and other peoples lists. I DO NOT ALLOW any commercial usage and everyone which doesn't respect this will get a DMCA takedown request and a paper from my lawyer.

And that's in a project where probably 90% of the lists content is shamelessly stolen from other people. People who probably have sentences very similar to his but he just doesn't care! Since he's very careful to remove all links and mentions of the original authors/devs/maintainers of his plagiarized stuff it's hard to say where exactly he's copying the lists from. 1 repo where he might have gotten some of that content from is https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/Badd-Boyz-Hosts and that guy has this in the readme:

You are free to copy and distribute this file for non-commercial uses, as long the original URL and attribution is included.

Regardless of where CK got those lists from, he's (1) using it commercially according to his own definition (=donations) (2) doesn't include the original URL anywhere and (3) includes no attribution either. Basically what CK does in that repo is copy a bunch of other people's lists, run them through a script which of course is copied from someone else too and then asks for donations for that! And that's just one repo out of the upwards of 90 repos I believe he had. Chances are he did the same thing in some of those as well. He threatens people for the very same thing that he does all the time!

ps If you think that's bad enough, well... he not only steals open-source, "free for non-commercial use" kinda stuff to make an easy buck, he also copies people's literal (in every sense of the word) paid-for work: I came across his blog and noticed a post about the TV show Legion. Since I'd never heard of that show I clicked it and started reading. Anyone who's ever read anything written by CK will pretty soon realize that there's just no way CK wrote that. I looked for any links or mentions of where he might have gotten that review from but of course, CK being CK, there was none. Googling one of the sentences immediately found the original review written by a professional critic. CK copied that guys actual work (it's the critic's full-time paid job to write that kind of stuff) without any attribution whatsoever to fill his blog with content in the hopes that he can make some money from donations with that blog. Weird enough the images he used are sourced and CK seems to think it's totally fine to steal text of any kind but images need to be attributed?! If he really does have a lawyer as he constantly claims, I think it would be wise to talk to that lawyer about intellectual property rights, copyrights etc instead of trying to shutdown everyone who calls him out on his bullshit.

Oh and what's beyond ridiculous is him talking about "free speech" when he's the one who constantly reports everyone and even tries to shutdown/ban projects!!

Someone tries to suppress my right or free speech.

source

CK in action:

against @crssi - https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/9opkel/chefkoch/e7zlal8/
against @Thorin-Oakenpants and this very repo - https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/issues/383#issuecomment-379906208 + https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/9opkel/chefkoch/e7zlokn/
against gorhill + uBlock Origin - https://archive.is/o/y6GXR/https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1659%23issuecomment-221893237 + https://archive.is/o/y6GXR/https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1659%23issuecomment-222192336

and that's undoubtedly just the tip of the iceberg

@Thorin-Oakenpants and everyone else.

First of all; I don't want to make any harm to CHEF-KOCH!

So...on the CHEF-KOCH's Discord server, CHEF-KOCH and a other guy (I don't remember name, sorry) was discussing about Xposed's safety. When the other guy opinion was (so he wasn't trying to make any fight) that Xposed is safe modification, CHEF-KOCH's opinion was that Xposed isn't safe (which is by the way the truth), so CHEF-KOCH banned the other guy immediately when he didn't agree what CHEF-KOCH said. So CHEF-KOCH don't seem to allow criticism. Fortunately this wasn't permanent ban but all his messages disappeared. Here are the screenshots what CHEF-KOCH said after the ban (CHEF-KOCH's first comments were for the guy who got banned):

arkenfox / user.js

FACT: CHEF-KOCH plagiarizes and passes off other people's work as his own #323

original post