The poster was preventing a crime against innocent parties. His "victims" were the criminals. The script kiddies were responsible for running malware and trying to launch attacks from their parents' computers in this scenario, and they would be the ones responsible for data erasure of others using the same computer.
In that sense, file deletion is destructive but honest. The poster owned the systems at this point and could have exfiltrated data or used the control of the systems for further attacks. This was decidedly mild.
It’s not black and white, so I won’t argue for black or white, but an important factor to me is: ddos eventually stops and then everything is back to normal; no permanent damage is done.
They are both cybercrime. I'm not disagreeing with that. But if you sabotage a bombmakers tools and they blow their own household up instead of other innocent people, is it the same thing?
Let's be very specific: "if they actually used it as part of a DDoS.". This wasn't embedded in warez or cracking tools, it was in botnet controllers, and ran when someone had pulled the trigger to execute an attack.
What if the bomb maker lives in a shared house with innocent people, or even in their parents basement?
Thats a more relevent analogy here, as probably most of those script kiddies were using the family PC which had other other innocent peoples important stuff on.
you are saying it was "botnet controllers" all the op said was "ddos tool on 4chan" - LOIC wasn't a "ddos" tool. it was a DoS tool. sub7 wasn't a ddos tool. BO wasn't a ddos tool. butttrumpet wasn't a ddos tool.
A "botnet controller" requires a botnet. The OP made malware. A program, when run, that would delete your files without permission.
merely having the thought of doing something illegal isn't illegal and afaik the catholics have the only guidelines on how to deal with illegal thoughts, and "delete all the files on their hard disk or otherwise corrupt their system" wasn't in the canon that i saw.
"Years ago when DDoS tools were being distributed on 4chan I fixed a bug in one of them and redistributed it there"
"if they actually used it as part of a DDoS"
You are incorrect, they said it was a DDoS tool. You are incorrect about "merely having the thought", it required executing an attack. FAFO. Again, this is part of the personal evolution of tons of security professionals who longer do juvenile stupid shit. Or at least learned how to do so in a hardened sandbox vm.
In that sense, file deletion is destructive but honest. The poster owned the systems at this point and could have exfiltrated data or used the control of the systems for further attacks. This was decidedly mild.