But there’s a dark side to wireless networking. If you’re not careful and don’t protect your connection, people can log into it anonymously and use it to do all sorts of bad things. Like Myron Tereshchuk, a fellow from Maryland who had it in for MicroPatent, a company in Connecticut. Tereshchuk believed the firm was in someway responsible for some of the misfortunes his own business had, and took to sending the company threatening e-mails and extortion demands.
Normally something like that would be traceable—to be technical about it, you could look at the e-mail header and see the path the e-mail took from the sending computer to the receiving computer. But Tereshchuk masked his identity by driving around the Washington, DC, area and looking for unsecured wireless networks to log into; when he found one, he’d use it to mail off his threats. These and other tactics kept Tereshchuk one step ahead of the company he was trying to blackmail.
So, yes, Tereshchuk did a fine job in covering his tracks on the technical front. But when it came to other aspects of identity obscuring, he was, well, less “ept.” For example, there was that time he decided to attempt to extort $17 million from the MicroPatent, or else he’d release some corporate secrets he’d recovered; he demanded the company cut a check payable to “Myron Tereshchuk.” As they say, this was the big break investigators were looking for.
One wonders why a man whose desire for anonymity caused him to drive around a major metropolitan area looking for home networks to hack into would suddenly just plop his name out there like fool. We suppose when $17 million is on the line, people’s thinking just gets a little fuzzy.
Armed with a big fat honkin’ clue like Tereshchuk’s name, the FBI began following him around (at one point noting observing him driving erratically as he paid attention to something in the passenger seat—driving and Web browsing don’t mix) and eventually got a warrant for his house. Inside they found evidence linking him to the harassment of MicroPatent, as well as some other interesting goodies, like grenades and a recipe for ricin, a nasty poison. Clearly this fellow was just a ball of fun. Tereshchuk was hauled in and eventually pled guilty to “attempted extortion affecting commerce.”
Oh well. It was a good plan. A technologically sneaky plan. Too bad the weakest link in Tereshchuk’s plan was himself.
Source: The Register (UK), U.S. Department of Justice
Insert “Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti” Joke Here
Every now and again—by which you can understand to mean probably every fifteen seconds—some idiot somewhere in the world gets the bright idea to put up a joke auction listing on eBay, the world’s largest online auction site. Because who doesn’t enjoy a good joke auction?
Well, we have two reasons to not file a joke auction on eBay. The first, of course, is that every joke auction eventually has to be taken down by some tech geek at eBay whose very expensive degree in information systems technology is being used to delete an attempt at auction-based humor. So whether or not the joke succeeds in being funny, removing it certainly isn’t the high point of the tech’s day.
Also, there’s the outside chance that some profoundly creepy person won’t think your auction is a joke at all. Just ask Daniel O’Dee, a Brit who apparently got a little soused and thought it would be a hoot to auction his body on eBay. Well, quickly enough, the eBay techs took down the auction, but they weren’t fast enough on the draw; in O’Dee’s e-mail queue was a note from “Donnie, the Hanover Cannibal,” who, unaware that the body O’Dee was offering was his very own, offered £2,000 for what Donnie believed was a corpse. Donnie hinted darkly at a cabal of continental cannibals who pooled their resources for fresh human corpses and were interested in O’Dee’s dead body auction.
O’Dee, almost certainly creeped out beyond all sensibility, responded to the Hanover homophage that the auction had been for his own body and was just a joke. The Hanover Cannibal’s response: “I’m disappointed that is was your own body you were selling as I want one as soon as possible. If you have any other access to a fresh corpse I would be interested. I guarantee that it will be more than a fair price.” O’Dee didn’t respond to this message, which apparently the Cannibal thought to be rude; Donnie then sent a death threat. Quoth O’Dee to the local paper: “I’m trying to put it out of my mind. It’s safe to say I won’t be visiting Germany.”
Now, of course, it’s entirely possible that Donnie the Cannibal is just some dude jerking O’Dee’s chain. But, you know, what if he wasn’t? The correct response to that, and we say this with a full measure of masculinity, is “Eek!”
So please, no fake eBay auctions. Do it for your soul and those nice eBay techs. Not to mention your liver, your heart and other edible portions of your body.
Source: thisisplymouth.co.uk, United Press International
The Perils of Being “Leet”
We feel pretty strongly about this: unless you are in fact an elite computer hacker (or, “l337 h4xx0r” as the online community likes to spell it these days), don’t go out of your way to represent yourself as an elite computer hacker. It’s only going to end in pain, and possibly a prison term.
Exhibit #1 is Simon Jones, of Southhampton, England. By day, our friend Mr. Jones was a supermarket shelf-stacker. Ah, but at night! At night he was—well, a supermarket shelf stacker as well. However, he also happened to be a supermarket shelf-stacker with a science degree, which is to say, someone who possibly expected something else from his professional career than stacking cans of peas. Not that there’s anything wrong with stacking peas—someone has to do it, and we’re glad they do, since it makes the canned peas easier to find—but you don’t actually need a science degree to do it.
And so, not unlike a misunderstood scientist in a comic book whose squashed dreams drive him to a life of crime, Simon Jones found himself planning mischief online. His target: Playboy, an institution founded on the principle of showing nubile young women in various states of undress. Was Simon planning to use his mad hacker “skillz” to tunnel into Playboy’s online subscriber database, holding it at ransom until a terrified Hugh Hefner shelled out cash and bunnies? Well, no. Jones’s “skillz” were apparently more modest than that. What he did have, though, were passwords to Playboy accounts that he found somewhere online, and from his lair (better known as his bedroom in his parent’s house), he used those to “prove” to Playboy that he was an elite hacker called “PayMaster 69” who was just itchin’ to expose Playboy’s subscriber database.
Now, here’s why you don’t pose as an elite hacker, unless you are, because you’ll always give yourself away, like Jonesy here. First, elite hackers don’t use their personal email accounts to mail the blackmail notes, like Jones did, since they’re pretty easy to trace. Second, if you’re not an elite hacker, then you probably don’t know what the going rate for online extortion is and may underbid: which is why, we suspect, Jones apparently was tickled when Playboy electronically wired him £60—about $100—as his “payment.”
Third, if you’re not an elite hacker, you may not know how to hide what money you’ve extorted. Jones certainly didn’t; he transferred the money into his personal bank account, which, electronically speaking, is like sending up a flare so the appropriate authorities can bear down on you like a cadre of hawks on a field mouse.
So, no real surprise that shortly after Jones’s extravagant £60 extortion payday, his parents’ home was the recipient of a pre-dawn raid by members of both U.S. Secret Service agents and officers from the UK’s National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. From there it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to two years in prison. Jones’s lawyer suggested Jones had been bored and committed the crime just for fun and not financial gain. This is an interesting argument—that attempting to extort a large corporation is fine as long as you’re just doing it for kicks and giggles. In this case, the judge wasn’t buying it. “You were bored and disappointed you had not found employment in the computer world as you hoped,” the judge told Jones. “But this was a planned invasion. Your e-mail to Playboy set ou
t your motive to extract money.” And off to the slammer he went.
Interestingly, Jones’s science degree will be even less useful to him behind bars than it was stocking shelves. In the words of the hackers, he’s been “0wnz0red” (which for us lay-people simply means “screwed”).
Source: The Telegraph (UK), The Register (UK)
Bidding on Jail Time
On one hand, eBay is a great way to get a whole bunch of crap you don’t actually need without pathetically cruising your hometown looking for yard sales. On the other hand, it’s a fine way to drive yourself utterly insane when you get trapped in a bidding war with some fool who doesn’t realize that that collection of Speed Racer posable figures was meant to be owned by you and you alone. The next thing you know you’ve spent a third of your monthly take-home on tchotckes that would fetch no more than 25 cents at a swap meet. Isn’t technology wonderful?
eBay rage will sometimes drive losing bidders to more frightening extremes. Take the case of “Paul,” a New Orleans native who bid on a collection of band uniforms and dance costumes that he figured he could resell at a profit (probably on eBay—because after all, if more than one person bids on something, doesn’t it prove there’s a market for it?). But, drat it all, there was one obstacle between Paul and his dream of slightly used epaulet-bearing clothing: “Chuck,” in New York, who was bidding on the same lot of uniforms. And when all was said and done and the dust had cleared on the virtual bidding floor, it was Chuck who came away with all 480 pieces of band/dance paraphernalia, at the price of $360.
Well, Paul must of heard of that famous salesman maxim: “Everything is open to negotiation,” because rather than accept his defeat and find something else to bid on, Paul began to badger Chuck directly through e-mail and by phone to sell the aforementioned auction winnings to him. Alas, Chuck liked his band clothes so much that he would not part with a single stitch, at least not to Paul. So Paul decided it was time for more, shall we say, dramatic methods of persuasion. He took a train from New Orleans to New York, then allegedly broke into Chuck’s house, and threatened Chuck’s wife with a gun; Chuck was not home at the time.
Well, Mrs. Chuck held on to her husband’s winnings, and Paul left without the precious band uniforms. Chuck’s wife then called the police, who picked up Paul in a taxi he was taking back to the train station. When the police questioned Paul about the incident, apparently he didn’t deny showing up at Chuck’s house, but he did dispute the “waving the gun around” part. The gun just happened to fall out of his briefcase, he said. This leaves open the question of why there was a gun in his briefcase at all, but let’s leave that now. A better question is why was Paul willing to pay $300 to go from New Orleans to New York by train (as was the going price when we checked while writing this) just to wheedle Chuck out of his band uniforms? Why he didn’t just kick in an extra $5 to top Chuck’s bid in the first place?
That extra $5 could have saved Paul a lot more than the cost of a train ticket: Paul was charged with burglary, coercion, and criminal possession of a weapon, which mean if he’s found guilty he’s going to spend at least five years in the state pen. Which seems a pretty steep price for band uniforms, even by eBay standards.
Source: Court TV
No Such Thing As a Free Fill-Up
We don’t want to suggest gas prices were high in 2004, but when people started offering up their first-borns for a full tank, it began to get a little bit crazy. That being the case, one is not entirely unsympathetic to the 107 people who used an interesting glitch in a magic Michigan gas pump to drive away with free gasoline.
At this particular pump, in Pittsfield Township, someone made the discovery that if you fed it a Michigan driver’s license instead of a credit card, it would let you take as much gas as you liked. Michigan licenses, like credit cards, have magnetic data strips on the back, which is apparently what confused the poor automated gas pump. But since the license isn’t set up to be charged for purchases, the gas you pumped ended up being free. And who doesn’t like free?
Well, the owners of the gas pump for one, and the local law enforcement for another. Both of these considered the folks who took free gas to be—what’s the word in English? Oh yes, that’s right—thieves. And here’s the kind of amusing thing about the whole “use your drivers license instead of your credit card” scam: while a Michigan driver’s license isn’t set up to be charged for gas, it is set up to transmit the information on your driver’s license, like your name and address. Which is what it did, handing that information right to the police. You would think that some of those people swiping a government-issued ID to steal gas would have thought about that tiny detail. Apparently not.
All of those people who came in for free gas—some of whom filled up as much as fifteen times in three weeks—are going to end up paying one way or another. Let’s hope the cops let them resolve it with a credit card. A real one, this time.
Source: Boston Globe
Cell Phone Craziness
Who among us who has a cell phone has not had the urge to throw the thing as far as its tiny little clamshell body could be hurled? If it’s not spotty coverage, it’s random roaming charges or the fact in so many places you can get ticketed by the police for nothing more than your right to blab away on the phone while driving your two-ton SUV at 80 miles an hour down the highway. As if anything bad might happen.
Well, here’s what we say: if you’re that angry with your phone, chuck that baby as far as you can. Catharsis is good, if somewhat expensive. However—and this is key—throw only your phone. Start throwing somebody else’s phones, and then you might have a problem.
“Hal” of Fargo, North Dakota, recently learned this lesson when he stomped into a Verizon Wireless store with the intent of registering a complaint about his cell phone service. Well, actually, he wasn’t planning on just dropping off a sternly worded letter of complaint. As he admitted to a local paper, his plan was to go in there and actually yell at people. But he just couldn’t stick to the plan. “I just lost it,” he later admitted. “I just started grabbing computers and phones and throwing them. I just destroyed the place . . . I kind of regret that I did it, but I hope my message got across.” Oh, we bet they could hear him now.
Possibly, but more likely the message the employees of the store were receiving was: there’s a crazed idiot in the store, which is why, not long after one of the employees was beaned in the shoulder with a hurled communications device, they holed themselves up in a back office and called the police. Hal, his rage apparently spent, was arrested without incident and charged with felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor simple assault. It is our suspicion he won’t have to worry about roaming charges for some time.
Source: CNN
Sleep On Your Own Time, Bub
Want to make people in a rail yard nervous? It’s simple. Just put something in the rail yard that’s not supposed to be there. After the terrible bombing of a train in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004, anything unusual in a train yard is automatically suspicious, and of course, anything suspicious is automatically bad.
This is why the police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the FBI were very, very nervous about the object they found at a commuter rail yard in Philadelphia in May 2004. It was a motion detector—a small monitor that lets someone know about comings and goings in the yard. It was found by a conductor and turned over to a police officer (who, in an entirely different dumb act that we’ll leave largely unconsidered, kept the thing in his locker for a week before turning it over to his bosses). No one knew where it had come from; no one knew what it meant. The local media had a field day speculating about its possible terrorist origins, which undoubtedly made the thousands who daily rode the rails oh so secure.
But finally the truth was revealed. The motion sensor was not placed in the rail yard by terrorists but by an employee of the rail yard, specifically an electrician. Why did he put in the rail yard? Because he wanted a nap. With the sensor in place, the electrici
an would be alerted when his boss was on the way over—he could wake up totally refreshed and look like he’d been busy at work all that time. It would have been positively ingenious, had not all of Western Civilization been spooked about possible acts of terrorism.
The electrician was not immediately fired, but as the chief of security for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority rather dryly noted to CBS News, “I think he is about to begin taking vacation time immediately.” He should probably catch up on his sleep. He should probably also avoid traveling by train.
Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, CBS News
Dim Bulbs in Bright Lights
Being There (1979)
Our Dumb Guy: Chance the Gardener, also known as Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellars)
Our Story: A mentally challenged gardener (Sellars) lives his whole life in the Washington, DC, townhouse of his boss. After the boss’s death, Chance must go out in to the world. There he meets a politically connected billionaire (Melvyn Douglas) and his wife (Shirley MacLaine), who befriend him and take his naive, TV-derived utterances as profound wisdom. Soon, Chance is the toast of the District and may eventually become a political power of his own, even if he has no idea what that means.
Dumb or Stoned? Definitely not stoned, just a simple man, with a simple life philosophy.
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