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I've heard of inmates tunneling under the wall to get out of prison, but this
is ridiculous.
Awaiting trial in a Florida jail for two murders, Michael Tanzi would kill
time using the facility's computerized law library. He discovered that the
reference CDs could help him access the sheriff department's network, and thus
access the Internet.
What's amazing about this story is
that Tanzi wasn't just caught hacking once, but twice; and then it wasn't until
the second time that the jail decided to beef up security.
After the first time, Tanzi
promised his jailers that he wouldn't misuse the system again. However, Tanzi
was up to his old tricks within a month, but this time with a little more
malicious intent. In addition to downloading copious amounts of porn, he
accessed the sheriff's personnel records and deleted several administrative
files.
Since then, the prison has tightened its computer security. And Tanzi, well,
he's still awaiting trial for the murders in Massachusetts and Florida, but he's
been given access to computers again--with the promise he won't hack anymore.
Sure, they can trust a murderer. He wouldn't lie to them again, would he?
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Look out Kevin Mitnick and Cap'n; you've got competition. Robert Lyttle,
better known as Pimpshiz, is tossing his hat into the semiprofessional services
ring.
Although he's still awaiting trial on charges for defacing several military
and NASA Web sites, Lyttle recently launched Sub-Seven Software, a venture that
will provide security wisdom from the "dark side" of the Internet.
Lyttle says the Internet needs hackers, or else enterprises wouldn't have any
reason to improve their security. "Only a hacker can defeat a hacker," he said
in published reports.
Funny thing, if there weren't people like Lyttle, we wouldn't need such tight
security. I doubt Pimpshiz sees the irony.
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Employees at Cloudnine Communications arehaving a hard time finding the
silver lining in the massive denial-of-service attack that permanently felled
their ISP.
After several months of methodical probing and scanning, hackers took down
the small British ISP in January, preventing customers from connecting to the
Internet and denying access to hosted Web sites.
CloudNine owners said the damage was so significant that their insurance
wouldn't cover the recovery cost. So, management decided that the most
expeditious recovery was to transfer their customers' accounts to another ISP
and go out of business.
Now that's a disaster recovery plan I want to read!
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When we last left the antiglobalizaiton movement, they had hacked the World
Economic Forum's (WEF) Web site and stolen the credit card numbers of
representatives--including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Yasser Arafat--as they met
in Geneva.
Well, the hacktivists were at it again for the WEF's recent gathering in New
York. The Electronic Disturbance Theater, RTMark and the Federation of Random
Actions acted in concert to distribute DDoS tools to thousands of supporters,
who then flooded the WEF's Web site.
At least the representatives' credit card numbers weren't compromised this
time.
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And, finally, from the files of the completely absurd, patrons of an
Australian shopping mall were shocked by a talking scale that starting spouting
such uncomplimentary messages as "Get off, you fat pig."
The machine was unplugged after a customer complained about a printed message
he received, "You are a little overweight. Fat [expletive]."
Mall management said someone apparently hacked into the scale's program,
subverting the usual messages, such as "Happy New Year," with insults and
sarcasm.
Gee, I wonder how long it took them to figure that out.
Lawrence M. Walsh is managing editor of Information Security. He can be
reached at lwalsh@infosecuritymag.com
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