November 2002

A Hacker Attack of the Clones

BY Lawrence M. Walsh

•R2D2 wasn't charged for hacking into the Death Star's network, but a former LucasFilms production assistant could pay a hefty price for succumbing to the "Dark Side" of the Internet. Shea O'Brien Foley, 30, is facing four counts of unauthorized access to a computer and nine counts of grand theft for allegedly transmitting "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" to an Internet reviewer last March. LucasFilms values the material--images, sound effects, etc.--at $450,000.

Imperial Storm Troopers, er, police arrested Foley at NBC Studios in Burbank, Calif., where he currently works. If convicted, Foley could spend more than seven years frozen in carbonite, er, prison.

•If you can't join them, beat them. Wait, it's the other way around, right? It's too bad that a 71-year-old German inventor didn't figure that out before setting out on a bank-defrauding scheme. The Professor, as he was known, invented a new automatic teller machine security system. Unfortunately, the banks said the system was too expensive. Dejected, the Professor made several hundred fake bank cards, which he used to make illegal withdrawals. Was his act of revenge worth it? Well, the Professor will have five years behind bars to think about that.

•Just when you thought there was no lower form of life than a lawyer, the British tabloid press rears its ugly head. It's no secret that these scandal-sheet scribes will do just about anything to get a scoop. Now, according to PR agents, they're resorting to hacker tactics. Apparently, tabloid reporters are cracking the passwords protecting the voice mails of celebrities and their PR agents. They're deleting their competitors' messages and intercepting communiqués for people negotiating story fees (yes, the British often pay their news sources).

In some instances, reporters have broken into each other's voice mail to keep competing rags from getting a jump on the all-so-important Sarah Ferguson topless sunbathing story. Now that's taking the power of the press to a new extreme.

•Quick, someone call Moscow! The dueling hacker prosecutions game is practically over. A federal jury in Seattle last month convicted Russian hacker Vasiliy Gorshkov on 20 counts of hacking U.S. banks in early 2001 and attempting to extort hush money from his victims. Gorshkov will spend three years in prison.

Federal prosecutors could also send Gorshkov's partner, Alexei Ivanov, to the American gulags if they convict him in Connecticut on similar charges. Russia, however, isn't sitting idle. Prosecutors in the former Soviet Union have filed charges against the FBI agents who lured Gorshkov and Ivanov to Seattle. The FBI agents broke the case by tricking the hacking duo into revealing their techniques. Then they used the pair's passwords to retrieve evidence from computer accounts in Russia without a warrant.

Although the protests are loud, Russia is expected to let the charges wither on the diplomatic vine. Besides, the FBI probably wouldn't fall for a Russian version of its ruse.

•Leave it to a California college to give Microsoft's marketing division a backhanded boost. Citing the poor security record of Windows NT and Windows 2000, the University of California at Santa Barbara has banned students using the popular operating system from connecting to the school's network.

The school is critical of Microsoft, but not entirely unforgiving. Exempt from the ban are users of Windows XP, which the school cites as having "few open holes." So, if students want to connect, they have to shell out a hundred bucks for the XP upgrade. Not entirely bad news for Bill Gates and Co.

Lawrence M. Walsh is managing editor of Information Security.

November 2002 Table of Contents

Copyright 2002 TechTarget