Slashdot Mirror
WebTV 911 Hacker... Cyber Terrorist?
Mastab286 writes "Federal agents have arrested David Jeansonne, 43, of Louisiana on cyberterrorism charges under the USA PATRIOT Act for a malware attack against eighteen MSN TV (formerly known as WebTV) customers. As part of an online conflict in July 2002, Mr. Jeansonne wrote a script to change the dial-up number of MSN TV equipment to the 911 emergency number. He disguised the script as a tool to change the colors of the user interface, and sent it to his eighteen foes; the next time they tried to log on, they would end up calling the police instead. Several of the customers sent the tool to friends, bringing the total number of victims up to twenty-one. The script also posted the users' browser history to a website and e-mailed hardware serial numbers to a free webmail account. Prosecutors charge that the act meets the definition of cyberterrorism since it endangered public safety."
Denial of Service Attack against 911??? Maybe 911 should change their phone number just like SCO changd their DNS name to http://www.thescogroup.com/.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
but this relied entirely upon the studity of the user to not only run it, but manually propogate it to other people
They were using WebTV.....
sent it to his eighteen foes
Wow, I don't know anyone who has WebTV and this guy knows 18, all of whom happen to be foes!
Oh yeah, and if you're dialing 911 for your internet access, how is the evil program supposed to post your browser logs to a website?
"unless 911 are offering PPP services now!"
It doesn't seem to connect, you just get this gurgling tone from your modem, and in the background you can almost hear a little voice going "hello?..." or something.
Dit.. dee.. nEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... "sir?"