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Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating 911 Worm

mabu writes "The United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced that, roughly a year after his arrest, David Jeansonne pleaded guilty Tuesday to two criminal counts in a scheme that sent email to users of Microsoft's WebTV Internet service containing an attachment that, when opened, reprogrammed their computers to dial 9-1-1 without their knowledge. It still unclear what motivated this 43-year-old to launch such a bizarre worm."

7 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Gah? by MustardMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    "It still unclear what motivated this 43-year-old to launch such a bizarre worm."

    What? Mean and stupid doesn't cover it?


    I hate to admit it, but I often entertain myself when extremely bored with yahoo chat rooms and the like. Without fail, the biggest idiot script kiddies in the room, running stupid booter programs they downloaded off the web, are adults. They run the gamut from 20s through the 50s. It's really sad to see supposed adults taking such glee in childish bullshit.

  2. Re:Gah? by tomstdenis · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's not my point. Making a bomb and not killing yourself is hard enough. I don't think that's good either.

    The point is they think they g0t m4dz zk111z for writing some virus. When in reality a virus [specially for win32 users] isn't that hard to get out there.

    So maybe if they realize that if they want to show off "mad skillz" they should just do something more productive cuz at least then they can brag about it and get mad job that pays mad money so they can have mad good toys.

    Think about it.

    Even if a virus WAS hard to write ... what you're gonna go to your next employer and go "you know the power outlet of August 2005? That was me!" ... yeah total model employee...

    And you could kiss government jobs goodbye too. In Canada for instance they get the RCMP to do a background check and shit so they know your life story.

    In no way is it a smart thing todo and all it does is cause others harm. Hence Stupid and Mean.

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  3. Re:Guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Assuming someone who uses WebTV is likely to also have family that does so, and assuming this thing also mails the infected box's address book... It could theoretically cause a flood.

    I live near DC and I read once in the Post that DC only has something like 8-10 911 operators on at any one time. If 4-5 boxes were calling 911 continously, that would cause some issues, I would think.

  4. Re:This is just dumb. by iMaple · · Score: 2, Informative

    The operating system should not allow a modem to dial an emergency response number without explicit authorization from the user

    I dont think so. First of all, 911 is not an emergency number everywhere in the world. For example in may countries 100 is the emergency number. And 100 (at least with my provider ) links me to the directory service or something. So we would need to select the blocked numbers based on the country of residence. Which jest means more complications. And ofcourse ppl might want to use the computer as an emergency service (Not with MS Win though ;)) , like dial 911 if the microphones in your yard detect a shotgun going off or if your paranoid enough , no one refreshes the /. page for 15 mins (in case of a kidnapping or something u know)

  5. Re:Hope he gets slammed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative


    Nice tagline though its a mis-quote:

    bootsect.s Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds

    NOTE! currently system is at most (8*65536-4096) bytes long. This should
    be no problem, even in the future. I want to keep it simple. This 508 kB
    kernel size should be enough, especially as this doesn't contain the
    buffer cache as in minix (and especially now that the kernel is
    compressed :-)

  6. Re:Hope he gets slammed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I fourth it. What a fucking jackass. 911 is for emergencies, not fucking with people because you don't like their driving.

    Jerk.

  7. Some details by Trailwalker · · Score: 4, Informative
    WebTv has its own alt.discuss news groups. The associations formed by WebTv users in them are very intense.

    One extremely egotistical type generated a great deal of dislike, if not outright hate. Jeansonne was part of this individual's clique. The actual "exploit" is very simple to do and well known. Jeansonne was just the first person to combine the requisite amount of vindictiveness and stupidity to actually do this. Almost all WebTv users have html signitures that rival web pages in their complexity. A simple
    <embed>
    webtv-trick://reset-phone "911"
    </embed>

    was all that was necessary.

    Having the police arrived unexpectedly at their door was very unsettling for the mostly female recipients of the email. Some were accused of making the calls on their own and threatened with arrest for missusing the 911 system.

    This was not a virus, but a direct personal attack against the victims of the email.