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."

Comments

Hope he gets slammed

[Evil W1zard]

This was a very, very, very dumb thing to do on his part. I could see the courts giving him some leniency if he was 12, but at 43 years of age I think he will get what he deserves. Does anyone know if the worm caused any delays in getting through to the 911 system that caused serious injury or death?

Re:Hope he gets slammed

[tomstdenis]

[YOA hater ranting here...]

Why? When I was 12 I was actually AFRAID to call 911 unless it was dead serious [excuse the pun]. Now I use it to report bad drivers and routinely see people get pulled over by cops cuz of it ;-) [after following them around the city...].

At 12 you should know that 911 isn't a toy. And if you don't AND are capable of writing a worm that dials 911 ... then you deserve to get a paddling.

Tom

Re:Hope he gets slammed

[sherpajohn]

I was following an obviously drunk driver once, as we approached a fairly sizeable town (25,00 folks or so at the time) - I dialed 911 - as I watched the guy litteraly nodding off in the drivers seat at a stop light. 911 directed me to the provincial police (OPP). The OPP told me they had no one to respond - this guy was gonna kill someone if he ewas not taken off the road! I was furious! They directed me to the town's police who asked me if I could follow him and stay on the line, about 15 minutes later - on the other side of town, as this guy is almost verring into the ditch, I see a town cruiser come screaming up behind me and pull him over. A few minutes later the cop walked back to my car to thank me - saying the guy was so drunk he could hardly talk.

Re:Hope he gets slammed

[Jace of Fuse!]

Actually, I dialed 911 once to report a moron driving on the wrong side of the road for several miles. When he went over into the other lane I immediately slowed down considerably and stayed some distance back, thinking he was drunk. He then continued driving, swerving over into the right(correct) lane whenever oncoming traffic started getting close, and then returning back into the left lane when they had passed.

By the way the oncoming traffic was slowing down and pulling off to the side and creeping along, I could tell he was really freaking some people out.

I called 911 and felt totally justified in it. I figured at any moment he might cause someone to over-react and lose control of their vehicle.

Sometimes stupid people just have to be reported.

The motivation for this?

[Stevyn]

None. He's just a dick. This isn't a cool hack or anything meaningful in computer science. It's taking an exploit of some type and messing with people's lives. Those operators on the other end and the police who are dispatched shouldn't be wasting their time with this nonsense.

Why do these people think that causing damage through an exploit is anything but stupid? It's not clever since they don't even find the exploits, they just use them.

Re:The motivation for this?

[LWATCDR]

Could it have been a mistake? I mean maybe he just wanted to see if he could do it, then it got out of hand. Could have been something as simple as I wonder if I could get webTV to dial a number. To be honest picking 911 was stupid. 411, or an 800 number might have been funny.

You'd seriously think...

[Bonker]

... That only a WebTV user would be naive enough to open an attachment like that.

Sadly, I've found that the great majority of people I know apparently have the intelligence of a WebTV user.

This either means that even rudimentary computer security is far too complex for the average person, or that I need to get some new friends.