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Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating 911 Worm

Posted by timothy on from the with-very-few-exceptions-is-not-a-worm dept.

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."

4 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Hope he gets slammed by Evil+W1zard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:Hope he gets slammed by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      [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

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  2. The motivation for this? by Stevyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. You'd seriously think... by Bonker · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... 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.

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