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German Wikipedia Threatened w/ Injunction
TheEagleCD writes "Wikipedia.de, the German version of the popular Wikipedia Encyclopedia, is currently closed due to a German court order. A detailed account of the current controversy [en.wikipedia.org] is available, the short version is that the family of "Tron" (Boris Floricic) - a German hacker and phreaker - is trying to force Wikipedia.de from removing the family name from his entry." As I write this the site is back up, as is the tron entry that caused the whole mess. However it does appear that the entire domain was briefly shut down over one entry.
Tron (hacker) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. As a result of recent vandalism, editing of this page by new or anonymous users is temporarily disabled. Other users may still edit this article. Changes can be discussed on the talk page, or you can request unprotection. Tron (8 June 1972 - October 1998) was the nickname of Boris Floricic, a German hacker and phreaker who used that pseudonym out of respect for the character in the 1982 Disney film of the same name. He became famous due to the unclear circumstances of his death. Tron was interested in defeating computer security mechanisms and broke, amongst other things, the security of the German phonecard by producing working clones. He was later sentenced to 15 months in jail for the theft of a public phone (for reverse engineering purposes), but the sentence was suspended on probation. Tron is also known for his diploma thesis, in which he created the Cryptophon, which was one of the first implementations of a telephone with built-in voice encryption. At the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 Tron was again the subject of media attention when his parents and Andy Müller-Maguhn (a spokesperson for the German Chaos Computer Club but acting on his own behalf in this case) brought legal action against the Wikimedia Foundation and its German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. This action found its most current peak in a court interdiction against using the German domain wikipedia.de as a redirect to the German wikipedia version. The redirect has been out of service since January 18, 2006. Contents [hide] * 1 Life * 2 Interests * 3 Cryptophon * 4 Mysterious death * 5 Current controversy * 6 Sources * 7 Further reading * 8 External links Life Tron grew up in a suburb in the south of Berlin. His interests in school focused on technical subjects. He left school after 10 years and completed a three-year Vocational education (Berufsausbildung) offered by the Technical University of Berlin and became a specialist in communication electronics with a major on information technology (Kommunikationselektroniker, Fachrichtung Informationstechnik). After this he gained the Abitur (diploma from a German secondary school qualifying for university admission) and began studies in Computer science at the Technical University of Applied Sciences of Berlin. During his studies Tron attended an internship with a company developing electronic security systems. In the winter term 1997/1998 Tron successfully finished his studies and published his diploma thesis. Within his thesis he developed the Cryptophon, an ISDN telephone with built-in voice encryption. As parts of the work, which were to be provided by another student, were missing, he could not finish his work on the Cryptophon. His work, however, was rated as exceptional by the university professor responsible. After graduation Tron applied for a job at at least one company, but did not find work. In his spare time he continued, amongst other duties, the work on the Cryptophon. Interests Tron was highly interested in electronics and security systems of all kinds. He engaged in, amongst other things, attacks against the German phonecard and Pay TV systems. As part of his research he exchanged ideas and proposals with other hackers and scientists. On the mailinglist "tv-crypt", operated by a closed group of Pay TV hackers, Tron reported about himself in 1995, that his interests are microprocessors, programming languages, electronics of all kinds, digital radio data transmission and especially breaking the security of systems perceived as secure. He alleged to have created working clones of a chipcard used for british Pay TV and would continue his work to defeat the security of the Nagravision/Syster scrambling system which was then used e.g. by the German Pay TV provider "PREMIERE". Later american scientists outlined a theoretical attack against SIM cards used for GS