Teens Arrested in MySpace Extortion Scam

An anonymous reader writes "Two New York teens have been arrested after trying to extort $150,000 from the makers of MySpace, the popular online community site." From the article: " MySpace discovered the intrusion earlier this year and blocked it. The Los Angeles-based company also reported the incident to authorities. During the course of the investigation, threats were made that unless $150,000 was paid, new exploit code would be released, according to the statement. By this time, the sting operation had been set up, so instead of meeting with MySpace late last week, the pair from New York met with undercover officers from the U.S. Secret Service and the Los Angeles District Attorney's Bureau of Investigation. "

Comments

Go to jail

[linvir]

Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $150,000.

if the story is factual

[yagu]

So, two kids hacked MySpace, and threatened further damage unless they were given $150,000, but cry "foul" when lured into a job offer/interview for the purpose of arresting them.

I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet extortion dollars thay MySpace would not bother luring people into their space if no extortion were there in the first place.

It's pretty amazing how criminals (alleged) cry about violated rights when apprehended. Yeah, there are constitutional procedures to guide law enforcement and judicial, thank goodness for that.

I don't see, assuming these are the kids who did hack MySpace, any impropriety nor violation of their "space".

Re:if the story is factual

[Nadsat]

Too bad these hackers were not more interesting. They seem to be simple data miners out for a buck. Script kiddies these day....

Re:if the story is factual

[yagu]

Nothing in the article says anything about them 'crying foul'. It mentions that they're pleading 'not guilty' to the charges but nothing else about their reaction.

My bad, I read a different (additional) article... From this Chicago Tribune article (possible registration required).

The pertinent text from that article:

...,

The popular social networking site improperly lured Saverio Mondelli, 19, and Shaun Harrison, 18, to Los Angeles with the prospect of a consulting contract, said Mondelli's lawyer, Michael Dowd of Manhattan.

And when they arrived in California last week and sat down for a business meeting with what they thought was a contingent of MySpace employees -- who were actually Secret Service agents and local detectives -- they were arrested without warning, Dowd said.

"The proposition to hire them as consultants was made by MySpace," Dowd said. "This was a naked attempt to lure them into the lion's den and to somehow make an allegation of impropriety against them."

Re:if the story is factual

[dagr8tim]

It's pretty amazing how criminals (alleged) cry about violated rights when apprehended.

What about the guy who was held hostage in his own home by 5 Sheriff Deputies while they dunked his head in a fish tank and a toilet, connected batteries/live electrical wires to his genetals, and put a gun to his head in an attempt to force him to sign a waver to allow them to search his home without a warrent. Funny thing was his wife set a tape recorder in the kitchen before being ordered out of the house.

Ofcouse that was over a year ago and the guy has since been conviced of unrelated drug charges. Are you saying that because this guy was a drug dealing peice of scum the police were allowed to violate his civil rights?

Re:if the story is factual

[suffe]

Are you insane? Not only did you Read The Fucking Article, you read another fucking article on top of that. Who are you and what are you doing on Slashdot?!

Re:if the story is factual

[commodoresloat]

Their "stupid ass lawyer" is just doing his job. Like it or not, one of the drawbacks to having a judicial system that values the rights of the accused, is that the accused will exercise those rights whether or not they are guilty. That is simply the price of justice, and, frankly, I think it's worth it. Due process is not a mere annoyance, nor is the right to confront your accusers -- these things are essential to maintaining a justice system that society can accept. So these kids are probably totally guilty; it is still their lawyer's job to make whatever argument he can that will help them get off.

Re:if the story is factual

[thesandtiger]

The attorney for one of them is attempting to make the claim that they were tricked. That's what they're supposed to do - what they're legally required to do. I think it would be rather unlikely to expect the guy's lawyer to say "Oh, yeah - they tricked my guy. He's too fucking stupid to walk and chew gum, they got him fair and square."

One of the guys could have clubbed a baby to death on national television with a rolling-pin, and the lawyer would have to find some way to blame it on Martha Stewart because her rolling-pins are deadly weapons and magnetically attracted to babies, and plus, the baby was kind of being a dick, you know.

A MySpace exploit? Oh noes!

[autophile]

I feel a disturbance in My Space... as if a million preteen girls all shouted "OMG, poniez!" at once.

--Rob

Re:A MySpace exploit? Oh noes!

[Meagermanx]

Shows what you know. Preteen girls don't use commas.

Re:Not surprised

[tbmcmullen]

Yeah, because only American kids think they can get away with anything and are selfish.
Thats just plain stupid.

Sucks to be them...

[jonoid]

If I were them I wouldn't be worried about the press publishing my name in connection with extortion, I'd be more embarassed about people finding out I was involved with MySpace.

Easier ways to take down myspace

[Foo2rama]

Don't mess with Tom!!!! Luckily he is my friendslist, so he is my friend right?


Sad thing is I can think of about 3 ways right now to bring myspace down at least from a users standpoint. The openess of css usage they allow, plus there is a great little expliot making the rounds after you clicked on an outsidelink it takes some actions on your account to propagate itself. You could make a nice cascading corrupted CSS plague, forcing all user pages to crash any browser.

Have these guys never seen a movie?

[llZENll]

Come on now, a job interview? Don't they know the way a transaction like this goes down is on the docks at night (when its foggy of course). The guy drops the money off in a breifcase, then you zoom by on a motorcycle with a hot chick on the back who picks it up as you fly by at 80mph in black leather jumpsuits.... ...oh I see where the plan fell through, being old enough to reach the shifter on the motorcycle, and knowing a hot chick.

Re:Have these guys never seen a movie?

[Saeger]

Nihilist: Ve don't care. Ve still vant ze money, Lebowski, or ve fuck you up.

Tracker Sites

[P!Alexander]

I was wondering if Slashdot would ever cover this.

These kids were associated with a site that charged for code that you can add to your MySpace profile which would allow you to see who had viewed your profile, when, and where they got to you from (another friend, search, etc). By my calculations they were making upwards of $20,000/month from their service ($5.00/mo with around 4000 users).

They, and other tracker sites, have been constantly battling with MySpace over the use of the "hacks". Most of the stuff they've used has simply taken advantage of bad programming. The first generation of trackers used a flash file in the profile to read users cookie data. Then MySpace forced all embedded flash objects to disallow the use of actionscript. They moved on to inserting javascript in CSS commands, using image files to capture browser info, etc. MySpace responded by blocking the use of certain domains within profiles. They then bought a bunch of different domains and assigned them randomly to users.

Then there was some random legal trouble that they never really talked about but had apparently moved past. The next planned release was supposed to be "unstoppable". They had promised the release for about a week and a half and it was eventually pushed back to May 19. Then they got arrested. The site, myspaceplus.com, switched over to a basic notice about "info coming soon" and that was it. There was a pretty active forum on there but I think people were starting to sense that there was trouble and/or the two owners (who went by Jack and Jake on the site) were skipping town.

Anyway, it's a really interesting phenomenon, especially considering that other services have built in the ability to see who's viewing you as long as you allow others to do the same when you view their profile (Friendster). Most of the tracker sites now are on a similar model where the tracker will only work with other users ot the service.

So, not really "hacking" per se. It seems that MySpace was most worried about people's IP addresses getting stolen. The sites started hashing them so you couldn't see the actual address. Seems like a weird thing to be worried about on the privacy front if you ask me.

Re:Tracker Sites

[Mooga]

It seems that MySpace was most worried about people's IP addresses getting stolen. The sites started hashing them so you couldn't see the actual address. Seems like a weird thing to be worried about on the privacy front if you ask me.

So you can post your name, age, birthday, address, and all your other personal information for everyone to see on MySpace, but now they wont find your IP address! That's privacy for you!
If people on MySpace wanted privacy, they wouldn't BE on MySpace.

Death sentence an option?

[a_greer2005]

They had an opprotunity to take down the most annoying site in the history of the internet and the greedy bastards didnt pull the trigger? HANG 'EM!

The abouve comment is a joke...laugh...

Re:Not surprised

[tysonedwards]

I am already a journalist, somehow I think that politics may be seen as a demotion.

Re:lol

[Anonymous Coward]

lol some more..

$150,000? This is 2006; MySpace probably spends that much money on office coffee every year.

Flew out to LA? I couldn't find any details on this, but I'm willing to bet that the two kiddies were given free airline tickets to fly out to LA.

MySpace? It's not much of a challenge breaking that site, right? Seems like there's a new exploit discovered every month. I hope the media doesn't portray them as l33t "hackers".

Straight "A" students? This is a funny comment left on the ZDNET site..

Not hoodlums
Thier not hoodlums genius, i live like 20 minutes away from them. thier both straight a students with alot of computer expertise but were using thier skills in the wrong way and tried to make some illegal money off of myspace. Some people need to drop the "everyone from new york is a gangster" stereotype just like they tell us to drop the "anyone not from ny is a redneck" stereotype.
Posted by: gtapro91 Posted on: 05/27/06

Re:Not surprised

[laffer1]

And? Blogging lowers my stress levels. I get to talk about how shitty my day was and a few people close to me may read it and then we'll have a dialog. If not, i put it somewhere and i can let it go. Not just teens blog. I'm in my late 20s. My mother has a blog too.

Frankly i have less of a problem with blogging than the governments privacy violations with the telephone network. I choose to blog, I didn't choose to let them listen to my calls or view the list of people I called.

Blogging isn't a breakdown in society, its just a new way to communicate information to people you know. (and don't know)

WTF

[SmallFurryCreature]

Okay, first off if the ZDnet story is the true account these kids must surely get somekind of "dumbest criminals" award.

However if you google for other news stories there seems to be more going on.

First of they are not teens. 18 and 19 makes them adult in america doesn't it?

Second is that they apparently ran a website http://myspaceplus.com/ (wich is still up but empty of content, and horribly laid out on opera/linux). Before this it apparently was a site for some software to hack myspace.

This "first" hack was discovered and plugged. They then apparently tried to extort myspace into paying 150.000 (or get paid to be consultants) and were then trapped by law enforcement officials at a meeting.

A lot of the explenation by the lawyer of the young idiots sound like typical lawyer crap "anything to get my clients off".

The real question is, what was myspaceplus.com about? Is this just a story of two idiots who were to greedy and now can learn a bit about the real world. Or did myspace step over the line in trying to get rid of a couple of hackers by appealing to their greed.

Either way the young aduls are stupid but you can wonder if they really need to spend several years in a federal jail because of it, oh who am I kidding. Fry the suckers.

It just is fucking hilarious. If their attorny is claiming the truth (HA) then you got to admire their lack of common sense. Ooh, yeah we publish a tool to hack myspace. Oh look they are sending us a job offer to advise them for 150.000 dollars. Lets travel across the country to get rich!

By the way doesn't the fact that they travelled across the state border (LA and New York are different parts of america right? You yanks ain't got a monopoly on bad education you know) make it a federal crime?

Oh well, since they are geeks they will at least soon loose their virginity. Squeel piggy, squeel!

Re:WTF

[Sycraft-fu]

The police did nothing wrong here, these guys are screaming "entrapment" because any criminal that gets tricked whines about it. The only time it's entrapment and thus illegal is if the police encourage you to break a law you wouldn't have normally. Example:

Not Entrapment: You are a drug dealer, you see an undercover officer (UC) and walk up to them and offer to sell them drugs, without them asking you anything. They then make a buy and bust you. All well and legal, since you made the offer, clearly you were willing to sell drugs with no encouragement.

Entrapment: You are walking down the street doing whatever and a UC comes up to you and asks for drugs, you say you don't have any, they offer you a bunch of money for them. You decide the money is enough you'll call a friend who's in to that and get the drugs. They then arrest you. That illegal and will get thrown out, since they encouraged you to commit the crime, you wouldn't have done it of your own volition.

Here, it's clearly not entrapment. As soon as the kids made the demand for money, the police were perfectly justified in making counter offers to trick them in. The kids already broke the law making the demand, entrapment isn't an issue.

Well that violation will happen later

[SmallFurryCreature]

Two fresh kids, a warm summer night, a dropped piece of soap, twenty horny harderned criminals.

Ah, young love. Brings a tear to your eye doesn't it.

Re:Well that violation will happen later

[localman]

LOL! ROTFL!

Wait... why is rape funny? Oh yeah: because we are as inhumane as anyone we've ever called evil.

I'm super glad these two pricks got caught. And I am glad they'll be removed from society for a while, or at least financially punished. But I hope they don't get raped, as they would be a) condoning torture, b) likely make them even more problematic members of the society in which I live and c) give an even worse criminal the pleasure of raping.

Cheers.

Re:Well that violation will happen later

[localman]

Nobody here condones or advocates torture.

I would bet that the majority of people here could care less that there is ongoing rampant rape and physical abuse in US prisons. They may not have a desire for it, but they aren't going to do anything to stop it.

I understand the desire for karmic balance. Raping a extortionist is not karmic balance.

Cheers.

Re:Not surprised

[Rob Kaper]

In the end, services like MySpace is one of the signs of the decline of society as a whole.

Look at it, people no longer care about privacy as they are publishing every single aspect of their daily lives for everyone to read about, including things like "My boyfriend dumped me today! I wanna die!"

Since when is a society on the decline when people can express themselves freely without any serious repercussions? The only use for privacy is protection against intolerant people, so societies where people voluntarily do not make use of it are probably very tolerant of individuals. I might have missed a few developments, but I always thought that kind of freedom is one of the things we consider to be a fundamental values of ours?

Re:Clearly not all teens have limited science abil

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacking up some javescript isn't exactly "computer science".

Heh

[Hawthorne01]

And this was posted right above an article about how science learning was down in U.S. schools.

Coincidence? ;-)

Re:Not surprised

[MrSquirrel]

Not to sound like a jerk, but you're dead wrong. "American kids thinking that they can get away with anything, interested solely in themselves, and getting something for nothing." If you said "almost everyone" instead of "American kids", I would have agreed with you, but I have problems with both the "American" and the "kid" parts.

First off, the easy one -- kids. Kids are NOT the only people who try to get away with anything, are interested solely in themselves, or try to get something for nothing -- here are a couple good ones:
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060527/ap_on_fe_st/he licopter_fireworks (a woman shoots fireworks at a police helicopter because it was annoying her by being there -- now she's charged with a felony),
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060525/od_nm/court _strangle_dc (a defendant on trial for murder tries to strangle his own lawyer IN THE COURTROOM),
www.dumbcriminals.com/drugs/dil-doh/ (a couple steals sex toys and enhancement pills repeatedly from an adult store, they end up being caught on one of their many return trips and when they are caught, the "goods" are in a bag NEXT TO THEIR 3 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER),
and last but not least - EVERY drunk driver EVER.

Now for the "American" part. Stupidity is not a trait restricted to Americans -- PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD ARE IDIOTS:
news.com.com/Worm+traps+alleged+child+porn+offen der/2100-7348_3-6002302.html?tag=html.alert (A German child pornographer turns himself in after getting an e-mail virus telling him he was under investigation.

And finally, to prove that not just American kids commit crimes -- www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1772630.html?menu=ne ws.quirkies.strangecrime (Austrian kids steal a bunch of stuff so they can afford after-school prostitutes).

I think I've made my point. Sorry, I just get a little riled up when people make broad generalizations with negative connotations.

"They are not teens"

[jdbartlett]

"First of they are not teens. 18 and 19 makes them adult in america doesn't it?"

Sorry, could you say that again with numbers in writing? I'll give you a hint: EighTEEN and NineTEEN.

You are correct that they are adults (legally able to sign a contract). They are also teenagers.

Re:"They are not teens"

[Osty]

You are correct that they are adults (legally able to sign a contract). They are also teenagers.

I don't know if the OP meant it this way, but I took it as a comment on how US society (or at least the media) tries to excuse behavior. Legally, at 18 you're an adult. The term "teen", while technically referring to someone between the ages of 13 and 19, tends to imply "child". So, are you still a child at age 18? What about at age 25? As an example, the local news continually referred to both the shooter and victims of the recent rave killing here in Seattle as "kids". The shooter was 28. Some of his victims were 21, 22, 26, and 32. Are those "kids"?

Maybe it's a sign of our aging baby boomer population, who see anybody younger than them as kids. Maybe it's because of our economic climate that keeps "kids" in university until 25 or 26 (and then only graduating with a Bachelor's degree, not even a Master's or better). Maybe it's our "take no responsibility" society that wants to blame anything but the person (thus the person is a "kid" who didn't know any better, rather than an adult). Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

Welcome!

[Lip]

Welcome to MyJailSpace.com!

Re:Welcome!

[commodoresloat]

Bubba is in your extended network!

The value of Myspace Data

[DaggertipX]

Are you kidding me? There is a reason that Fox bought myspace - strictly for it's "data" as you put it. Myspace is a site where one of the most profitable(not to mention fickle) demographic in the world voluntarily offer up their likes/dislikes etc to a company in great detail that is easily searched, cross referenced, and advertised to. It is possibly the biggest advertising goldmine I've ever imagined.
It's always baffled me how so many people could miss what is so big and profitable about Myspace. Even if the site itself never made money (which I doubt, as they advertise heavily and widely) - the data they collect is worth millions upon millions of dollars.

Re:Not surprised

[Kjella]

Look at it, people no longer care about privacy as they are publishing every single aspect of their daily lives for everyone to read about, including things like "My boyfriend dumped me today! I wanna die!"

If they choose to, what harm is there to that? I mean, there are people starting wtih JennaCam and ending at BigBrother who'd like to be in front of a cam 24/7. Great for them. If they want to keep a public diary (read: blog), go ahead. For the most part I consider it a good thing that people aren't that insanely stuck up with their facade (dunno if that's the right english word) and that they live life with their ups and downs, just like everyone else.

What's important is that things can also be private when you choose to. That you don't feel on display, that people can grope into your private life when you don't want to. If you're a creepy stalker, a marketdroid or the frigging government, I don't like people profiling me, analyzing me, collaborating data. Chances are you'll be able to read out of it more than I want you to. It's well known from intelligence work that a collection of seemingly innocent unclassified information put together can reveal things that are (and should be) classified. Same goes for a personal life.

Even if there's a "breach" of privacy and things are already public, either because you were bloody drunk, your friends decided it'd be fun to surprise you or use a hidden cam, your ex was bitter or for some other reason it's still private. There are some kinds of mistakes or silly and embarrasing situations you wish would go away, or least limited in scope to some good friends and for a limited time. Good luck with that in a digital world though...

The Real Deal

[rivetgeek]

I speak from experience in that I was the one to bring this scam to the attention of myspace in the first place. And I cracked the first several codes they released. ( Having friends that work at myspace helps) They ran a site that released "trackers". These were bits of flash mostly that when loaded onto a users page cause anyone viewing that page to be victimized by a series of css or bad design exploits. These mostly took advantage of css through flash actionscript that was encrypted to obscure the actionscript (swfencrypt). As for their latest "unblockable" code: it was really lame. A flash file on the users page redirects you to a 3rd party site that looks like myspace (think pishing tactics) that then asks you to enter your email address that is associated with your myspace account to view the users page. So now they have your ip and your myspace account and how often you visted the users account. Frankly you'd have to be a moron to fall for this though. For an example check www.blendnet.com/verify.php (though I wouldnt recommend entering a valid email address since these guys still control this server. And should this give anyone an idea, don't bother, it's already been blocked) P.S. If there are any myspaceplus users reading this, you people are some of the dumbest forum posters on earth, we watched you all this entire time and you gleefully gave us everything we needed to find and crack these stupid little codes.

Myspace

[certel]

And so it begins. Myspace will be the next online target such as the gambling sites were a couple years ago.

Re:Not surprised

[acornboy]

Yes all teens have selfish tendencies and can be self absorb and haven't developed the capacity to evaluate consequences... so why is it still valid to mention American kids specifically? Because the culture of entitlement has beeen taken to the highest offices of government and the corpoprate world to such an extent that beggars the imagination in comparison to the rest od the so called first world (and most of the rest of the world to!!) this give kids in American an even bigger delusional system to mimic than anywhere else so yeah the kids aren't really to blame, the whole situation is kinda fucked up...

"Myspace.com: error"

[mattpointblank]

This had to fail, if everyone who found code issues in Myspace's programming wanted $150,000 they'd be bankrupt by Monday.

And the connection is...?

[harlows_monkeys]

What's the connection between this story and my rights online?

Re:Not surprised

[Nutria]

In the 80's and 90's they were called diary's. You could buy a pretty pink one and hide it under your pillow to relieve your stress.

To heck with pretty pink ones. Great men have been keeping journals since inexpensive paper came to Europe.

Re:Not surprised

[MysteriousPreacher]

Give us Europeans the credit we deserve. We're just as capable of being jerks. We just have smaller cars, fewer missles and better beer.

Exactly!

[jZnat]

An attorney's job (as confirmed by the American Bar Association's Attorney's Oath) is to do his or her best job possible for every client to win the case. It's their job! You need to blame the person who hires the attorney for malice or idiocy typically.

Re:Exactly!

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, but "doing their best job" is, ideally, not supposed to involve lying, cheating or stealing, nor are they required to perform illegal or unethical activity simply because their idiotic or malicious client requests it. If they do, it's because they want the money that client is paying them. On the other hand, when you hear a defense attorney babbling nonsense about his felonious client's sterling character it's generally an attempt to offset any potential jury/media bias, and that's a very real factor in jury selection and the outcome of a well-publicized trial.

150k, WTF

[Old Wolf]

[pinkie in mouth] One hundred and fifty ... THOUSAND ... DOLLARS!!!