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Arrest Made In Webcam Highjacking Extortion Case
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Jared James Abrahams, a 19-year-old computer science student, has been arrested for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women — among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf — taking nude images, then blackmailing his victims to send him more explicit material or else be exposed. Abrahams admitted he had 30 to 40 'slave computers' — or other people's electronic devices he controlled — and has had as many as 150 total. His arrest came six months after a teenager identified in court documents as C.W. alerted authorities. She has since publicly identified herself as Cassidy Wolf, the recently crowned Miss Teen USA. Wolf received messages featuring pictures of her at her Riverside County address and others apparently taken months earlier when she lived in Orange County, says the criminal complaint (PDF). The message explained 'what's going to happen' if Wolf didn't send pictures or videos or 'do what I tell you to do' in a five-minute Skype videoconference, according to the criminal complaint. 'Either you do one of the things listed below or I upload these pics and a lot more (I have a LOT more and those are better quality) on all your accounts for everybody to see and your dream of being a model will be transformed into a pornstar (sic),' wrote Abrahams. FBI agents raided Abrahams' Temecula home in June and seized computers and hardware, cellphones and hacking software, court records show. Outside the court, Abrahams' lawyer, Alan Eisner, said that his client's family feels 'profound regret and remorse' over what happened. Eisner told CNN affiliate KTLA that Abrahams is autistic. 'The family wants to apologize for the consequences of his behavior to the families who were affected.'"
The current excuse of the day when some nerdy low-life gets caught up to no good. Here is a hint, just because you have problems coping, it does not mean "I am autistic" is an excuse for being an arsehole.
since she didn't secure her computer enough
Well, here's hoping that Abrahams gets a fairly long sentence. Coercion and blackmail is coercion and blackmail, regardless of the circumstances.
This goes *way* beyond teenage fun and games. He deserves to spend some time in custody.
Eisner told CNN affiliate KTLA that Abrahams is autistic.
Oh, well that's makes his actions okay then.
Funny how being caught does that to people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone with enough knowledge to commit this crime can't possibly hide behind autism as an excuse. This person formed intent, then a plan and executed the plan uncounted times. He communicated his intentions quite well which doesn't really point to autism. This young man is a sexual predator and probably always will be. Autism doesn't make you a pervert either, you have do that on your own.
Mr. Jared James Abrahams,
We have decided to go with another candidate.
Thank you for applying.
Sincerely,
HR/Hiring Manger person.
He WILL get those.
And there's not a goddamn thing he can do about them.
Suck it.
I applaud this brave young lady for standing up to this creep. She did the right thing.
He should join the NSA once he's out of jail. He has a bright future there.
Another criminal genius bites the dust!
Actually what I think is the court should take into account is the fact that this person's brain is not developed yet which might lead him to do... that.. and think 1) it's a fine thing to do and 2) he'd get away with it.
They do this in Europe- take the age and developmental stage of the defendant into account as it interacts with the defendants s crime.
We live in a world of humans. Some young humans spontaneously think up criminal acts to engage in. This is always a risk. We have no reliable way of making young humans be other than they are, no way to avoid developing brains doing bad , even outrageous things. Everyone involved really ought to consider that before they put him in the no-rehab hell-on-earth called American prisons for 20 years and turn him into a REAL criminal.
My liberal bleeding heart at work overtime.
The perp will be out in 30 days so he can make the rounds on TV talk shows...
I dunno. Sure - there's the pseudo-excuse that is Autism, and the pseudo-apology upon getting caught (didn't regret it when you were viewing the images, did you?). But unless you crawled out from under a rock and into Best Buy after being a hermit for the last decade, then by now you should know enough to take certain precautions. Turn your webcam away from you, close your laptop, don't change clothes in front of it, put your router in standby when not using it, don't click that link, he's not really an African Prince, she's not really going to Western Union you the money plus another hundred for your trouble, these aren't really naked pics of Pink, etc. In 2013, I think survival of the digital fittest should come into play...
Just because you're a nerdy low-life who gets caught up to no good doesn't mean you're autistic. How much do you want to bet that he was diagnosed AFTER?
This is worse than bullying, it's sexual harassment and extortion.
And I agree, Ms. Wolf did a courageous thing to stand up and present evidence so this lowlife could be stopped.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Why don't people slide the webcam cover when not in use?
Nurture FTW
* Not to excuse this man's crimes - he deserves what he gets - but if he's a computer science student he should fail all of his classes as well. What an embarrassment he must be to his instructors - he didn't consider some way to anonymize himself? At the very least, don't show your face on Skype. WTF
I really want to slam Slashdot for publishing this story with the reference to autism in it. That is no different from pointing out any other unrelated personal characteristic like race or national origin as part of a news story about a person.
It is disgusting profiling and really does not belong in a reasonable news story.
she invited him in ... since she didn't secure her computer enough
I really can't tell if you're making a tasteless joke parodying blaming rape victims, expressing a sincere belief in support of that train of thought, or being bitterly sarcastic about it, since any of those are believable on Slashdot.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
and that can be wore then doing jail time.
What you said implies he had been previously diagnosed and was using his condition as an excuse. I take particular exception to that as that idea runs rampant on Internet forums the world over and there is much animosity attached to it. What I said is that he was caught doing no good and may have been since diagnosed for the benefit of the excuse.
What a scapegoated noob. At age 19 most had far more :)
If his initials were NSA, would you really be surprised by this?
I can't be the only person who tapes over the camera in my laptop and disables it. Apparently my tin foil hat isn't tight enough, as I haven't unplugged the wires internally yet.
I like looking at naked women, I will admit. But this sort of thing crosses so many lines, you can't just hide behind a mental illness as an excuse. If you're that kind of mentally ill that this behavior seems okay, then you need to be locked up, plain and simple. I also would be interested in punishing the companies that output such insecure software that this asshole can hack other people's webcams and computers. Sure maybe the girls clicked on a bad link or something but that shouldn't be an excuse- there should be a way to have your personal property be secure, and to know if somebody else is intruding.
Different story, first sentence: "Who would have thought that getting naked and naughty
with a stranger online could have negative consequences?"
I didn't read past that, seeing as from the start I'm seen as total idiot.
Police: Naked scammers seduce, blackmail men on Web
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/18/tech/web/naked-webcam-blackmail/index.html
So, how many girls did he extort before he made the mistake of targeting somebody with influence? If you are going to cheat, steal, blackmail, etc., you don't do it to the people the police actually protect.
ArsTechnica covered this "epidemic" in March.
...
The Remote Administration Tool is the revolver of the Internet's Wild West.
The article is slightly sensationalist, but interesting
Perhaps law enforcement has opened a can of worms... or monkeys... autistic monkeys.
Ironic that there are no pictures of this shitbag attached to any of the stories. His face should be plastered on every page so nobody forgets it. Whatever else happens to him, a life of public shame should be the minimum sentence.
His whole plan just doesn't make sense. It relies on the victim to both have issues regarding nudity that cause them to actually believe that nude photos taken with a hacked computer are somehow blackmail material, and to also be willing to send far more explicit images or video for further blackmail purposes. The overlap of these sets has to be pretty small and only contain people with IQs below room temperature. As we see, not even a Miss Teen USA is that clueless.
Scumbag-like tendencies and a lack of morals make this his likely career path.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
When an attractive young girl accidently shows more of herself than she wants to, you need to be conscientious and respectful and look away.
When I show accidentally more of myself than I want to, you do not need to be respectful to look away. You will look away for your own sake, or what you see will be its own punishment.
I think y'all know what I'm getting at. You've seen Clockwork Orange.
"And we couldn't have *caught* him without the NSA's *help!* Thank G** for "domestic surveillance!"
Here endeth the tinfoil rant...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
In Federal Pound Me In The Asshole Prison, fuckstick.
I agree with others that the autism excuse is a little too convenient. But what I wanted to mention is that anyone who says "I have a LOT more of these that are better quality" whether the goal is political, bragging at a share site, or the vilest of extortion, they're always lying. If they had better quality photos, they'd have shown them to you. If the creep is trying to extort based on one or two blurry low light screenshots, chances approach certainty that it's all he has.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I've heard about this type of setup numerous times. I'm actually amazed somebody got caught for it, although I guess most of the puppetmasters just watch.
Austic my arse. Just another excuse. Darryl Hannah now claims to be autistic. A way into the limelight. This punk did wrong, period. But, if he IS autistic you can bet that he will probably get a short probation and fine.
This was *not* about seeing naked girls. As we all know, there is more highly detailed porn on the internet than one person could experience in a lifetime. (Probably. I haven't, like, taken an inventory. But evidence indicates this is the case.)
This was about control. It was very specifically about the feeling of control experienced when forcing someone to do an act they find disgusting.
He wasn't trying to see his victims naked. He could have seen tens of thousands of girls naked for free on the internet. He was very specifically attempting to gain control over his victims, to make them do something that revolted them.
I wonder how his lawyer is going to try to spin this.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
He took pictures of a 17 year old.
I'd expect that there are child pornography charges involved too, no?
So "IF" he is indeed Autistic and professionally and properly diagnosed as such then Mommy and Daddy Should be more on the hook for not knowing just WTF the special needs kid was doing for years now.
A dawn creep. I hope is still time for him to be rehabilitated.
Hakikaten deiik
http://www.xn--bidoludnya-geb.com/
Unlike a lot of you who are so free with your sadistically joyous
comments about sending someone to prison, I HAVE BEEN to prison.
That means that unlike you I actually KNOW what prison is like from
having been there. It is very different from any portrayal on TV or in
a movie, though "The Shawshank Redemption" comes closest to
capturing the vibe of being an inmate.
Someone who is weird or mentally weak will not do well in the prison
environment and they may not even live through the experience unless
they are in protective custody.
It is obvious the guy who perpetrated the stuff described in the summary
needs help, and certainly he needs to be shown in a definitive manner that
what he did is not accepted by society. There are other ways to do this
which can be as effective as prison and more likely to produce a positive
outcome. I'd suggest denial of computer access for a period of time and
a GPS ankle bracelet for the defendant, along with some sort of work
program which forces him to perform some sort of labor which benefits
society.
Prison doesn't ever "fix" people or "teach them a lesson". Prison damages
people. When people are not going to be in prison for their entire lives it
really is in the best interest of society to use other solutions than prison
if the goal is punishment and reform of the offender. And until YOU have
been in prison yourself, you really have no business suggesting that prison is
the best answer for a criminal offense which has other possible solutions,
because you don't know what you are talking about, period.
'
HOW did he get control of webcams? I think this is a major problem, needs to be fixed.
> I could see possibly wanting to find ways to peek through someone's webcam secretly. Put up a website with a really secret webcam out there. You're sure to have thousands of hits.
Pics or it didn't happen.
No left turn unstoned.
I mean, either you contact the police and let the hacker expose a couple of pictures of you in "natural positions" (because you did not know pictures were taken) OR you give the hacker more munitions by sending him pictures of yourself in explicite positions, thus digging your own grave until the hacker gets tired of this game and decide to expose everything anyway.
I think asking for money would have been perceived in a different way and maybe it would have worked.
I hope that one day you grow up, see how immature you are, and stop your 'hating', for it really does lead to the 'dark side'.
Start working on your morality, boy. Perhaps one day you will be a man.
Video and pics or it never happened!
What were the five things he wanted her to do on the cam? Did she do them. Inquiring minds want to know.
LAW & DISORDER / CIVILIZATION & DISCONTENTS How the FBI found Miss Teen USA’s webcam spy RAT user "cutefuzzypuppy" wasn't all that cute. by Nate Anderson - Sept 27 2013, 7:40pm EDT INTERNET CRIME 83 RATer's moniker was "cutefuzzypuppy."
Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock The sextortionist who snapped nude pictures of Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf through her laptop's webcam has been found and arrested, the FBI revealed yesterday. 19-year old Jared James Abrahams, a California computer science student who went by the online handle "cutefuzzypuppy," had as many as 150 "slave" computers under his control during the height of his webcam spying in 2012.
Watching all of those webcams to see when a young woman changes her clothes takes a serious time commitment, and Abrahams made one; he "was always at his computer," according the FBI complaint against him. Abrahams yesterday turned himself in after the complaint was unsealed, and a federal judge released him on a $50,000 bond.
Anatomy of a RATer
How did Abrahams get his start learning the intricacies of remote administration tools (RATs), the malware used to spy on his victims? Not surprisingly, he was a regular user of hackforums.net, which features a large RAT forum that I profiled earlier this year. As cutefuzzypuppy, Abrahams asked for plenty of help distributing software like DarkComet to victims, since he "suck[ed] at social engineering" and needed to find better ways to spread his spyware.
He also announced his successes. On May 17, 2012, he told the RAT community at hackforums.net, "Recently I infected a person at my school with darkcomet. It was total luck that I got her infected because I suck at social engineering. Anyway, this girl happens to be a model and a really good looking one at that :D. I was hoping I could use her and her facebook account to further spread my darkcomet rat. I want to mass message all her friends on facebook but I have no idea what to message them to get them to download the rat. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)."
The "model" in question appears to have been Wolf, whose machine was infected in mid-2012. Abrahams used DarkComet to snap lots of nude photos of Wolf, whom he watched until March 21, 2013. That day, Wolf received a message from Facebook saying that someone was attempting to change her password. Then came a similar message from Twitter—then messages from Tumblr and Yahoo. Suspicious, she checked her profiles; her Twitter account now displayed a "half nude" photo of Wolf.
Thirty minutes later, she received an e-mail from her attacker. He demanded that Wolf either send him "good quality" nude pictures through Snapchat, that she send a video of herself, or that she "go on skype with me and do what I tell you to do for 5 minutes." If she didn't, the attacker pledged to release his many nude photos widely—and he attached a few just to prove how many he had.
Instead, Wolf went to the FBI, and the Bureau's LA cyber squad swung into action. On March 29, the FBI looked at Wolf's laptop and found evidence of both DarkComet and another RAT known as Blackshades, which confirmed how the attacker had taken his photos. But who was he? The IP addresses behind the attacker's e-mails resolved back only to a VPN provider which purposely kept no logs. But the RATs themselves had connected back to the attacker by accessing no-ip.org, a service which allows users to dynamically map their IP address to a domain name (in this case, to cutefuzzypuppy.zapto.org and schedule2013.no-ip.org), thereby allowing the "slaves" to phone home, even when the attacker was using a dynamic IP address from a home Internet account. No-ip.org did keep records, and the FBI obtained them.
The records showed that the
That man hacked nothing and is simply a kidnapper and he recorded them with recording software, consider the courts and police there accomplices.