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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.
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.
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...
Huh? The guy's a adult, not a child!
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.
No - simply invoking the error chain, though I can see how that might come across in the reading. Take a link out of the error chain, any error chain (in flight collision, at-sea collision, ordnance mishap) and suddenly all you have is a close call instead of a headline. In similar fashion to the related story, taking certain precautions (full night of sleep, drink a six pack instead of a case, put down the phone instead of answering it mid-turn), keeps everyone out of harm's way. Tech is a tool - so are weapons. The user has certain responsibilities for both understanding and usage.
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.
Alternatively, people could behave like respectable human beings and not invade others privacy.
I'm hoping for a long jail sentence. I hear they like people like him in prison, its not like a number of those killers in there don't have daughters that age...
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.
His lawyer is already bringing it up, as a possible mitigating factor. So slam him and his lawyer for bringing it up, not for Slashdot for providing details you find unfavorable.
Absolutely! But sadly, the world is full of unpleasant people who will get it into their heads that what they want, they must have, and devil-may-care about the consequences. I'm not about to leave my life savings in a box on my doorstep in the hopes that no one will steal it. I'm going to safeguard it in a vault or a bank (another topic for another thread, perhaps) because there are thieves afoot. My phone has a password on it because I'm not convinced the person to find it in case I misplace it won't be one to call Kenya on my dime. My car door is locked. The list goes on...
Pretty sure the kitchen crew at his prison will be "hiring."
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.
The reason that this story has the reference to autism in it is because the accused is attempting to use his alleged autism (I am going to assume that he has an actual diagnosis, not that it means he is actually autistic) as an excuse for his crimes. This story is actually a perfect example of what is wrong with the way our society (in general) is approaching autism. It is viewed as something which makes one unable to tell right from wrong. I do not actually believe that this man has autism, although I think it likely that he was diagnosed with it. This article does a good job of explaining what I am talking about.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
You also want to sue Smith & Wesson for the people killed by their weapons? How about knife companies by people who were knifed? Or any other company that has been used to do harm?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"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.
Shut up.
Unlike race or national origin, Autism affects one's behavior. And he's using it as a defense.
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 was reading earlier this week that "child" goes up to age 25 now.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I agree with the article in Salon. Autism spectrum disorder is an overused diagnosis.
HOWEVER that does not mean it's not a real phenomena. I have a son who was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. There are several clear differences between him and my other children (who are bright geeky types) including a near eidetic memory and slowness processing spoken language. You might not notice it in a casual context, but it becomes pretty apparent over time.
I am still pissed off at Slashdot publishing this summary in this manner. This shit of a lawyer is still engaging in adverse profiling and contributing to a body of ideas that has no justification.
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.
I don't think it's a reasonable legal requirement to presume that every lens in your household must covered at all times. I also don't think it's reasonable to expect me to lock my closet doors, just because hey maybe someone snuck into my house while I was away and is in my closet. Do you sweep your house for bugs twice a day? Do you test your milk for poison before you eat a bowl of cereal, just in case someone put cyanide in it?
In my opinion it would be much better just to prosecute the perverts who illegally hack into personal computers and take surreptitious pictures of unsuspecting victims.
He took pictures of a 17 year old.
I'd expect that there are child pornography charges involved too, no?
I like looking at naked women, I will admit.
So do I, but man, there's a whole lot of much easier and cheaper ways to look at digital images of naked women, even in real time.
Hell, redirect that kind of effort, and who knows, he might have even been able to get laid by a flesh and blood woman.
Stories like this certainly seem to confirm the notion that sex crimes are more about power than about sex.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Mine doesn't have a cover. But then I don't sit in front of it naked. The worst pic anyone is going get is me with finger up nostril to the second knuckle.
Bon appetit for those reading /. on their lunch break.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
'
I think the essential thing to understand is that people have different abilities and needs. No category is quite adequate. I have trouble with speech, but unlike your son, apparently, I have almost no "mind's eye" at all, and a terrible memory for anything that I can't logically relate to other facts or feel in a musical way. I don't think that necessarily means that he's more or less genuinely Asperger's than I am. One of my three children has trouble with speech also, and is overly affectionate with strangers by most people's standards. He is very different from me in a lot of equally significant ways. Some people have characterized my social skills as Asperger's like, but I think the main difference is I have less of a veneer of pretense over everything. I actually don't think I'm lacking in social skills or social perceptiveness at all, relatively speaking. I think that slick, salesman types have just been more successful at getting their particular strengths and characteristics defined as the norm. (Though the 'sociopath' category is a win for my team I suppose.) One of my other children has freakishly good language and social skills: he was able to BS comfortably with adults as if he were a peer when he was 2. I don't think this is a syndrome either though, just something he's really good at, and strengths almost always come with other weaknesses and tradeoffs. He's smart, but his 'Asperger's-like brother is smarter in some ways, and that intelligence has a deep connection to his speech difficulty, in my opinion. He finds it harder to put things into words in part because he's able to think in ways that don't map neatly into a string of grammatical concepts. People are complicated machines, and in everyone a lot of small pieces are broken or don't work well, and other interrelated pieces that may be genius. It just may or may not be recognized depending on how externally obvious those pieces are.
a knoblette of blu-tack works well too - especially as it can be pushed in over the camera lens to form a nice smooth and flat surface so it doesn't look as unsightly as a band-aid or tape.
or paint, that works well too. Course, if you do that you'll need an external webcam - that can be unplugged or turned to face the wall when you're not using it
The thing I see in the summary, which seems to be different from what you are seeing, is that this is a story about someone trying to pretend to be autistic in order to cover for bad behavior. My experience is that people with autism are no more likely to behave badly than anybody else (in certain circumstances, they may be more likely to behave poorly but not badly). So, when this guy claims autism as a defense for his behavior it reflects doubly bad on him. First, he committed these acts. Then he attempts to excuse his behavior.
Actually, make that reflects triply bad on him. The third being that he thinks that autism would be an excuse for bad behavior.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, it's not. I agree with you. However, if she had thought to cover her webcam when she wasn't using it, this wouldn't have happened. Do I cover mine? No, because if anybody tried this with me, I'd laugh at them because nobody's going to be that interested in my 64-year-old body and more importantly, my desktop doesn't have a webcam. (My laptop does, but that doesn't get used at home, and I doubt that this little skript kiddie knows enough to hack into Linux.) If anything at all good comes out of this it will be because teens (boys and girls both) learn that things like this not only can, but will happen to them if they don't take a few simple precautions, such as taping over the webcam when it's not in use.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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.
If he is a detriment to society because he is a psychopath he should be off the street. If he is a detriment to society because of something about his autism, he should be off the street. If he is a detriment to society because he does criminal things, no matter what his condition or excuse, he should be off the streets. Actions over-ride excuses.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Pics or it didn't happen.
No left turn unstoned.
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
You were reading that, were you.
How interesting.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Reading. Try it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I read lots.
You said:
I was reading earlier this week that "child" goes up to age 25 now.
Which is pretty much fact free.
Where were you reading it.
In some countries where I have lived "child" now seems to end at 10.(*)
Without context you have no idea what I'm talking about.
((*)The two ten year old boys who killed Jamie Bulger were tried as adults)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The word used was "teenager," not "child." Someone who is 19 is still a teenager, since the number ends with the suffix "teen."
No, culture and upbringing affects one's behavior, you stupid asshole.