THE NATION’S NEWSPAPER
Secondary
Case
Study
How to keep your personal
information safe
By Mary Beth Marklein
..........................................................................................4
Malicious-software predators
get sneakier, more prevalent
By Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz
..........................................................................................5-8
Cyber Security Awareness
New communication technologies provide many great opportunities; however,
there is always the potential that someone will misuse that technology to take illegal advantage of a user. It is important for students, educators and parents to have a
basic awareness and knowledge about being responsible and safe when creating
online profiles, blogging, using instant messaging services or socializing on the Web.
As the number of registered members and online activity continues to increase on
social networking sites, budding cyberthieves also increase. This case study provides
examples of some potential online dangers and offers recommendations on how to
protect your personal information while networking safely and wisely.
Data miners dig a little deeper
Companies may
know a lot more
about you than
you think —
or want
Some ‘script kiddies’ get more
attention than others
By Jon Swartz and Byron Acohido
..........................................................................................9
Discussion questions, activity
and additional resources
By Michelle Kessler and
Byron Acohido
USA TODAY
..........................................................................................10
SAN FRANCISCO — When
customers sign up for a free
Hotmail e-mail account
from Microsoft, they're
required to submit their
name, age, gender and ZIP
code.
USA TODAY Snapshots®
What actions should the U.S. government
take to better safeguard cyberspace?
Establish better communication with
and among the private sector
71%
Educate people about cybersecurity
roles and capabilities
71%
Make cybersecurity a greater priority
70%
Educate critical infrastructures on
cybersecurity risks and how to
respond to cyberemergencies
68%
By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY
Note: Multiple responses allowed
1 – Oil & gas, nuclear, energy, water or other critical industries
Source: CSO magazine survey of 389 chief security officers and security
executives. Margin of error ±5 percentage points.
By Jae Yang and Sam Ward, USA TODAY
But that's not all the
software giant knows
about them.
Microsoft takes notice of what time of day they access their inboxes. And it goes to
the trouble of finding out how much money folks in their neighborhood earn.
Why? It knows a florist will pay a premium to have a coupon for roses reach males
30-40, earning good wages, who check their e-mail during lunch hour on Valentine's
Day.
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. All rights reser ved.
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Stores’ loyalty cards offer a wealth of information about shoppers
Microsoft is one of many companies
collecting and aggregating data in new
ways so sophisticated that many
customers may not even realize they're
being watched.
These businesses are using new
software tools that can record every
move a person makes online and
combine that information with other
data. Brick-and-mortar stores, afraid of
being left behind, are ramping up data
collection and processing efforts, too,
says JupiterResearch analyst Patti
Freeman Evans.
The result: Corporate America is
creating increasingly detailed portraits of
each consumer, whether they're aware of
it or not.
Companies say they can be trusted to
do so responsibly. Yahoo, for instance, has
a strict ban on selling data from its
customer registration lists. And Microsoft
says it won't purchase an individual's
income histor y — just the average
income from his or her ZIP code. "We're
making sure there's a very bright line in
the sand," says spokesman Joe Doran.
Some consumers aren't reassured. Salt
Lake City lighting designer Jody Good,
54, goes to great lengths to control his
personal information, including signing
up for some services with false names
and keeping unusually tight security
settings on his PC. "I'm trying to preserve
my privacy," he says.
Privacy advocates are worried, too.
"Think about it: A handful of powerful
entities know a tremendous amount of
information about you," says Jeff Chester,
executive director of the Center for
Digital Democracy. "Today they
manipulate you into what kind of soap to
buy, tomorrow it might be who you
should pray for or who you should vote
for."
Data mining grows
Worldwide advanced analytics software market:
(in billions)
$2.0
$1.6 $0.9
$1.2
$0.8
$0.4
0
’00
’01
’02
’03
Online advertising revenue
(in billions)
$1.8
’04
’05
$12.54
$12 $8.09
$8
$4
0
’00
’01
’02
’03
’04
’05
Sources: IDC and Interactive Advertising Bureau/Price Waterhouse Coopers
By Adrienne Lewis, USA TODAY
Targeting behavior
Internet firms are at the vanguard of
the trend through a technique called
behavioral targeting.
It works like this: Anyone who has
registered to use any of Yahoo's free
online services can be sure the tech
company is paying close attention to
everything they do within its network. It
will notice, for instance, who uses Yahoo
search to find information on SUVs.
Why? It wants to sell targeted ads to SUV
makers and auto loan brokers that will
appear, say, on Yahoo Finance the next
time that person checks his or her
stocks.
Online retailers target, too, usually by
placing a small data file called a cookie
on a customer's computer. The cookie
keeps track of where you go each time
you are on the site. Hewlett-Packard's
online store uses cookies to remind
customers of items viewed in previous
visits — no matter how much time has
elapsed between them.
Targeting isn't new. In 2000, online
advertiser DoubleClick ignited a public
uproar when it announced plans to
cross-reference anonymous Web-surfing
data with personal data collected by
offline data broker Abacus Direct.
Congress held hearings, and DoubleClick
backed off.
But, as online advertising soars, "We're
hitting the tipping point," says Bill
Gossman, CEO of Revenue Science.
Merrill Lynch estimates the online ad
market will grow 29% this year topping
$16 billion. Researcher eMarketer
estimates advertisers will spend about
$1.2 billion on targeted online advertising
this year and more than $2 billion by
2008.
A phalanx of online marketing
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specialists, including Tacoda, Revenue Science, AlmondNet,
advertising.com, DrivePM and Did-it, are pushing it. They're
hustling to form overlapping alliances with major media
website publishers.
"Targeting has certainly become a large part of what
advertisers are interested in," says Yahoo spokeswoman Nissa
Anklesaria.
Targeting advocates herald the win-win-win. Publishers can
charge more for relevant ads that spur sales and decrease
annoyances. Microsoft says it can help a Dinners-To-Go
franchisee zero in on working moms, age 30 to 40, in a given
neighborhood, with ads designed to reach them before 10a.m.,
when they are likely to be planning the evening meal. "Instead
of carpet bombing, it's more of a shotgun approach where
you're hoping to hit the targeted customer," say Doran.
But there's one big holdout: search giant Google. Although
the company scans customers' Google e-mail accounts in order
to send them text ads, it hasn't yet embraced more proactive
targeting.
"We're treading very carefully in this space because we put
user trust foremost," says Google product manager Richard
Holden.
Rewarding loyalty
Brick-and-mortar companies are working hard to create
similarly rich data sources. Although they can't track a
customer's every move, they can create basic profiles of them
using loyalty cards.
Loyalty cards are typically given to customers in exchange for
personal information. In return, customers get coupon-like
discounts when they present their card.
Safeway helped kick off the loyalty-card era in 1998, and was
soon followed by rivals such as Albertsons and Kroger. Many
programs are run behind the scenes by a little-known Florida
firm called Catalina Marketing.
Catalina collects loyalty and bulk sales data from more than
20,000 stores, then uses it to create pictures of shoppers over
time, says CEO L. Dick Buell. The picture gets clearer the more
data stores collect. For example, Catalina can help retailers
determine that someone lives in an upscale area, buys diapers,
and may be interested in high-end baby food.
The data Catalina receives do not contain personal
information. Records are identified by an ID number only. But
retailers hang on to personal information and can reattach it to
records once getting them back from Catalina.
That worries privacy advocates, because loyalty cards — fairly
rare a few years ago — are spreading fast. Most large grocery
chains except Wal-Mart have them. And they're moving
beyond grocery stores, to outlets such as Barnes & Noble
bookstores, CVS drugstores, and Exxon and Mobil gas stations.
Mining for data
The flood of new information is helping spawn a sister
industry: data-mining software. These powerful programs sort
through massive databases, looking for patterns that would
take a human years to spot. Sales of data-crunching software
have jumped more than 30% since 2000 and are expected to
keep growing, says tech analyst Dan Vesset with researcher
IDC.
"Most large companies are doing it in one area or another,"
says tech analyst Gareth Herschel with researcher Gartner.
In its most basic form, data mining is simple. A grocery store
might put the peanut butter next to the jelly one week, and
move it to a different aisle the following week. The store can
then run data-mining software on the two weeks' sales receipts
to learn which setup sold more peanut butter.
Technology always improving
But far more sophisticated and complex types of mining are
emerging. Silicon Valley firm Sigma Dynamics has launched
software that can analyze data on the fly, even if it's not stored
in neat columns and rows. For example, it can read the typed
notes of a customer service agent, compare them with a
database of stored records, and see if any phrases match. Then
it can instantly pop up a window offering a solution to the
customer's problem.
Entrepreneur Jeff Jonas has created software that starts by
examining the record of a known entity — usually a person. It
then compares that record to thousands of others, looking for
patterns that might signify a relationship. Jonas designed the
software for Las Vegas casinos, which wanted to better know
who their customers were — in part to keep out cheats. The
software could identify relationships that might otherwise go
unnoticed, such as the fact that a cheater and a casino
employee were roommates.
The Central Intelligence Agency realized that the software
could have other applications. Its venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel,
funded Jonas' small company in 2001. IBM bought it in 2005
and now sells the program to businesses, including retailers
and financial institutions.
Other companies are working to make data mining —
traditionally a high-tech discipline of statisticians and
programmers — accessible to average workers. One such firm,
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
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San Francisco data-mining software maker KXEN, says there's a
huge demand. Data-mining technology "has been used for a
long time, but only by a very small number of people," says
President Ken Bendix. Although companies have long had
useful data, the information was rarely used to its full potential,
he says. Now that's starting to change.
But the growth in data mining creates a problem, says
Stanford University professor Hector Garcia-Molina. "How can
you provide that kind of useful information without violating
the privacy of individuals?" he asks. Garcia-Molina is working
on computer science tools that will keep databases from
extracting too much personal information while slicing and
dicing. The work, still in its experimental phase, "is not easy,"
he admits.
IBM's Jonas proposes a lower-tech solution — better
disclosure. Most companies do have privacy policies today, but
they're generally vague, he says. "I would like to do business
with companies who are using my data the way I expect them
to," he says. "I want to avoid surprise."
Jeff Barnum, a 45-year-old real estate consultant from
Cincinnati, agrees. He avoids filling out many forms and
frequently deletes cookies from his PC, yet is willing to share his
information with companies he trusts.
Barnum says his clients do the same. When visiting an open
house, many people give him false names and other
information. But once they get to know him, "They'll tell me
anything," he says, laughing.
AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S LIFE SECTION, AUGUST 2, 2006
How to keep your personal information safe
By Mary Beth Marklein
USA TODAY
locked box so even your roommate can't
get it.
No one knows for sure how many
college students have been victims of
identity theft, but they are popular
targets. Federal Trade Commission data
show that 18- to 24-year-olds are the
second-highest-risk group, after ages 25
to 34.
u Add a shredder to your list of backto-school needs.
u Don't use your Social Security
number for any reason other than tax
and employment, to get a line of credit or
for student loan applications. If your
school uses your Social Security number
as an identifier — whether it's on your
student ID or a professor posting grades
by Social Security number — lobby to
change the policy.
Students are attractive candidates in
part because they are typically transient
and have less credit history than more
established adults.
That makes it more difficult to
distinguish between a legitimate credit
application and a fraudulent one, says
Mike Cook of ID Analytics, a San Diego
identity risk management company.
"If you're going to steal an identity, a
student identity is a very good one to
steal," he says.
Also, college students create risks for
themselves. The popularity of social
networking sites such as Facebook and
MySpace has led to concerns that
students disclose too much information
about themselves without taking stock
By Web Bryant, USA TODAY
of the potential dangers of such activity.
A number of organizations, from the
Federal Trade Commission to individual
colleges, are developing campaigns
aimed at helping consumers protect
themselves.
Linda Foley of the San Diego-based
Identity Theft Resource Center offers
these tips for students:
u Keep personal information in a
u Don't be tempted by free T-shirts or
other incentives to apply for credit cards
at a table set up on campus.
u Know what the scams are, and don't
respond to them. (One popular online
scam called "phishing" involves a thief
posing as a legitimate business asking
you to provide sensitive data so they can
"update their files" or "protect your
data.")
This month, Foley's group will unveil a
teen information program on its website.
It
will
be
available
at
www.idtheftcenter.org.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
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Malicious-software spreaders
get sneakier, more prevalent
So-called bot herders team
with organized crime to steal
identities, account info
In separate cases, federal authorities last August also assisted
in the arrest of Farid Essebar, 18, of Morocco, and last month
indicted Christopher Maxwell, 19, of Vacaville, Calif., on
suspicion of similar activities.
The arrests underscore an ominous shift in the struggle to
keep the Internet secure: Cybercrime undergirded by
networks of bots — PCs infected with malicious software that
allows them to be controlled by an attacker — is soaring.
Without you realizing it, attackers are secretly trying to
penetrate your PC to tap small bits of computing power to do
evil things. They've already compromised some 47 million PC's
sitting in living rooms, in your kids' bedrooms, even on the desk
in your office.
By Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz
USA TODAY
SEAT TLE — At the height of his powers, Jeanson James
Ancheta felt unstoppable.
From his home in Downey, Calif., the then-19-year-old high
school dropout controlled thousands of compromised PCs, or
"bots," that helped him earn enough cash in 2004 and 2005 to
drive a souped-up 1993 BMW and spend $600 a week on new
clothes and car parts.
He once bragged to a protege that hacking Internetconnected PCs was "easy, like slicing cheese," court records
show.
But Ancheta got caught. In the first case of its kind, he
pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of hijacking
hundreds of thousands of computers and selling access to
others to spread spam and launch Web attacks.
Bot networks have become so ubiquitous that they've also
given rise to a new breed of low-level bot masters, typified by
Ancheta, Essebar and Maxwell.
Tim Cranton, director of Microsoft's Internet Safety
Enforcement Team, calls bot networks "the tool of choice for
those intent on using the Internet to carry out crimes."
Budding cyberthieves use basic programs and generally stick
to quick-cash schemes. Brazen and inexperienced, they can
inadvertently cause chaos: Essebar is facing prosecution in
Morocco on charges of releasing the Zotob worm that crippled
systems in banks and media companies around the world;
Maxwell awaits a May 15 trial for allegedly spreading bots that
disrupted operations at Seattle's Northwest Hospital.
More elite bot herders, who partner with crime groups to
supply computer power for data theft and other cyberfraud,
have proved to be highly elusive. But the neophytes tend to be
sloppy about hiding their tracks. The investigations leading to
the arrests of Ancheta, Essebar and Maxwell have given
authorities their most detailed look yet at how bots enable
cybercrime.
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Low-level cybercrooks much more likely than elite ones to get caught
Estimating the number of bots is
difficult, but top researchers who
participate in meetings of high-tech's
Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group
often use a 7% infection rate as a
discussion point. That means as many as
47 million of the 681 million PCs
connected to the Internet worldwide
may be under the control of a bot
network.
Security giant McAfee detected 28,000
distinct bot networks active last year,
more than triple the amount in 2004.
And a Februar y sur vey of 123 tech
executives, conducted by security firm
nCircle, pegged annual losses to U.S.
businesses because of computer-related
crimes at $197 billion.
Law enforcement officials say the
ground floor is populated by perhaps
hundreds of bot herders, most of them
young men. Mostly, they assemble
networks of compromised PCs to make
quick cash by spreading adware -- those
pop-up advertisements for banking,
dating, porn and gambling websites that
clutter the Internet. They get paid for
installing adware on each PC they infect.
"The low-level guys … can inflict a lot
of collateral damage," says Steve
Martinez, deputy assistant director of the
FBI's Cyber Division.
Ancheta and his attorney declined to
be interviewed, and efforts to reach
Essebar with help from the FBI were
unsuccessful. Steven Bauer, Maxwell's
attorney, said his client was a "fairly small
player" who began spreading bots
"almost as a youthful prank."
The stories of these three young men,
pieced together from court records and
interviews with regulators, security
experts and independent investigators,
illustrate the mind-set of the growing
fraternity of hackers and cyberthieves
born after 1985. They also provide a
glimpse of Cybercrime Inc.'s most
versatile and profitable tool.
Ancheta: Trading candy
School records show that Ancheta
transferred out of Downey High School,
in a suburb near Los Angeles, in
December 2001 and later attended an
alternative program for students with
academic or behavioral problems.
Eventually, he earned a high school
equivalency certificate. Ancheta worked
at an Internet cafe and expressed an
interest in joining the military reserves,
his aunt, Sharon Gregorio, told the
Associated Press.
Where the bots are
Bot-infected PCs, by country rank:
Jan.-June 2005
July-Dec. 2005
United
Kingdom
China
France
Instead, in June 2004, court records
show, he discovered rxbot, a potent —
but quite common — computer worm,
malicious computer code designed to
spread widely across the Internet.
Ancheta likely gravitated to it because
it is easy to customize, says Nicholas
Albright, founder of Shadowserver.org, a
watchdog group. Novices often start by
tweaking worms and trading bots. "I see
high school kids doing it all the time,"
says Albright. "They trade bot nets like
candy."
Ancheta proved more enterprising
than most. He infected thousands of PCs
and started a business — #botz4sale —
on a private Internet chat area. From
June to September 2004, he made about
$3,000 on more than 30 sales of up to
10,000 bots at a time, according to court
records.
By late 2004, he started a new venture,
court records show. He signed up with
two Internet marketing companies,
LoudCash of Bellevue, Wash., and
GammaCash Entertainment of Montreal,
to distribute ads on commission.
But instead of setting up a website and
asking visitors for permission to install
ads — a common, legal practice — he
used his bots to install adware on
vulnerable Internet-connected PCs, court
records show. Typically, payment for each
piece of adware installed ranges from 20
19%
26%
32%
22%
USA
South
Korea
Canada
Taiwan
Spain
Germany
Japan
7%
9%
3.7%
4.4%
3.6%
3.8%
5%
3.8%
2.4%
2.7%
2.7%
2.6%
3.6%
2.6%
3%
2%
Source: Symantec
By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY
cents to 70 cents.
Working at home, Ancheta nurtured
his growing bot empire during a workday
that usually began shortly after 1 p.m.
and stretched non-stop until 5 a.m., a
source with direct knowledge of the case
says. He hired an assistant, an admiring
juvenile from Boca Raton, Fla.,
nicknamed SoBe, court records show.
Chatting via AOL's free instant-messaging
service, Ancheta taught him how to
spread PC infections and manage adware
installations.
Checks ranging as high as $7,996 began
rolling in from the two marketing firms.
In six months, Ancheta and his helper
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pulled in nearly $60,000, court records
show.
What bots do
victim must help, by clicking on an email attachment to start the infection.
During one online chat with SoBe
about installing adware, Ancheta, who
awaits sentencing May 1, advised his
helper: "It's immoral, but the money
makes it right."
Infected PCs that await commands,
bots are being used for:
Diabl0 created a ver y distinctive
version of Mytob designed to lower the
security settings on infected PCs, install
adware and report back to Diabl0 for
more instructions. Last June, David
Taylor, an information security specialist
at the University of Pennsylvania, spotted
Diabl0 on the Internet as he was about to
issue such instructions. Taylor engaged
the hacker in a text chat.
Sean Sundwall, a spokesman for
Bellevue, Wash.-based 180solutions,
LoudCash's parent company, said
Ancheta distributed its adware in only a
small number of incidents listed in the
indictment. GammaCash had no
comment.
Maxwell: Infecting a hospital
At about the same time — in early 2005
— Christopher Maxwell and two coconspirators were allegedly hitting their
stride running a similar operation. From
his parents' home in Vacaville, Calif.,
Maxwell, then an 18-year-old
community college student, conspired
with two minors in other states to spread
bots and install adware, earning
$100,000 from July 2004 to July 2005,
according to a federal indictment.
They ran into a problem in January
2005 when a copy of the bot they were
using inadvertently found its way onto a
vulnerable PC at Seattle's Northwest
Hospital. Once inside the hospital's
network, it swiftly infected 150 of the
hospital's 1,100 PCs and would have
compromised many more. But the
simultaneous scanning of 150 PCs
looking for other machines to infect
overwhelmed the local network,
according to an account in court records.
Computers in the intensive care unit
shut down. Lab tests and administrative
tasks were interrupted, forcing the
hospital into manual procedures.
Over the next few months, special
agent David Farquhar, a member of the
FBI's Northwest Cyber Crime Task Force,
traced the infection to a NetZero Internet
account using a phone number at
Maxwell's parents' home, leading to
u Spamming. Bots deliver 70% of
nuisance e-mail ads.
u Phishing. Bots push out e-mail
scams that lure victims into
divulging log-ons and passwords.
u Denial-of-service attacks. Bots
flood targeted websites with nuisance requests, shutting them
down. To stop such attacks, website
operators are coerced into making
extortion payments.
Diabl0 boasted about using Mytob to
get paid for installing adware. "I really
thought that he was immature," Taylor
recalls. "He was asking me what did I
think about his new bot, with all these
smiley faces. Maybe he didn't realize
what he was doing was so bad."
u Self-propagation. Bots scour the
Internet for other PCs to infect;
they implant password breakers
and packet sniffers that continually
probe for routes to drill deeper into
corporate systems.
In early August, Diabl0 capitalized on a
golden opportunity when Microsoft
issued its monthly set of patches for
newly discovered security holes in
Windows. As usual, independent
researchers immediately began to
analyze the patches as part of a process
to develop better security tools.
Cybercrooks closely monitor the public
websites where results of this kind of
research get posted.
u Direct theft. Bots implant keystroke loggers and man-in-the-middle programs that record when the
PC user types in account log-on
information, then transmit the data
back to the bot master.
Maxwell's indictment on Feb. 9. He
pleaded not guilty.
Essebar: Birth of a worm
As authorities closed in on Ancheta
and Maxwell last summer, 18-year-old
Farid Essebar was allegedly just getting
started in the bots marketplace. The FBI
says the skinny, Russian-born resident of
Morocco operated under the nickname
Diabl0 (pronounced Diablo but spelled
with a zero). Diabl0 began attracting
notice as one of many copycat hackers
tweaking the ubiquitous Mytob e-mail
worm. E-mail worms compromise a PC
in much the same way as a bot, but the
Diabl0 latched onto one of the test
tools and turned it into a self-propagating
worm, dubbed Zotob, says Charles
Renert, director of research at security
firm Determina. Much like Mytob, Zotob
prepared the infected PC to receive
adware. But Zotob did one better: It
could sweep across the Internet,
infecting PCs with no user action
required.
Diabl0 designed Zotob to quietly seek
out certain Windows computer servers
equipped with the latest compilation of
upgrades, called a service pack. But he
failed to account for thousands of
Windows servers still running outdated
service packs, says Peter Allor, director of
intelligence at Internet Security Systems.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
By the start of the next workweek,
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Zotob variants began snaking into older servers at the Canadian
bank CIBC, and at ABC News, The New York Times and CNN.
The servers began rebooting repeatedly, disrupting business
and drawing serious attention to the new worm. "Zotob had a
quality-assurance problem," says Allor. Diabl0 had neglected to
ensure Zotob would run smoothly on servers running the
earlier service packs, he says.
Within two weeks, Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement
Team, a group of 65 investigators, paralegals and lawyers,
identified Essebar as Diabl0 and pinpointed his base of
operations. Microsoft's team also flushed out a suspected
accomplice, Atilla Ekici, 21, nicknamed Coder.
Microsoft alerted the FBI, which led to the Aug. 25 arrests by
local authorities of Essebar in Morocco and Ekici in Turkey.
The FBI holds evidence that Ekici paid Essebar with stolen
credit card numbers to create the Mytob variants and Zotob,
Louis Reigel, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division told
reporters.
While Ancheta operated as a sole proprietor, and Maxwell
was part of a three-man shop, Essebar and Ekici functioned
more like freelancers, says Allor. They appeared to be part of a
loose "confederation of folks who have unique abilities," says
Allor.
"They come together with others who have unique abilities,
and from time to time they switch off who they work with."
Despite their notoriety, Essebar, Ancheta and Maxwell
represent mere flickers in the Internet underworld. More elite
hackers collaborating with organized crime groups take pains
to cover their tracks — and rarely get caught.
"Those toward the lower levels of this strata are the ones that
tend to get noticed and arrested pretty quickly," says Martin
Overton, a security specialist at IBM.
Acohido reported from Seattle, Swartz from San Francisco.
For more educational
resources,
visit http://education.usatoday.com
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Cybercrime, Inc.
Some ‘script kiddies’ get more attention than others
By Jon Swartz and Byron Acohido
USA TODAY
based PCs to crash and reboot, was sentenced to 21 months of
probation.
SAN FRANCISCO — It used to be that kids collected comic
books and baseball cards. In the digital age, some youngsters
amuse themselves by seeing how many Internet-connected
computers they can infect for fun or profit.
He received only 30 hours of community service and was
later hired as a consultant at a computer-security company,
Securepoint, in Germany.
Known as "script kiddies," these young people typically have
no formal training. But they are comfortable at a keyboard and
adept at self-learning. Noodling at their computers while
munching on junk food, they search out and tweak malicious
computer code, called scripts, created by others, according to
computer-security experts and law enforcement officials
involved in the prosecution of teenage hackers.
Instead of riding bikes or playing ball, script kiddies immerse
themselves in a digital world steeped in an ethic that holds all
things in cyberspace to be fair game for clever manipulation.
Most seek kudos from peers who admire those who can
infect the most PCs. But from there it's a small step to
rationalize using hacking skills to make a quick buck.
"We talk about safe sex, avoiding drugs and alcohol. But we
don't talk about computer ethics," says Paul Luehr, a former
federal computer-crimes prosecutor.
Script kiddies who rose above their peers to earn wider
infamy include:
u Kim Vanvaeck, 19 when arrested in 2004. The Belgian
female, author of a computer virus that scrambled MP3 files
and caused quotes from TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer to pop
up on PC screens, was arrested outside Brussels and charged
with computer data sabotage. The case was dropped.
Vanvaeck began tweaking viruses at 14 but maintained she
never actually released any of her creations on the Web. "When
people make guns, can you blame them when somebody else
kills with them?" she told TechTV.com in a 2002 interview. "I
only write them. I don't release them."
u Sven Jaschan, 17 when arrested in 2004. The German
author of the Sasser worm, which caused millions of Windows-
Jaschan started writing computer viruses in early 2004 after
he learned about the MyDoom e-mail virus and how it had
infected millions of Windows-based PCs.
Working in the basement with his stepfather, a PC repairman,
the precocious Jaschan wrote the Netsky e-mail virus, which
cleaned up MyDoom infections but was itself invasive,
according to a 2004 interview Jaschan did with Germany's
Stern magazine.
Jaschan progressed to creating the destructive Sasser worm,
which spread much faster than Netsky because it required no
action by the PC user.
u Jeffrey Lee "Teekid" Parson, 18 when arrested in 2003. A
high school senior from Hopkins, Minn., Parson was one of
many copycat hackers who tweaked the invasive MSBlaster
worm in 2003. His version infected 48,000 PCs and caused $1.2
million in damage, prosecutors said.
But Parson failed to cover his tracks well. A link in his coding
pointed to a website where he stored other viruses alongside
lyrics to his favorite songs by Judas Priest and Megadeth.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, who sentenced Parson in
January 2005, said Parson was a lonely teenager who holed up
in his room and created his "own reality."
Parson is currently serving an 18-month sentence in Duluth
(Minn.) Federal Prison Camp. His projected release is Aug. 14.
His attorney, Nancy Tenney, describes him as shy and said he
declined an interview.
Parson was the only hacker arrested in connection with
MSBlaster, which infected more than 20 million PCs.
Swartz reported from San Francisco, Acohido from Seattle.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
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Discussion
u Why does Microsoft collect and aggregate data about its customers? How do Internet companies use
this information to target consumers? Why do these data collection techniques have some privacy
advocates worried? How do you feel about the practice?
u What is data mining? How do companies use it to learn more about consumers, increase profits and
improve their businesses? Describe an example of a sophisticated data mining model. What problems
has the growth in data mining created?
u Why are college students popular victims of identity theft? How do college students put themselves
at risk? Why is it unwise to post too much personal information on open, social-networking websites,
such as MySpace or Facebook?
u What is a computer “bot”? What are they capable of doing? How do bot herders partner with organized crime groups? What is their goal?
u Why is it imperative for adolescents and their parents to communicate openly about the potential
dangers of the Internet (in addition to its benefits)? What software is available to help you protect
yourself from potential identity thieves and other online predators?
Activity
Phishing is an online identity theft scam that tricks a person into giving out confidential details, such as
his or her Social Security number or credit card account information. It is derived from the word fish,
because these predators are said to “bait” and “hook” potential victims.
Based on the information in this case study and other articles in current editions of USA TODAY, list 10
techniques (e.g., spam filtering, vigilance, etc.) that people can use to protect their personal information and their personal safety online. Explain how each strategy works and why it is important.
Additional Resources
q Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org)
Helps people prevent and recover from identity theft. The
site also provides information for victims, details on current laws, media resources and a reference library.
q Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (www.privacyrights.org)
A non-profit consumer information and advocacy organization that supplies information on identity theft, fraud
prevention and online privacy.
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. All rights reser ved.
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