By Jo Best, 29 June 2004 13:20
NEWS A Southampton man has been jailed for convincing legendary 'jazz-mag' Playboy that he'd hacked its servers. He managed to extort a whole $100 yes, that's $100 from the company, claiming paying up would stop him selling confidential customer data.
Simon Jones, 25, carried out the attack from his bedroom at his parents' house in Hampshire, where he decided to take the billion-dollar company for the princely sum of around £55. Playboy coughed up rather than have the crime overlord sell the details of two of its internet subscribers.
The 'hacker' had no such details in reality, just a list of some names and passwords, but it was enough to convince the Playboy folk that they'd been penetrated by a hacking although clearly not a financial whizzkid.
The campaign of cyber terror was brought to an end when the US secret service tracked down the cash-crazed supermarket shelf-stacker and brought him to justice some months later. Jones had asked for the blackmail money to be deposited in his bank account - giving the US secret service a handy clue as to who he was.
He was convicted of blackmail yesterday and has been sentenced to two years in jail for his criminal masterminding, despite a defence which saw him claim he 'wasn't in it for the money' (Ed note. you don't say).
While it might seem Hugh Hefner's smut empire got off lightly with just a $100 bill to keep the hacker at bay, the true financial cost of the fake security breach ran into thousands as the bunny business was forced to review its security arrangements.
Hef's minions had to carry out checks that cost the Playboy bunny considerably, only to discover that their servers were unbreached by Jones, who operated under the pseudonym Paymaster 69 to avail himself of the Playboy mega-bucks.
For a while, the mag also thought it might need a database overhaul that could have reached seven figures.
So what prompted the disgruntled supermarket worker to carry out his fiendish blackmail scheme? The court was told the former science graduate turned hacker was hacked off at not having landed a plum role in the IT industry.
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. EJ
Interesting how at various security seminars the audience is always told how unless the damage is in the millions of dollars, the crime is never investigated. This will be a great anecdote to relate.
2. Peter
Is this article in the storage section because the guy was a shelf stacker?
:-)
3. Bob Hail
World domination around the corner for a 13 year old next! No doubt run from the spare room of his parents house in Bognor. Perhaps there was too much over reaction and not enough realistic risk assessment.
4. Nelson Munce
HaHa!
5. Andy Woolnough
OK, £60 wasn't exactly going to put Hef's excessive parties on hold (Gawd bless him!) but I read he got two years for this! Don't you think two years was a little excessive?
6. anonymous
2 years in jail for making such a point is an absolute scandal. Playboy's over-reaction doesn't justify such a sentence. The judge should be locked-up for wasting penal resources.
7. Simon mallett
Just shows who our lawyers favour. Had the shelf stacker beaten up an old lady, left her for dead and nicked her weekly pension, it is doubtful he would have got a prison sentence, let alone two years!
8. anonymous
Unbelievable! 2 years in jail for this? I hope this is a joke. Seriously, if the techs at Playboy are stupid enough to be duped into thinking a few names and passwords are a security breach then they deserve to get screwed.
Why did it take 2 months to track this 'criminal' down? It can't have taken rocket science to trace his bank account information. Playboy, fire your DBA's and hire some people with a spec of intelligence.
It's atrocious how tech paranoia has been raised to such a level that this can occur.
9. anonymous
Simon is a long standing friend of mine and knows he did wrong. The sentance none the less is completley wrong as many comments say. Sentance appeal shorlty and it must be reduced. Not that the media would report that ofcourse. Although i am bias.. those are my thoughts