Rewarding the wrong people
The author of a worm which attacked Twitter services has been rewarded by being offered a lucrative job in a security business.
Michael Mooney, (who calls himself Mikeyy with a double Y), is a 17 year old student from New York who recently created a worm which exploited weaknesses in the popular Twitter website. He used it to generate thousands of automated messages to Twitter users over the Easter holiday weekend. The messages were promoting a website he ran. This was quickly followed by a number of copycat worms from other hackers who, having seen how to exploit a weakness in Twitter, have been quick to capitalise on it before the loophole is closed.
Disappointingly, as a result of his actions, Mooney was promptly offered jobs by at least two companies and has accepted one of them with a software development company as a security expert. The 24 year old CEO of the firm which made the offer admitted that hiring Mooney will help generate publicity for his company. Let's hope that other teenagers do not see Mikeyy as a role model.
Meanwhile, Christopher Jacquette, Lawrence Secrease and Marcus Barrington, students of Tallahassee, Florida had a less successful outcome to their hacking activities and now face time in jail. Having gained access to the university admin systems using keylogging software, they were found to be charging up to $600 a time to change exam grades for other students.
However they were not the brightest bulbs in the hall. The software they installed had their own email addresses embedded in it and the server logs showed the unauthorised changes were made from Jacquette's home. They might have been more successful if they hadn't so blatantly changed 114 F-grade students to A-grades, including Barrington's sister. When asked to explain how her grade had changed from F to A, she said she believed it was an act of God.
24th April 2009