[...]The first rule of hacking, after all, is “Don’t get caught.” And Fox newsman Darrell Phillipsmay have broken that rule, says Drew Curtis. Curtis, is the founder of Fark.com, a thoroughly juvenile, and entertaining, social news site where users pick the headlines. Phillips, is the new media manager at WHBQ Fox13, a News Corp.-owned TV station in Memphis, Tenn. And Curtis claims to have assembled all-but-conclusive electronic evidence that Phillips has tried to hack into Fark’s servers, potentially breaking several laws.
Curtis believes that Phillips, or someone working with Phillips, sent him and several other Fark employees deceptive emails in an attempt to get them to download a trojan, a form of computer virus. The Trojan was designed to capture their passwords and give the author access to Fark’s servers. In one case, it succeeded, giving a hacker passwords to a file server and one Fark employee’s email account; he tried, but failed, to break into Fark’s Web servers and email. Unfortunately for the hacker, Fark was able to trace his attempts to break into their system back to a machine in Memphis connected to a Comcast high-speed Internet connection.
At the same time, Phillips, already a Fark member, logged into several other user accounts on Fark — either ones he’d created or ones to which he’d somehow gotten access. Phillips also purchased, using PayPal, a paid subscription to TotalFark, a premium Fark service. The accounts all used the same IP addresses as the hacker. Busted. Curtis says he’s “99 percent sure” it’s Phillips — and is now attempting to pursue legal action, seeking detailed data from Comcast, to remove his doubts.
[Continue Reading at Valleywag]
You would think that no one would be stupid enough to do something like this, yet this reported did. I wonder how many and what excuses he’ll say
and Drew has turned down offers before (to buy Fark) so I don’t think News Corp. can use that to get out of it.
Also I’ve got to wonder what activity trigger the knowledge they had gotten rooted. Was it attempts to get where the user wasn’t allowed?
Tags: Interesting, Internet, News, Security
