By The Way...

They arrested the teenager who created the "Blaster" virus which choked up the Internet earlier this month, partially due to the fact that they didn't really try to cover his tracks at all:

"As a byproduct of each infection, every victim's computer sent signals back to the 't33kid.com' Web site that Parson had registered in his own name, listing his home address. The computer bug also included an infecting file called 'teekids.exe' that experts quickly associated with Parson's Web site: Hackers routinely substitute '3' for the letter "e" in their online aliases."

People are making the assumption that the reason the kid made it easy to track the virus back to him was because for his mad hacker skillz (he's l33t!), he's not very smart -- he didn't think far enough ahead to realize that having the virus reporting back to his personal site might give him away. But I have to wonder if that's it.

Follow: The way the video game companies get new progammers is that kids create "mods" -- new versions or levels of a popular game. The best modders get hired professionally. As it happens, some former "hackers" go into computer network security when they get older: Kevin Mitnick, the most famous hacker, now has his own network security firm. Maybe this kid wanted people to find him. Sure, he'll probably have to do some time in a minimum security prison first. But after that, he'll have job prospects.

Not the way I'd want my kid to job hunt. But what can I say. It's a tough economy at the moment.

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• #1 Comment from swhstigerkatie 
  2/13/04 3:27 AM | Permalink

  you are just halarious!!! really really awesome. i'm so impressed with every entry i read. you're genius.