Ah, youth. Ready to take on the world, today's generation of dynamic, tech-immersed youngsters have grown up alongside the Internet. Firsthand, and sometimes single-handedly, they have advanced some of today's hottest technology trends, from peer-to-peer networking, to massively multiplayer online games, to social networks and instant messaging. And along the way, a small, sociopathic number of them have behaved very, very badly.
[ For further tales of bone-headed cyberschnookery, see the original "Stupid hacker tricks" story ]
Even the very definition of poor online behavior has been advanced by these cyberschnooks. Armed with broadband and lots of unsupervised free time in front of the computer, shielded by the relative anonymity of the Web, they've managed to transform themselves from Those Neighborhood Kids Who Set Fires and Torture Small Animals into international menaces who destroy online communities, damage the reputation and utility of online services, and steal anything worth taking from the Net -- all while mangling the English language as thoroughly as possible.
Fortunately for the rest of us, while using the Net's multiplier effect to their nefarious benefit, most are as sloppy and egotistical as we've come to expect from the young and delinquent, leaving a bread-crumb trail a mile wide for authorities to follow. And when they cross the line, as many of these tech-savvy Nelson Muntzes eventually do, it's with more than a little schadenfreude that white-hat vigilantes posse up to take them down.
It is to these ne'er-do-wells that this latest installment of "Stupid hacker tricks" is dedicated. Call it Portrait of the Stupid Hacker as a Young Man.
[ Stupid juvy hacker trick No. 1: You got Rbot in Mytob, you Zlob ]
You got Rbot in Mytob, you Zlob
Perp
Farid "Diab10" Essebar
Status
Currently a guest of the Moroccan prison system. His prison sentence is scheduled to end later this year.
Dossier
In 2005, at the ripe old age of 18, Farid Essebar probably thought he was untouchable. Working with accomplices in his home country of Morocco and in Turkey, the Russian-born Essebar wrote and distributed the Mytob, Rbot, and Zotob botnet Trojans. The malware infected thousands of computers at large corporations, U.S. government departments, and media companies and was built to log keystrokes and steal financial and personal data.
[ For more IT-related idiocy, check out "Stupid user tricks" and "More stupider user tricks redux" ]
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