http://www.thisissouthampton.co.uk/hampshire/southampton/news/SOTON_NEWS_NEWS2.html 28 June 2004 By Echo reporter A SUPERMARKET shelf stacker woke up to find Hampshire detectives and the US Secret Service on his doorstep after he blackmailed Playboy for $100. Simon Jones, 25, used his computer knowledge to obtain user names and passwords for the private section of the American porn empire's website. >From the bedroom of his Rownhams home, the science degree holder e-mailed Playboy, claiming he belonged to an elite band of hackers whose sole aim was to gain access to adult-based servers to retrieve account information. He told them: "Our current account listing runs to about 21,000 individual compromised accounts and is growing steadily. "While many hackers do this purely for the purpose of hacking and gaining control of Web servers, my motives are far simpler. I want to sell the accounts on to the owner or highest bidders." He told the shocked security staff: "There are currently ten accounts from playboy.com that you get first choice. I look forward to hearing from you," signing himself as Pastmaster 69. Charles Thomas, prosecuting at Southampton Crown Court, described how Jones had obtained the user names and passwords through access to a different site which was an Internet channel. Armed with that information, he then approached Playboy for money. They indicated they were interested in buying the accounts for $50 each. Playboy bought two initially for which $100 was forwarded through an Internet-based payment system into his account. Mr Thomas said Playboy carried out their own review at a cost of $6,500 and found their database had not been compromised, otherwise it would have cost about $1m to set up again with the potential loss of subscribers fearful of their identity being compromised. Jones was arrested at home by police accompanied by the American Secret Service after the payment had been traced to his bank account. Jones, of Greenwood Avenue, pleaded guilty to blackmail and was jailed for two years. He was of previous good character, the court heard. In mitigation, James Leonard said Jones had got himself into considerable trouble through "a whim" and no subscribers had been compromised. He said: "There cannot be very many young people waking up one morning to find the police and the American Secret Service inquiring about their Internet use. "Jones only made one demand before he was arrested six months later. A more dedicated, sophisticated blackmailer would have carried on. On the face of it, he had this steady flow of income to be exploited, but it stopped." Mr Leonard added: "It shows how far he was prepared to go. It shows no criminal sophistication but naivety. "He is genuinely bewildered by the consequences and wants to apologise for all the trouble he has caused and didn't wish to compromise Playboy." Passing sentence, Judge John Boggis QC accepted neither the Playboy database nor its subscribers had been compromised, that Jones had received only $100 and that he was remorseful. He said: "You were bored and disappointed you didn't find employment in the computer world as you hoped for. But this was a planned invasion. Your e-mail to Playboy set out your motive to extract money." _________________________________________ ISN mailing list Sponsored by: OSVDB.org - For 15 cents a day, you could help feed an InfoSec junkie! (Broke? Spend 15 minutes a day on the project!)
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