Alleged WebTV 911 hacker charged with cyberterrorism
FBI agents arrested a Louisiana man last week under the cyberterrorism provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act for allegedly tricking a handful of MSN TV users into running a malicious e-mail attachment that reprogrammed their set-top boxes to dial 9-1-1 emergency response.
According to prosecutors, David Jeansonne, 43, was targeting 18 specific MSN TV users in an online squabble when he crafted the script in July 2002, and sent it out disguised as a tool to change the colors on MSN TV's user interface. Though the code didn't mass-mail itself to others, some of the recipients were sufficiently fooled that they forwarded it to friends, for a total of 21 victims.
Known as WebTV before it was acquired by Microsoft, MSN TV works with television set-top boxes to allow users to surf the Web and send and receive e-mail without using a PC.
The boxes connect to the Internet through a local dial-up number. The malicious script changed the dial-up to 9-1-1. If a victim didn't go online again after being infected, the box would summon help anyway when it tried to make an automatic daily call to the network at midnight.
The code also crossmailed itself to the 18 targeted users, so it would appear in some cases to have come from someone the victim knew. Additionally, it posted victims' browser histories to a particular website, and e-mailed their hardware serial number to the free webmail account "timmy@postmark.net."
