So the feds have caught one of the people who created a variant of the Blaster worm. The media (at least on cable news) is making it seem like the kid is a much bigger fish than he actually is--the first report I saw on Fox News made it sound like they caught the creator, and only when you look at the details do you discover that this Jeffrey Lee Parson kid isn't much more than a script kiddie. All he did was make a couple of small changes to the worm, and his variant only infected about 7,000 computers, which is nothing compared to the number of computers infected by the original worm. Parson wasn't too bright, because he had his variant contact his website, which he registed using his real name and address. In other words, the feds barely had to do any work to catch him.
The thing is, the only people who ever get caught are teenagers who don't do a good job of covering their tracks, which gives people the impression that the only people who commit these sort of computer crimes are bored and isolated teenage males. We don't know who the people who don't get caught are, and I wouldn't be surprised if the people who don't get caught do not fit the teenage-male-as-hacker/virus-writer demographic. The teenage males aren't the ones I'm worried about, they aren't good enough to avoid getting caught. The people I'm worried about are the ones who are criminally minded instead of just bored/curious, and who have the skills to really create a mess. I don't think that we've really seen the extent of what could be done by dedicated criminals or terrorists.
Posted by kathryn at Agosto 31, 2003 12:12 AM | TrackBackI totally agree, we should be worrying about the ones that are smart enough to avoid detection than these little scapegoats they feed to the public.
Posted by: mkrueger at Agosto 31, 2003 02:46 AM