The Weekly Round-Up: 02.07.04

The line between criminal genius and hapless moron is a fine one as a Southampton man discovered this week.

Simon Jones was a supermarket shelf stacker with a rudimentary grasp of hacking skills and a chip on his shoulder.

Feeling the world was against him he decided to hold one of the most prominent websites on the net to ransom - Playboy.

Simon thought that having got hold of some of the site's customer subscriber details he could blackmail Playboy for its big bongo bucks.

So was planted the germ of his idea. Unfortunately for Simon his plan was rubbish. Nervous, would-be criminal genii should look away now.

From his high-tech crime centre (bedroom) in his secret underground lair (parent's house) the criminal mastermind (halfwit) launched his plan to bring the porn giant to its knees, figuratively speaking.

Simon managed to convince the company he had confidential user details obtained by hacking into the Playboy buxom servers and would exploit them if they didn't pay up (see here).

In fact, all Simon had were two usernames and passwords but faced with the evidence Playboy thought it was dealing with the real deal.

It decided to settle with the hacker and through gritted teeth asked how much he wanted.

Operating under the pseudonym Paymaster 69 (nice touch) Simon demanded... $100 (and no, there isn't a little 'm' or 'bn' missing from the end of that number).

Playboy agreed, perhaps wondering if this criminal madman was paying some strange homage to Austin Powers' arch-nemesis Dr Evil (see here) and asked him how he would like to receive the money.

Simple Simon demanded the company credit the $100 (that's about £60) to his bank and passed on his account details.

Now, the eagle-eyed reader may have just spotted how the US secret service tracked their man down.

The Feds caught up with him a few months later - presumably it took them that long to stop laughing.

Jones this week told a sniggering courtroom, rather unnecessarily, that he wasn't "in it for the money" and launched his crime spree because he was bored with his mundane life stacking supermarket shelves and was bitter about not finding a job in IT.

The judge showed little sympathy, convicted Simon of blackmail and sentenced him to two years in jail - which on balance may be just a little bit harsh.

Then again the ill-conceived blackmail scheme did cost Playboy more than $100 after the company ordered a review of its security systems costing several thousand dollars.

The company also admitted it had considered a complete overhaul of its database that would have put it back millions of dollars.

Something which would have ended up costing Playboy supremo Hugh Hefner an awful lot of bunny tails, smoking jackets and Viagra...

Microsoft's Tech Ed Europe conference kicked off in somewhat noisy fashion in Amsterdam as over 5,000 software developers and IT professionals joined in what is thought to be the largest drum circle staged under one roof, ever.

According to the press release, the world’s largest (and surely only?) interactive drumming company the Drum Café led the deranged, tech-savvy amateur percussionists through an ear-splitting session of "powerful African drum rhythms".

The session was led by "world-acclaimed drumming facilitator" Brett Schlesinger, who clearly knows how to carve out a niche market for himself.

(Anyway, how hard can 'drum facilitating' be? - "Hi. Here's a drum, here's some sticks, now hit that with those. BANG. Well done. Next!")

The drumming was a big hit with the software giant's event facilitators.

“We wanted to incorporate an activity that would create a feeling of community,” bellowed Microsoft event manager Dave Sorsoli in an unnecessarily loud voice as he struggled to hear himself over the ringing noise in his ears.

Just before fainting he roared (possibly): "The sound of everyone drumming together was phenomenal and the atmosphere in the hall was electric. This was a powerful way to open the event.”

Indeed but quite frankly the Round-Up would rather be locked in a windowless room with a hundred hyper-active kids armed with whistles.

Meanwhile, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates was banging his own security drum this week as he announced in an 'executive email' that he's stepping up the battle against spam (see here).

Gates said: "It's still a major problem - an invasion of privacy, a costly drain on time and resources and, as a carrier of worms and viruses, a significant threat to computer security."

He touted Microsoft's success to date with its recent anti-spam innovation and claimed its free Hotmail service now blocks about 95 per cent of incoming junk email.

Despite its popularity in some quarters Gates, knocked the idea of paying per email, as people do for postal services, and instead said the company is committed to delivering a technological solution to the spam problem.

He added: "The goal instead is to thwart spammers' misuse of the internet, so that everyone else can continue to enjoy its enormous benefits."

Bravo Bill!

Microsoft has merged two email authentication methods into a single proposed standard in an attempt to clamp down on the spam and phishing menace (find out more here)

While some security experts are skeptical the fix will hold up for long against determined and tech-savvy spam merchants it's certainly a step in the right direction for the world's biggest software company against what is a global problem.

It's estimated that spam now accounts for the majority of all email traffic, with 99 per cent of the stuff originating from just five countries (see here).

Meanwhile, a whopping 30 million Americans fell for phishing scams last year (see here.)

(What's this phishing malarkey you cry? Well take a gander at our handy Cheat Sheet and get the facts on the latest big email scam here.)

Meanwhile, back at the Tech Ed conference Microsoft was busy talking up its Windows XP Service Pack 2 - a hefty 300MB of upgrades which the company is touting as another step towards its goal of 'trustworthy computing' (see: http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39121762,00.htm ).

Security product manager Steve Riley nicknamed SP2 'Shorthorn' in reference to some of the features that have been added in from the development of Microsoft's next major version of its operating system, Longhorn.

Speaking of which, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has given developers a first peek at Mac OS X Tiger (see here) and suggested cheekily that Microsoft's history of operating system upgrades is based on imitation rather than innovation.

Slogans at the event included: "Redmond, start your photocopiers", as the company predicted that Longhorn will simply mimic its own OS X cat-themed updates.

Miaow... saucer of milk for Mr Jobs' table please.

Ironically, it's Apple that's been the one accused of copycat behaviour this week with one third-party developer accusing the company of stealing his big idea.

Arlo Rose is outraged at the striking similarity that Tiger's Dashboard application bears to Konfabulator - his own $25 Mac program.

Both apps allow quick access to small programs called widgets, which perform a range of snazzy little tasks like to-do lists, weather alerts and RSS news aggregators.

"It's insulting, is what it is," said Rose in a telephone interview with silicon.com sister site CNET. "They could have at least offered to work with us or to buy it."

However, Apple insists Dashboard is the result of company's own innovation and noted that 'widgets' have long been a part of NextStep OS and Mac OS X.

(A quick search on the word 'widgets' in the Help database of OS X Panther resulted in: 'No matching help topics were found'.)

Still Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller was adamant, if not a little huffy: "It's not his stuff. What we've done is ours."

Meanwhile, Rose tried to turn the tables on Apple and Tiger (which doesn't ship until 2005 - at least a year before Longhorn, lest we forget) by way of an advert on his website.

"Cupertino: Start your photocopiers," reads the Konfabulator home page. "Why wait until the first half of 2005, when you can get the original Dashboard now?"

You can't beat a good spat.

What's the world coming to? Apple accused of stealing other people's ideas, re-branding them as its own without credit and calling it innovation.

Sound like the actions of another West Coast operating system company?

And finally this week: bosses, eh?

Don't you suspect secretly - or know - they're coasting while the real work is done by the exploited, overworked and possibly invisible IT staff? (see here.)

Vernon Blake certainly does and what's more he proved it. Unfortunately, he did himself out of a job in the process.

Vernon became so frustrated with his boss's 'cyber-loafing' he installed spyware on his computer to prove it was used for little more than playing games.

The illicit software did indeed prove that his work-shy boss spent, on average, 70 per cent of his time playing Solitaire (although given recent research that may tell a sadder story, here).

Vernon exposed his findings triumphantly. The result: a limp slap on the wrist for the boss and a P45 for Vernon.

Justice? Don't talk to Vernon about justice (see here).

His boss' written warning, which may or may not have been written by Scott Adams, read simply: "While your work ethic and your production are above reproach, management-level personnel must be mindful not to compromise their ability to manage subordinates."

The information Blake accessed could easily have been of a sensitive nature and his access to it may not only have breached company rules but will most probably also have broken the law.

It's just a bit galling for Vernon, one imagines.

Meanwhile, take a moment to vote in our latest poll here, also about workplace productivity, and if your boss saunters into view just jab ALT + TAB to get back to your terminal window - that always fools them...

Psst! Want to find out how you can shave hours off tedious, confusing tasks, discover productive, new ways of working and get to know your colleagues a whole lot better in the process? Find out here.

And finally, remember sport really isn't important. At all. Oh to hell with it. Tiger Tim indeed...

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