Posted on 09/12/2007 2:02:17 PM PDT by SubGeniusX
Fark.com has sued a man it accuses of attempting to hack into the e-mail and computers of its staff members.
The Web site, founded in Lexington, allows members to comment on postings of oddball news stories. It has developed a large national following.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington on Tuesday, says an unknown computer hacker sent e-mails on Aug. 8 imploring Fark staff members to visit a particular Web site. For the next four days, Fark staff received forged e-mails that appeared to come from other staff members, containing links to three Web sites. The links contained Trojan horse programs, malicious software that allows secret unauthorized remote access to computers.
The lawsuit says the purpose of the programs appeared to be to steal passwords from infected computers and download them to a computer in Tennessee. It says the hacker attempted to log in to Fark e-mail and staff member accounts using stolen password information.
The hacker got into one of the e-mail accounts of a Fark moderator, said the Web site’s founder, Drew Curtis of Versailles. The infection did not affect the Web site, he said.
“We got lucky because they did not get all the way in,” Curtis said.
Curtis says he is “99.9 percent sure” he has identified the hacker, who he believes works at a Memphis television station. He said he is waiting to obtain information via subpoena to confirm his suspicions.
“That’s what is weird: We don’t know what they were trying to do,” Curtis said.
The lawsuit seeks undisclosed economic and punitive damages and a permanent injunction against future hacking attempts.
THE 'social news' website Fark claimed that a hack working for a Fox-owned TV station in Memphis had a go at cracking their site. The site's owner, Drew Curtis, is suing Fox for the attempted hacking.
Silicon Valley gossip magazine Valleywag outted Darrell Phillips as the hack Curtis says is responsible for breaking into his site.
Apparently insiders at Fox told Valleywag that Phillips has a history of sending dodgy email attachments and Curtis claims that a trail leads to Phillips' machine. The hacker had access to a machine inside the Fox network, and control of Phillips' PayPal account, he claimed.
The facts are that on August 8, several Fark staff received suspicious email encouraging Fark staff to visit a particular website. In August 12 similar emails continued to arrive for other Fark volunteer staff, most pretending to be from other staff.
The emails linked to three websites which installed two different trojan horse programs. All the emails came from a server in Australia and any infected computer would try to communicate with a computer in Tennessee. The Trojan would look for passwords and mail them on.
The IP address of the Tennessee server showed up in multiple attempts to break into Fark accounts belonging to both staff and users. It was successful once.
Evidence Trial Here: Valleywag: How a Fox linked hacker failed to fool Fark
/Duke Sucks
PING
Is this where we start posting bad photoshops about hacking?
Ping...
to a TFarkette
One of my son’s favorites.
Once the perp’s identity is known he’ll be the subject of a Fark Photoshop, and rightfully so.
Here are the Farker’s comments on this story:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3064117
Interesting comment from the Fark thread linked at #7 above:
“The theory of the hacking seems to be (as previously speculated by posters in previous threads on this story) that the TV station in question is in the process of starting a Fark-like website, and the reporter wanted to steal the source code that runs Fark.”
I can see it now....
Email that says, “Someone at Fark has sent you a funny ecard...”
Make sense. Most reporters I know are lazy and all their stories seem identical, which is analogous to stealing source code. Why write something original when you can copy from someone else?
Fark is a leftist looney annex of the DU and Daily KOS. I can’t go there without having to take BP medicine beforehand. That site’s ONLY redeeming value is Caturday and it’s been lame for a while too.
it has both flavors ... but the mods tend to greenlight more “Conservative” posts
Are you kidding me????
Do you even read the comments on the threads? That place is filled with liberal useful idiots
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