And he knew this because the same thing had happened to more than a dozen online friends. Computer Insider, a newsletter for hackers, estimates that about recreational hackers were hired in the last four years by companies they once targeted.
Of course, a cynic might say hacker schemes look an awful lot like protection rackets. Law-enforcement officials, in particular, complain that deals between companies and their online predators have made prosecution of online security breaches impossible. This is a huge problem. Little wonder, then, that 21 states are now considering versions of something called the Uniform Computer Security Act, which would effectively criminalize immunity deals between hackers and companies—while imposing stiff penalties on the corporations who make such deals.
Not surprisingly, hackers hate the proposed legislation. Less predictable, however, is the opposition of companies that have been hacked. In the story, Restil breaks into the database of a fictional company called Jukt Micronics and posts every employee's salary along with pictures of nude women on the company's internal website, along with his calling card text: "the big bad bionic boy has been here baby.
It was part of a growing trend of hackers breaking the law in order to get big rewards, Glass explained. In fact, the practice had become so common that "hacker agents" were advertising their services in also fictional industry newsletters like Computer Insider. Restil's agent supposedly represented close to hackers—ages nine to Companies were eager to strike deals with those who had hacked them, and that was giving law enforcers headaches, wrote Glass.
The story continued:. Nevada law-enforcement officials got so desperate they ran the following radio advertisement: "Would you hire a shoplifter to watch the cash register? Please don't deal with hackers. Little wonder, then, that 21 states are now considering versions of something called the Uniform Computer Security Act, which would effectively criminalize immunity deals between hackers and companies—while imposing stiff penalties on the corporations who make such deals.
It was all fake. So too was the "National Assembly of Hackers," described as being created to lobby against the new law. The "organization" held a convention at which Restil was feted.
Glass' activities became the subject of a feature film called Shattered Glass. In the years to follow, blogs and other online outlets grew to provide rapid and unforgiving fact-checks to journalists who missed the mark or dared to make up the facts. But the Web has changed things. Media coverage of the story -- in the Washington Post , for example -- suggests that Glass is an ambitious year-old writer who'd overextended himself with high-profile freelance assignments and was bound to "blow up.
I can't say I feel much sympathy for poor Glass and his over-booked assignments for high-paying or prestigious publications like Rolling Stone, Harper's and the New York Times Magazine -- where editors presumably fell in love with his great lead paragraphs.
Fabricating stories for maximum "juiciness" is a loathsome enterprise. Beyond bamboozling the public, it also devalues the work of more diligent writers who actually depend on mundane reporting for their stories -- but whose articles, forced to conform to the less-than-cinematic nature of reality, may come off as pallid next to such feverish concoctions.
And how can we trust anyone? And what could we have done to prevent this? I'd humbly suggest to Sullivan, Lane and the New Republic that preventing such fraud is a relatively simple matter: If you want to run stories about the fascinating but labyrinthine world of hackers, make sure you have an editor or two around who understands it at least well enough to catch blatant lies and fictitious organizations.
Experience within a specific field gives journalists decent noses to sniff out fishy tales from bona fide facts -- that's what got Forbes' editors suspicious in the first place. If an online publication of note had succumbed to a similarly wacky fraud in the offline world -- say, if News.
Proof that Web journalism has no standards! I wouldn't reflexively turn the tables on the print press, though. Bad luck and a determined con artist Glass reportedly devised both a fake corporate site on America Online and a bogus voice-mail message for Jukt Micronics can trip up any publication, in print or on the Web.
But the next time you hear some pundit proclaim that the online press is inherently inferior to its print and broadcast predecessors, remember the Glass saga. Like previous goofs, such as Pierre Salinger's gullibility over TWA Flight reports that had circulated and been debunked on the Net, this latest incident suggests that mainstream journalism still holds pockets of ignorance when it comes to technology and Internet coverage.
Certainly, U. But the New Republic's gaffe with "Hack Heaven" makes it plain that many publications still have a long way to go.
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