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WebTVs Hacked To Dial 911 Called Cyberterrorism
from the stupid?--yes.--terrorist?--no dept
A guy who was pissed off at some WebTV owners sent them all a virus he created which caused their WebTVs to dial 911 instead of phoning home to Microsoft. He was tracked down by following the trail of the program. Besides calling 911 (and causing the police to respond to a number of homes), he had it mail off information to a certain address. The folks at Microsoft worked out that that same address had emailed a version of the virus earlier to another WebTV customer, and figured that he was probably the culprit. The guy has been charged with cyberterrorism. This seems a bit extreme to me. Clearly, he deserves to be charged with something - but cyberterrorism seems to go a bit far. Also, I wonder why no one thought to set up WebTVs so that they couldn't call 911. In fact, why would any modem be allowed to directly call 911?
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Simple.
Because YOU the consumer (that means you Mike) won't pay extra for such a 'feature'. If such a 'feature' were to cost you $5 per phone-using device, would you pay that $5?
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Re: Simple.
Wow !
An istance where WebTV was actually compatible with something !
Those boys @ Microsoft never fail to amaze me !
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Locale-sensitive modems?
What if you are behind a PBX that requires 9 to get an outside line? Blocking 911 would mean that you couldn't call anything that began with 11.
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We have prisoners being held in outdoor jail cells in Guantanamo Bay (hope I spelled that right) that are there for merely thinking about committing the act (conspiring)...this guy actually did an act that could have had dire consequences if those emergency resources were required elsewhere at that time.
The Guantanamo Bay reference was not meant as a political one...just an analogy.
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