http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-4460608-0.html?tag=st.ne.1002.thed.sf
By Robert Lemos
Special to CNET News.com
January 12, 2001, 12:55 p.m. PT
The law appears to have caught up with "Pimpshiz," the hacker
allegedly responsible for defacing some 200 Web sites last year with
pro-Napster graffiti.
On Friday, police investigating the Web site break-ins confirmed they
had searched the Pleasant Hill, Calif., home of a 17-year-old high
school student and confiscated computer equipment last month.
Police said the raid came on a tip from the FBI, which fingered the
suspected mastermind of a Web graffiti campaign protesting a copyright
infringement lawsuit filed against Napster by the record industry in
June. A court-ordered shutdown of the popular song-swapping service is
on appeal.
"Music is art, an extension of ourselves," read one August Web
defacement. "Major label record companies do not sell art; they sell
50 cents of plastic at $15 because they see music as an industry they
can control. Maybe 5 percent of your $15 will end up going to the
artist."
In an interview, the teenager admitted that what he did was "probably
wrong," but he seemed proud of the defacements.
"My defacements are protests," he said. "I want people to think about
the Napster case positively, not negatively."
The Contra Costa County district attorney's office had only been
investigating for a few weeks before it searched the teenager's home
under a warrant, Deputy District Attorney Dodie Katague said Friday.
"The FBI came to us and said, 'We have this information. Do you want
to do something with it?'" he said, adding that the district
attorney's office has not decided whether to press charges. Katague
said the defacements will most likely be the more minor of the two
sets of charges that his office could file.
"We are investigating whether he bought some of the equipment we found
with others' credit-card numbers," he said.
The state attorneys are waiting for the FBI to complete forensics on
the computer equipment seized from the suspect's home. The equipment
amounted to three computers, two Palm III devices, a DVD player, and
several boxes of computer-related equipment, according to the
teenager.
Although the teenager has admitted to almost 200 defacements, many of
those are foreign Web sites outside the jurisdiction of the FBI.
The teenager used a vulnerability that only recently came to light to
compromise Web servers. Scanning up to 22,000 Web sites every hour, he
located those susceptible to the exploit and used a program to deface
several Web sites at a time. Under the "Pimpshiz" moniker, the
teenager admits to defacing a dozen or so military sites as well.
Security site and defacement tracker Attrition.org has credited
"Pimpshiz" with 20 mass defacements, each consisting of the same
message.
One thing the investigation won't get to the bottom of is the meaning
of the teenager's handle.
"When I first started chatting on (America Online about four years
ago), my friend gave the name to me. I've been using it ever since,"
the teenager said. "I don't know what it means."
The teenager is looking for legal representation.
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Received on Sat Jan 13 02:03 CST 2001