Saturday, December 23, 2006

Congressional aide (R) admits trying to hire hackers to boost his college GPA

According to Network World's Paul McNamara, the communications director for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Todd Shriber, hired two 'hackers' to break into the computer of his alma mater, Texas Christian University, and change his college grades.He went trolling for the law-breaking 'hackers' on a computer security website. But instead of finding anyone to do his dirty work he came across a couple non-criminally minded techies who proceeded to chat him up about his scheme, draw out in explicit detail that what he was asking them to do involved mulitple felonies and then posted their complete email correspondence on the site, attrition.org.

This all happened back in September. But it was apparently only this week that McNamara, who has a blog at the Network World site, figured out who Todd Shriber was and started trying to get the guy on the record about what the hell he was thinking.After what was apparently a good deal of prodding, Shriber told McNamara: "I did something that's greatly out of character for me and it's a mistake that I regret." Asked why he attempted this criminal enterprise: "I would rather not get into that at all. I just got a little too far ahead of myself thinking about things down the road." More

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