‘Cyber-crime’ term has a lasting scary impression upon users. The very thought of becoming a victim scares us. And it’s almost impossible to get through it (well at least for basic users). While we have looked upon one side of cyber-crime cases, there are yet others that can give you a few laughs. Here are 5 cyber-crime incidents that are no less than any other interesting story you’d come across about hackers.
A Hidden “Girl Detector” in Windows:
One fine day, a group of hackers decided to be pain in the neck of a large computer and software company and so integrated a Girl Detector in Windows Operating System. This Girl Detector, on the basis of your usage, would know if you are a male or a female and would subtly change the operating characteristics. The Spoof states…
The girl detector worked like this: using the computer’s built-in video camera and microphone, the operating system built user profiles that attempted to determine which consistent users were adult females. Once the user was calculated to be an adult female, the system then listened for tell-tale phrases such as “Honey, how do I..”, “Hey, sweetie, tell me again how to…”, “What’s that password again?”, “Why won’t this print?” and other phrases and questions that the detector was programmed to interpret as coming from a less-than-expert user. That profile was then flagged by the system and placed in the “Let’s phuck with her” cache.”
Once all this was successfully carried out, the computer would behave indifferently such as not following the usual steps to a print or web pages not getting loaded, etc. This hack bewildered many users.
Cupcake Hack:
We’d generally expect a hacking attack – which is more a prank than a serious attack – from teens acting their age. But that doesn’t seem to be the case always. Apparently, organizations find prank hacks amusing too. This was the case with Cupcake Hack. Back in 2011, British intelligence service MI6 took over a radical Muslim preacher. The team concentrated on his online magazine and replaced an article on ‘How to Manufacture Pipe Bombs in Your Kitchen’ with a collection of cupcake recipes. Those recipes were borrowed from Ellen DeGeneres’s show. This hack made a lot more sense than to put out recipes for manufacture bombs.
Letters to The Editor About Phone Hacking:
Some of you might have come across a cyber-crime. But has the hacker contacted you and annoyed you? This one did, back in 2011. This was phone hacking and the users were later bothered with emails like this, “Dear Sir,
every time I try to make a phone call, I start coughing. This is no joke, since I have developed a really bad hacking cough and I struggle to make myself understood in the phone conversation. My pen pal, Haile Selassie, who lives in Ethiopia and works for I think Local Government up there (he is always going on about eradicating slavery), reckons it is due to my smoking Capstan Full Strength cigarettes every time I am on the phone. This is because I am nervous of speaking on the telephone. When I was a young girl, I was shouted at by a distant aunt on the phone who was worried about goats trampling her cloches, and since then I have suffered. I do not smoke Capstan, or anything else, at any other times. Yes, there is the hookah, at Christmas and Lady-Day – the balsamic odour of Eastern tobacco is, I find, a wonderful sedative – but nought else. I wonder, do any of your readers have any tips about how to combat on-phone nerves in such a way as to obviate the use of strong tobacco and its pulmonary consequences?
Yours sincerely,
Stanley Knyffe,
Salisbury Plain.”
AC/DC Hackers:
This malware was detected in 2012 and followed all traditional hacking activities such as shutting down the system or masquerading the hardware. But it also had a unique signature. It would activate workstations anytime randomly at mid-night and make them play “Thunderstruck” at the maximum volume. Seems like hackers were a big time AC/DC fan and they amusingly integrated the band in their program.
Sometimes even Hackers Feel Sorry:
Have you ever found a hacker having mercy on innocent users? Well, Australian hackers do have! They have been given all the rights to successfully conduct hacking after Howard gave them away to the multi-nations. A hacking team developed and executed data acquisition Trojans. But that brought them in rather bad repo amongst citizens. This made hackers claim a statement, “After all we have a superior moral agenda and our collective technical skills make both IBM and the Feds look like gummy bears”
When they would finish a website, they would publish a URL where Australians could see what data has been hacked, to whom it has been sold.
Crime is certainly not something we’d expect and want, but when hackers are such, they surely can give you few laughs, if you are not much a stickler for the perfect world. We hope not more such stories or the severe ones proliferate, although these incidents probably would make you smile in spite of yourself.