Boing Boing: Teenaged girl social engineers the hacker who ripped off her dad

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Teenaged girl social engineers the hacker who ripped off her dad

A teenaged girl who, at 12, was duped into installing a trojan on her father's PC by a flirty Lothario, has run the little fraudster to ground. The hacker used the trojan to acquire her father's credit-card number and run up charges, and then came back for more. The girl flirted back, sending her crooked suitor a quiz that asked for his personal info, a successful social engineering hack that resulted in his arrest.

"I told him I wanted to see if we matched up. I was laughing when he e-mailed me back with all his details. He gave his name, address and even his mobile phone, which I had not asked for."
Danielle passed on this information to the police who were able to track him down to Moffat, near Dumfries in Scotland, through the email address he used to flirt with the young Nottingham girl.

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posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:45:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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