Teen charged in AOL hacking

A 17-year-old New Yorker is getting a different kind of education. One of hard knocks.

The district attorney for the city of New York filed criminal charges this week against Mike Nieves, alleging he engaged in computer tampering and trepass, possession of illegally obtained computer-related material, and criminal mischief, according to a report in the New York Post.

The teen allegedly infected AOL's network with viruses, in a move to steal employee and customer information. Nieves allegedly scooped up sensitive personal information, including credit card data, from AOL's databases in Manhattan and India, resulting in an estimated $500,000 in damage, the Post reports.

New York police investigators said Nieves attributed the "why" to AOL taking away his accounts and not returning them, according to the Post report. The paper further notes it appears the teen did not use the customer information for his own financial benefit.

Parents, do you know what your kids are doing on their computer right now?

[kylechicago]

Proving ONCE AGAIN that AOL is crap

I remember back in '95 that there was a hack called AOL4Free. It
did exactly as the name says:create and use AOL accounts for
free.And with a little more hacker knowledge,one could also obtain
passwords and account info from other (legit)customers. It took
almost a year before AOL caught on to the whole thing. Now,12
years later and they still can't get thier act together!?! Jesus H...

[RicknMarcia]

AOL4FREE is a trojan... sorta

This is part hoax, part reality. First, there is a Macintosh program named aol4free (note, it does not carry the filename aol4free.com)Second, there is hoax generated that stated aol4free deleted files on users hard drives. Finally, there is a Trojan by the same name, which has been dubbed A4F-Spoof by the antivirus vendors to avoid confusion. (The assumption is that hoax was a spin-off of the Mac program, and the Trojan a spin-off of the hoax). In any event, hoax messages are text email only, whereas any attached executable has the potential to be infected. The Trojan, As4-Spoof, runs the DOS DELTREE command in to delete all files from a user's system.

[RicknMarcia]

aol4free is a hoax

This is part hoax, part reality. First, there is a Macintosh program named aol4free (note, it does not carry the filename aol4free.com)Second, there is hoax generated that stated aol4free deleted files on users hard drives. Finally, there is a Trojan by the same name, which has been dubbed A4F-Spoof by the antivirus vendors to avoid confusion. (The assumption is that hoax was a spin-off of the Mac program, and the Trojan a spin-off of the hoax). In any event, hoax messages are text email only, whereas any attached executable has the potential to be infected. The Trojan, As4-Spoof, runs the DOS DELTREE command in to delete all files from a user's system.