MySpace sex offender caught by hacker
There’s another reason why not to think that hackers may do only some harmful acitvities: Renowned hacker Kevin Poulsen has helped police arrest a convicted sex offender on MySpace.com, using results from a Perl script he wrote several months ago. Poulsen, the former news editor for SecurityFocus and now editor at Wired News, correlated data mined from the U.S. National Sex Offender Registry with over a million profiles on MySpace.com. While his automated Perl script resulted in a large number of false positives, he was still able to find 744 confirmed sex offenders with MySpace profiles after examining just one third of the data.
The search ultimately resulted in one arrest, of repeat sex offender Andrew Lubrano in New York. Like many sex offenders, Lubrano registered his MySpace account using his real name. MySpace is increasingly being targeted by sexual predators, as the popular social networking site attracts at large number of children and teenagers. Poulsen’s Perl script, about 1,000 lines in length, is expected to be released to the open source community later this week. By the way, can someone already explain me what’s so interesting on MySpace? I haven’t found its appeal yet…
Comments(19)
“By the way, can someone already explain me what’s so interesting on MySpace? I haven’t found its appeal yet…”
Same question here…
the same here!
ps. Martin u are from europe arent you? im from greece
my god its like to see all the different people ‘n stuff like, you know like all different cultures like africa, europe, america.
and its like a great place to share your feelings with people like you’ve never met before, like i find it so interesting thinking ‘n stuff…
typical my-space entry!
ITS NOT GREAT! dont give the site hits its evil.
i’m pretty sure it was founded by emo king who’s trying to take over the world with his black personailty. altho i could be wrong.
Martin, if you want to know the secret of myspace, just read my NTi forum post about Blogs.
Same applies to myspace. It started with good intentions, but ends up with nothing but a bunch of weirdo nutball shutins and sex offenders. Shutins attract more shutins, and the cycle grows.
I think these sites are great actually. Oh, I still hate the poeple that use them , but think about it. 10 years ago, you go outside, and what do you see? A bunch of nerdy retards with no people skills. Playing magic cards, or D&D cards, acting like retards.
Now go outside, do you see them? Nope, why? Cause they are at home typing up their pitiful life onto their myspace blog. The more people who post on those sites, the less morons and idiots I have to deal with in my day to day life.
haven´t found anyhing interesting on myspace yet
don´t have an account don´t want one don´t need one since i dont go on myspace
i think its an american phenomenon
Myspace is about socializing and stuff that only chicks bother about. Us guys just don’t dig it, so not to worry…
i met my gf on myspace
very nice comment phishy
there will be something about it…
Sounds like something out of Numb3rs used in the real world
I have friends who have also met their gf/bfs on MySpace, pretty funny. I like it to get in touch with people, I’ve found some people that I never would have reconnected with otherwise, but I don’t spend too much time on it. I never got how people could spend days and days changing their profiles and collecting 8000 friends…
The Wired article was pretty insance, just adds credence to those shows like Dateline that are busting those guys. I’ve reported a few sketchy things I’ve seen online to Cybertipline and then they follow up with authorities – not a bad resource to have in this day and age. At this point we know there is a problem, people just need to start acting to keep kids safer. Kids need to understand what’s going on and that the internet is a “real” thing, parents need to stay up on the technology and teachers need to drive the point home imo. Hopefully people can be safe about using sites like this, because I think they are a fun thing for millions of people.
anyone who has a myspace is a pussy
simple as that
myspace is feckin awful, badly coded crap, check out stumbleupon its far better!
lol writing a perl script that can search through profiles is hardly hacking.
phishybongwaters
October 17th, 2006 | 12:26
dude ur comment made me laugh, but it is true what u said
can’t stop giggling.
um.. MySpace is so you can um.. talk to other people and stuff. But seriously, I just have it so hot girls I know can send me random comments and shit since I move around a lot, It’s good to keep in touch with hot women, that way when you see them it’s not awkward and your opportunities are open
I never saw the point to myspace, but looks like it may have some point now…
@ Jon
it clearly says “Renowned hacker Kevin Poulsen has helped police arrest a convicted sex offender on MySpace.com, using results from a Perl script he wrote several months ago” which doesn’t state that writing scripts is hacking
CalcioNo9 this it doesn´t say he HACKED myspace just that he IS a hacker
look it up on wikipedia ..
If I need to explain the appeal of myspace.com then U R 2 old to understand. Besides that it is great for exposing pedophiles. And to know what your kids are up to. Tdyed63.