MySpace and Crime: No end to people's stupidity

I was recently asked by a family member if I could do a small favor.

The story goes like this - son goes to holiday party.  Son gets very, very drunk.  Friends drive son home.  Son is worshipping the porcelain god for 48 hours and when he finally can sit up straight he checks his wallet and finds that his $138 in cash is missing.  Son becomes outraged.  Son goes to MySpace and finds the profiles of the two people that he remembers were the ones that gave him a ride home from the party.  One of the young men has posted on his myspace page "I robbed that dude last night man!"  Son downloads a copy of the page to save as "evidence" of the robbery.

This is where I come into the picture.  I am approached by the son and his father.  They ask me if I can hack into the kid's myspace page and plant malicious code so that the young man's computer will be infected or wiped out.  I laugh out loud.  "Is that the best plan of revenge you can come up with?", I say.

I explain to them that I cannot hack anything any time or anywhere no matter how tempting the thought is.  I am a security expert and I hold to a code of ethics that I will not violate.  As much as I wanted to help the pair, I gave them some other ideas about how the money can be recovered.  I now feel sorry for the young man who robbed the son because he is never going to know what hit him.  He may move out of our town once the clan gets done with him.  

There are several "life lessons" that I hope the son learned.  1.  Do not drink more than you should.  2.  Do not carry cash in your wallet that is more than you need, and especially if you are going to drink.  3.  Do not hang out with people you can't trust.  4.  MySpace is evil but can be found useful at times.

This incident also reminded me of a story I read this week Congressional aide admits trying to hire hackers -- to boost his college GPA.  "The communications director for Montana's lone congressman solicited the services of two men he falsely believed to be criminally minded hackers-for-hire -- with the expressed goal of jacking up his college GPA."

I guess there is no end to people's stupidity.  The son who drank too much, the stupid young man who did the robbery and then posted his deed on myspace.  The idiot who tried to hire a hacker to fix his grades.