0x80

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0x80 is a hacker interviewed by the Washington Post about his lucrative business in running "botnets", or networks of remotely controlled personal computers without the owner's consent. The article in the February 19th Washington Post detailed 0x80's earnings of around $US 6,800 a month sending out spam from controlled personal computers. He does this by installing spyware called "adware" in exchange for a per-computer commission.

0x80 agreed to be interviewed for the Post article under the condition that he not be identified by name or home town.

After a link to the article on SlashDot, a reader used the IPTC information encoded into the image to learn that Roland, Oklahoma had been entered as the picture's location. The Washington Post removed all of the images from their site and commented "As you know we take our obligations with sources very seriously and I don't want to comment about any speculation about sources" in response to an interview question asking "Are you aware that the Post failed to scrub the metadata from the images used in this article, leaving information about your town?" (question text edited by the Washington Post; original is not available)[From interview of Brian Krebs at Washington Post].

Image Metadata

SLUG: mag/hacker

DATE: 12/19/2005

PHOTOGRAPHER: Sarah L. Voisin/TWP

id#: LOCATION: Roland, OK

CAPTION:

PICTURED: Canon Canon EOS 20D

Adobe Photoshop CS2 Macintosh 2006:02:16 15:44:49 Sarah L. Voisin

External links

• [Washington Post article]
• [Slashdot comments exposing image metadata]
• [Post blog about victims of 0x80 hacking]
• [Possible location] via Google Maps
• [Cheyenne Gentlemen's Club] - possible strip club mentioned in the article
• [LP Bottle Express] - possible gas station mentioned in the article
• [Blue Ribbon Chevrolet] - possible used car dealership mentioned in the article

References