Captain X-Ploit: Strangers are just Enemies you haven’t met. Part 2

The Adventures of Captain X-Ploit:
The Amazing Adventure of Mr. Biscuits, Señor Sparkles and The Evil Dr. Whiskers
– Part 2 of the epic chronicle –
Strangers are just Enemies you haven’t met.

David’s adventure:

“That damn Sara, who does she think she is trying to take my place as rightful hacker god of this town? I’ll show her,” David thought to himself as he strode into the local pet store named “PuppyStation”. He sauntered up to the counter and said “I need a…. Wait! Is that sign for real?” The clerk’s eyes followed David’s gaze to a sign that read ‘NOTE TO EVERYONE: You will no longer be able to walk your dogs. We regret to inform you that we will be shooting any dogs being walked.’

Before David could exclaim about how terrible this was and use his hacking skill to right this horrible wrong a strange group of men wearing paper bags on their heads walked in. They hastily sped to a door labeled “Totally Secure room” one of them reached for the handle. It fell off in his hand and the door swung open.

As the men were running away with fists full of dog callers and cash the man behind the counter said “Hey! You can’t do that!!!!” In a flash he was in hot pursuit. “HEY!” yelled David. “I was gonna do that…” he trailed off quietly and anticlimactically in an empty store. “Nuts to this,” David thought as he pocketed “trained mice” who, according to the sign on the enclosure, come when called by name.

Back out on the street corner he pulled the mice out and bestowed upon each a name to be inscribed in eternity with shimmering golden letters. “You shall be known as ‘Mr. Biscuits‘!” with a stone serious look etched onto his face he liberated the second mouse from its pocket prison. “The Gods of fate bestow upon you the title ‘Señor Sparkles‘. With equal eloquence he produced the third and proclaimed “The bowels of eternity will forever echo the name ‘Dr. Whiskers‘”.

A flash of lightning on a clear sunny day sealed the ceremony with the severity only a god can grant.  Or maybe it was a backfiring car. Either way, David hurriedly made his way to the high-end retail district.

He entered the first store he saw and loosed his little friends, waited about twenty seconds for the screams, then wandered over to the counter demanding to speak with the owner. Upon the flustered store owner’s arrival, David explained that he was the health inspector and would have to ‘shut down his establishment lest he get rid of this horrific infestation immediately’.

“But where will I get one on such short notice?” the owner asked.

“Well… I am also an exterminator.” David replied

After departing from the store $1000 richer he repeated this procedure until the sun was about to set.

End note by author:

Really, Sony, Really?
Well, Mr. Joe Webster I think I’ll let you have at them.

End note by regularly scheduled commentator:

Okay, Mr. Nicholas Webster maybe I will. First let me say how nice it is to have the good Captain back with us after his semester long hiatus.

For those non-gamer readers among us, the seemingly gratuitous digression (all right obviously gratuitous digression) into illegal dog walking – something that was previously not only legal but encouraged and a popular feature of dog ownership – was a shot at the recent and still unfolding massive data breach of the Sony Playstation Network. This attack against PSN evolved from an attempt by some hackers (perhaps modders would be a better term) to figure out how to get their modded Linux powered PS3’s to work with PSN after Sony decided that in spite of advertising it as a feature, the Linux capability should be disallowed and unceremoniously forced an “upgrade” on all PS3 owners to do just that. Needless to say many of the PS3 hacker community were not amused.
Then when it turned out that Sony was really attempting to take complete control of every PS3 unit to make their PSN “security” much easier, not only did that further incense the hacker community, but it went pear shaped in a big way. A really, really big way. A 77 million PSN users and counting data exposure way. “So what’s the beef with Sony?”, you might ask if you are not a PSN user. Let me put it as delicately as I can, since your gamer friends and children will be significantly more brutal in their explanation.

1. When you sell an item to a customer, they own that item. You have no right to alter that item without the customer’s – i.e. the owner’s – express consent.
2. When the security of a client/server based system depends on you having control of both the client and the server and you do not have actual physical control over the client, you have no security.

I won’t even get into the attempted cover-up, the blame-shifting and other dubious behavior by Sony. Those are topics for another full blog entry. Suffice it to say – Sony = EPIC FAIL.

As for the actual parable in this episode, David – with the help of his trusty trained rodent companions Mr. Biscuits, Señor Sparkles and Dr. Whiskers implement a classic “fake malware removal” scam. You know what I’m talking about here – those “Your computer is infected with a virus” pop-ups you get online that then offer to sell you malware protection that will fix the problem. Of course you will have the same experience as the luckless store owners had with David and Co.’s “rodent mitigation” if you fall for it.

Welcome back Mr. Stone! We missed you.