(Republican) Congressional aide admits trying to hire hackers -- to boost his college GPA

[Judi Lynn]

Congressional aide admits trying to hire hackers -- to boost his college GPA
By Paul McNamara on Thu, 12/21/2006 - 6:59pm

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 -- during an exchange that spanned 22 e-mails over two weeks this past summer.

Todd Shriber, 28-year-old press aide to U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., e-mailed the security Web site attrition.org on Aug. 9, writing: "I need to urgently make contact with a hacker that would be interested in doing a one-time job for me. The pay would be good. I'm not sure what exactly the job would entail with respect to computer jargon, but I can go into rough detail upon making contact with a candidate."

After initially denying knowledge of the exchange, Shriber told me this afternoon in the final of our three phone conversations: "I did something that's greatly out of character for me and it's a mistake that I regret."

Two members of attrition.org, "Lyger" and "Jericho" (a.k.a. "security curmudgeon") corresponded with Shriber and fooled him into believing that they would carry out his wishes, with Jericho warning him at one point: "You are soliciting me to break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a federal offense and multiple felonies."

Shriber wanted Lyger and Jericho to break into the computer system at Texas Christian University, from which he graduated in 2000.
(snip/...)

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9999

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. ROFL

Hilarious. The best was that his alma mater is Texas Christian University.

Hey, no offense to TCU, but I've made it my life's work to avoid two out of the three words in their school's name. I work in a university. ;-)