Man Gets Deterrent Sentence for Hacking MSN

An individual was accused for stealing identities of several women on Instant Messaging and for even blackmailing one. The man aged 24 years was sentenced to 27 months of incarceration on January 15, 2007.

Song Yick Biau was a lonely man incapable of adjusting socially. So, he probably sought the help of Internet where he disguised as different persons to win friends. But he applied a tactic too far and was accused of ten charges - nine for violating the Computer Misuse Act and one for committing criminal offense.

In November 2005 Song came to know about a program that helped him to gain access to another person's PC by duping him. Song would chat with such people and in the meantime send them the program. If any of them clicked on it, a fraudulent MSN login would appear on the screen.

As soon as the targeted person entered his username and password, an error message flashed. Song would troubleshoot and eventually get access to the person's identity. This simple tactic worked that even surprised Song. He would now change the password so that the person could not access his account. Then he would take up the victim's identity to chat with people on the person's address list.

Song also manipulated images of some of the women by pasting their heads on nude bodies. Once he blackmailed to expose the picture of one victim if she did not send naked photos of her. The woman lodged a complaint with the police.

On January 8, 2007 Song pleaded guilty at the Subordinate Court. His lawyer trying to defend him said that Song had started it all as an experiment that ended up giving 'cheap thrills'. According to the lawyer's mitigation plea when Song learnt of the software he thought no one would be duped enough to try an unknown program and respond by sending him their data.

The prosecution stressed for a prison sentence arguing that it was necessary to tell everyone that no next person could do what Song had done. Thus Justice Liew Thiam Leng passed the deterrent sentence on January 15, 2007.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 1/19/2007