Spam Kings by Brian S McWilliams Page B

date. Shiksaa's newest email, [email protected] , which she had been using on Nanae since February, was
     not included. (She was given the account at Etherboy.com as a gift by its administrator,
     Dave Lugo, an admirer and longtime spam fighter.)
    As a further sign that Shiksaa had become a veteran spam fighter, she was invited to join #Nanae and #Lart, two Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
     channels where anti-spammers could more privately trade quips and information. While Usenet
     had little of the immediacy of in-person conversation, IRC was often confusingly fast-paced,
     with comments from participants scrolling dizzyingly down Shiksaa's screen.
    Sometimes, such as occasions facetiously known as Nanae Beer Nights, more than a dozen
     spam fighters, from all over the U.S. and Europe, would be in the chat room at the same
     time. It was on IRC that Piers Forrest, a 43-year-old computer technician from England,
     known on Nanae as Mad Pierre, began doting on Shiksaa. Usually all business on the Nanae newsgroup, Mad
     Pierre was a master of the humorously flirtatious IRC remark. In August, Shiksaa began using
     one of Mad Pierre's more memorable utterances in the signature line of her newsgroup
     postings: "I worship at the feet of Shiksaa...I'd worship higher up if the straps weren't so
     tight."
    While Mad Pierre was not alone in his hyperbolic adoration—several of the male members
     of Nanae had jokingly been referring to her as the Spam Goddess—Shiksaa particularly enjoyed playing along with Mad Pierre. Once, after a
     spammer trolled Nanae, accusing antis of having no life, Mad Pierre sarcastically responded
     that the spammer was correct.
    "Damn, you've got us bang to rights. We have no lives. None. At all."
    To which Shiksaa responded, "Your life is the worship of moi ."
    But because of her investigative skills and dedication to anti-spamming, Shiksaa
     continued to be a magnet for harassment from bulk emailers, who sought her out on AOL
     Instant Messager (AIM) or anonymously posted insults about her on Nanae. While she could
     handle the occasional run-in with kooks, Shiksaa was livid over a stunt pulled by Brunner in
     the late summer. As part of her self-education in the ways of spamming, she had downloaded a
     demo copy of CyberCreek's Avalanche spamware program. Her plan was to install and test it
     out. But as she was skimming the ReadMe file that came with the software, Shiksaa
     froze.
    Near the bottom of the document, which invited users to contact CyberCreek with
     questions or suggestions, was a section called the Net-Nazi Hall of Shame. Below a
     disclaimer that stated that he was not responsible for "actions/misdeeds committed unto the
     following persons or entities," Brunner had listed Shiksaa's first name and her phone
     number. Beside them, Brunner had added an appeal to all the hundreds of spambags who would
     install his program: "If you have her address please drop us a note, as she is going to be
     the first Net-Nazi to be held accountable in a California civil court for
     defamation."
    The spam goddess was now a target.
    ----
    [ 3 ] The attacker's statement that he had "escalated my remote access to that of a full
     privileged local user" made it appear that he had broken into a system running the Unix
     operating system. Yet according to the screen-grab photograph he provided, showing the
     programs running on Garst's computer, the hacker appeared to have compromised a laptop
     computer running Microsoft's Windows 98, which gives all users the same access rights.
     Plus, there was the anonymous June 5 Nanae posting that announced the Behind Enemy Lines
     site—a message from "John Doe" posted from an Internet Protocol address registered to
     Premier Services. These inconsistencies made some anti-spammers suspicious that perhaps
     the whole incident was actually the work of a disgruntled insider with local access to
     the computer, or even a hoax.
    [ 4 ] Payne posted a log file of his