William Genovese

"Illwill" redirects here. For other uses, see Illwill (disambiguation).

William Genovese is an American ex-hacker who goes by the moniker illwill.[1] In 2004 federal authorities charged Genovese with unlawful sale of a trade secret[2] (US Code Title 18, section 1832) for selling the incomplete WindowsNT/2000 Microsoft source code.[1] to Microsoft investigators and federal agents.[1]

Conviction

Following an investigation, Genovese was arrested in November 2004. Even though the code Genovese sold was already widely distributed on the Internet prior to his sale.[3] In 2005, in order to receive a reduced sentence, Genovese agreed to plea agreement and was convicted of the unlawful sale of a trade secret, and received a 24 month sentence.[4]

Other News

In 2005, illmob.org, a security website owned by Genovese, posted leaked images and phonebooks from T-Mobile Sidekick user's phones that were obtained from a fellow hacker, Nicolas Jacobsen. Users included celebrities such as Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Nicole Richie, and Paris Hilton.[4][5] Reportedly, the data of Sidekick-toting celebrities was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability in a BEA WebLogic Server database. The WebLogic hole took the form of an undocumented function that allows an attacker to remotely read or replace any file on a system by feeding it a specially-crafted web request. BEA produced a patch for the bug in March 2003. The website was also mentioned[6] in news articles, in connection with the notorious internet leak of Paris Hilton's phone data and Fred Durst's[7] sex tape leak.

Release

Since his release in 2008 Genovese completed his probation successfully. He has continued to be involved in the computer security industry with contributions to the Metasploit project. Speaker at a security conferences in 2011 eXcon and B-SidesCT2011 & B-SidesCT2014. He was also a panelist at Defcon 23 in Las Vegas in August of 2015.

Genovese now helps run a 501(3)(c) non-profit Hackerspace in Meriden, Connecticut called NESIT, which offers the public free classes on various network security topics, personal internet safety, embedded electronic projects, 3-D Printing and design, and offers a virtualized pen-testing network where users can safely attack and penetrate various live machines in a safe lab environment.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Defendant: Microsoft source code sale was a setup | The Register
  2. ↑ U.S. Arrests Connecticut Man on Charge of Selling Stolen Microsoft Source Code (November 9, 2004)
  3. ↑ Statement from Microsoft Regarding Illegal Posting of Windows2000 Source Code
  4. 1 2 http://www.cio.com/article/17291/MS_Illwill_Hacker_Gets_Two_Years
  5. ↑ http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10271
  6. ↑ Paris Hilton's Sidekick hacked | The Register
  7. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100330172930/http://www.blender.com/guide/68174/who-does-fred-durst-think-he-is.html

External links

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