back to article HBGary's nemesis is a '16-year-old schoolgirl'

Forbes has bagged an interview with the "teenage girl" who supposedly played a key role in hacking security firm HBGary on behalf of Anonymous. HBGary Federal earned the enmity of the loosely knit hacker collective by threatening to expose its membership at the B-Sides security conference last month. The security consultancy …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    I'm 12 years old and what is this?

    brilliant

    1. Matt Piechota
      Paris Hilton

      SD card?

      What's the point of using an SD card, other than it being a bit easier to hide? I'd think to be leet[0] she'd use Live CDs.

      [0] I use that word to demonstrate how un-leet I am.

      Paris, because I'm trying to make some tenuous joke so the people on the internet think I'm cool, interesting, and/or funny.

      1. Number6

        Faster

        It'll probably boot faster off an SD card (I haven't tested this...), and if it's generated from a bootable .iso image and used read-only, then it'll be almost as safe as a CD but more convenient to carry.

      2. Jason DePriest
        Unhappy

        nom nom

        In the interview, she says she can chew up and eat the micro-SD card to destroy evidence if needed. It's harder to eat CD and probably worse on your tummy, as well.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      it's

      It's a usb cable, I'll show you later.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Kayla

    Anagram of AKA LY

    (Yes, I know it's "lie", but that wouldn't have made a very convincing name, would it?)

    1. Jerome 0

      Also...

      It's also an anagram of LA YAK. Is Jeff Minter living in Los Angeles these days?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I am Sparticus

    I am Sparticus

    1. Thomas 4

      No, I'm Sparticus

      ...and so's my wife.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        No. I'm Spartacus.

        Oh, hang on a minute...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Classic...

    Times like this it's worth remembering the anonymous phrase "there are no girls on the internet"!

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      On the Internet-

      Nobody knows you are a dog.

      1. Apocalypse Later

        My dog says...

        ...that she can tell.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    won't let me post without a title

    This looks legit

  6. Monkey Bob
    Welcome

    There are only two types of people on the internet

    16 year old girls, & people pretending to be 16 year old girls.

  7. Shane Kent
    Alien

    16 year old hacker or...

    fall girl for the father? If caught she is unlikely to do time and he would be guaranteed to do time.

    I kinda wonder about the comment the father knows but does nothing about it, as a father should he not be keeping his daughter away from organized criminals?

    I also wondered this of the Montreal kid that took down CNN, etc. His father would have done time, but the kid got a slap on the wrist after claiming responsibility.

    If she is caught she should have to prove she did it, otherwise they look at the father, family, older friends, etc.

    1. Ted Dannington
      Stop

      Hoho

      >Organised Criminals

      Please get out more.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Shane Kent

      If anyone is caught the authorites have to prove he/she did it.

      He/she or whoever does not have to prove anything.

    3. Jon 52

      based on what

      Your basing that asumption it was dad on what, the fact she is a she? If it was a 16y/o boy you would not be saying it was farja.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re

      "organized criminals"

      These people are just as much "organized criminals" as Martin Luther King was.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm on the internet, and I'm a dog.

    Aw shoot.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bullshit

    there are no girls on the Internet

  10. Cyberspice
    FAIL

    Why the quotes?

    Why do write "Teenage girl" like that? You seem as dubious as Forbes is about the age or gender of the individual concern. Of course there's no way they can be that young, or heaven forbid, a girl! Way to go with the misogyny.

    I would like to point out that I was 13 when I learnt to program and was hacking not long after. This was the end of the 70s and early 80s. If you read Bruce Sterling's Hacker Crackdown (the book about Operation Sundevil from the very early 90s) you'll see there were also teenage female hackers then.

    There have always been teenage female hackers.

    You fail!

    Love

    Ms Cyberspice

    1. foo_bar_baz
      Pint

      Totally feasible

      Any "it's her father/brother/uncle" comments are narrow minded, sexist, agist, bigoted, etc.

      However, we're dealing with Anonymous here - see Rules of the Internet.

      1. Jedit Silver badge
        Paris Hilton

        There are no rules except 34

        I know (and have met in the flesh) a female member of Anonymous.

        Paris, because like me, she is neither a member of Anonymous or an attractive woman.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >implying that distrusting Anonymous is misogyny

      fail yourself

    3. c3
      Megaphone

      what are you doing on the computer ?

      the computer is not in the kitchen.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And where

        is my sammich?

    4. Jon 52

      yep

      I retired from hacking at the age of 16 when I left school. I was a pretty good little script kiddie back in the day.. scourge of school admins (not hard when they barely knew how the shift key worked)

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      sudo make me a sandwich.

      Yep.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      @cyberspice

      Teenage Mutant Female Hackers refer to themselves as "hackesses"! I read it in P56-02.TXT so it's true.

      You, sweatheart, are a 30-something balding male dwelling in thy mother's root cellar.

      I am Cyberposh; I am a hackess! I am a 40-year-^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H PH33R!

    7. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      RE: Why the quotes?

      Ms Cyberspice is correct, there are plenty of pimply teenage girls, just as lacking in social skills as male skiddies, looking for a sense of self-worth through a bit of mindless internet vandalism....

      Of course, the fact the Xyrix is a well-known braggart and attention-seeker also makes it likely that he's just claiming kudos for the hack when he probably had nothing to do with it.

  11. Chad H.
    Joke

    lulz

    Sounds like our Anonymous friends having a right laugh.

  12. Adam T

    Wouldn't want to upset that...

    ...scary little girl. She'll be single forever.

    Wasn't there an article recently that claimed flash drives are less secure (harder to keep clean) than HDDs?

    1. lIsRT

      abc and/or 123

      Easier to hide, swallow or otherwise "lose" though.

      1. TakeTheSkyRoad

        I've never tried it

        but you can probably also shred an SD card in much the same way with you can shred a chipped credit card. Probably need a better then cheapo shredder tho.

        Not much use if you get busted on the street though lol

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can think over over 9000 reasons why this doesn't add up

    > Implying it isn't all a hoax

  14. John Sanders
    Pirate

    ARRR!!!!

    ARRRR!!!!!!!!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    LOLWUT

    "Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox," Forbes reports. "She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card," it adds.

    Is that a service provider that keeps a backup anyway and also logs everything.....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: LOLWUT

      "Is that a service provider that keeps a backup anyway and also logs everything....."

      ... on "her" neighbours WiFi connection.

      *Hides from Cyberspice*

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Oh goody

    "Susan Thunder" has a daughter.

    I'm so happy.

  17. Anton Ivanov

    Yeah

    And I am the tooth fairy.

    Yeah... Right...

    The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents

    1. LaeMing
      Happy

      Ah,

      So you are saying the FBI did the hack?

  18. hayseed
    Happy

    Ye Auld Proverb

    The Internet - Men are Men, Women are Men, and Children are Police

  19. Whyaduck
    Go

    And she...

    ...swallows the SD card every night when she's done. It's a good thing she's regular.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    16? Doubt it.

    Great publicity stunt though.

  21. This post has been deleted by its author

  22. Morpho Devilpepper
    Flame

    I refute the validity of a freedom-fighter...

    ...whose representative demographic incorporates the entire world's Justin Bieber fanbase. And I revile anyone who hero-worships a bunch of script kiddies who couldn't spell their own names if their lives depended on it.

    When did we all decide that criminal acts are cool as long as some authority figure is embarrassed by it? All you Anonymous supporters...keep in mind who your heroes are when they steal your identity and credit records in order to fund their "fight against evil."

    1. Chris Harden
      Happy

      proof

      Unless you have proof that Anon hackers are related to 419s stfu. gtfo and diaf kthnx bai (and other such 4 letter words).

      Saying that, you do get points for giving me a nice mental image of Dade Murphey (ask your nerdy parents kids) sitting in his shades listening to Justin Bieber while he hacks.

    2. Chris Harden
      FAIL

      Did it

      Ya, it works quite well:

      http://v3ga.net/YouTubeMixer/

      then mix up

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2efhrCxI4J0

      and

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4

      and you must watch it through to the end as punishment for being such a tool.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re

      When did we decide criminals are cool? Right around the time we named a day after MLK.

    4. Asgard
      WTF?

      @Morpho Devilpepper

      Morpho Devilpepper, "When did we all decide that criminal acts are cool as long as some authority figure is embarrassed by it"

      When did you decide Morpho Devilpepper, that some authority figure cannot be a criminal, because many people do believe acts to expose them are justified. (Also authority figures by definition are the people who choose what to label as a criminal act and history is full of examples of crooked authority figures who use their power for their own gain, including trying to stop people exposing them as crooked).

      Morpho Devilpepper, "a bunch of script kiddies who couldn't spell their own names if their lives depended on it"

      Strange how you wish to imply they are stupid (i.e. can't spell their own names), yet very evidently they are smart enough to be a hacker. The evidence weighs heavily against your attempts to misrepresent them, but then the question becomes why do you seek to misrepresent them and in such a derogatory way?. What do you gain from misrepresenting them and trying to put them down so much? Also your attempts to misrepresent them is very obvious evidence of duplicity. From the dictionary, a “lie”, defined as a deliberate intent to deceive. In fact your whole post is filled with attempts to put them down and misrepresent them all as so bad, so why? Some of what they expose is very good to know and important to know, for example, “a pitch by HBGary to run a dirty tricks campaign against WikiLeaks on behalf of the Bank of America.”

      One thing is certain Morpho Devilpepper and that is you are very evidently someone who is willing to use duplicitous misrepresentations of people to get your own way. But then two-faced people like you have a lot to worry about the world becoming a place where your kind can be exposed as duplicitous manipulators and liars. Therefore its no wonder the idea of crooked lying authority figures being exposed as liars would cut you deeply, as liars always fear the truth being exposed. The idea of a world where liars could be increasingly exposed (often by hackers) must scare you deeply. Too bad for you, as you were born in the wrong century. Increasing numbers of people have only just begun to expose the liars of this world. :) … Welcome to the Internet generation. :)

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just a wild guess

    I expect some folks will go to prison for hacking HBGary. Anonymous won't be so happy then.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Fail to understand anon

      Anon will be very happy and find it hilarious when people go down for it, much as they always are, but it's not like they messed with football this time.

  24. Mike Powers
    WTF?

    Oh jeez

    "Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox," Forbes reports. "She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card," it adds."

    Seriously? This sounds like the breathless "CYBER-HACKING" stories that we heard back in the early Nineties, when people thought that sending someone an email could make your computer explode, when people thought that European teenagers buzzed on sugar water and were stealing people's bank accounts and taking control of nuclear-missile silos.

    She "wipes her web accounts"? What does that even *mean*?

    1. Scorchio!!
      Happy

      Re: Oh jeez

      "She "wipes her web accounts"? What does that even *mean*?"

      Tissue, water, screen. There, all internets gone now daddeh!

      Of course the 'web accounts' don't have logs, do they? Oh no and, even if they did, she would 'wipe them'.

      It may take a while to deal with the anon crowd but some hard lessons will be learned over the next few months and possibly years.

    2. gollux
      Grenade

      Easy explanation...

      She also probably can see Russia from her back yard and is probably related to the great AK Mayor, Partial term governor and failed Vice Prez wannabe who can...

  25. tuna 1
    Black Helicopters

    Yeah. Me, Too!

    I am also a wizard, 1337 and my mom rents the above-ground structure from me.

  26. a_been
    Happy

    Anonymous vouches for Kayla!

    "16-year-old girl called Kayla", 2 memes in 1 and of course she "deletes everything". Somewhare in the backend of the internet people are laughing.

    1. The Original Ash

      Don't forget

      She does all this behind seven proxies.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        pity the fool

        That only uses 6 proxies.

        With over 9000 internet agents chasing her that 7th proxy will make all the difference.

        I'll be out back, with the party van. o shi-

        ahh the old days.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Randall Munroe knows best

    http://xkcd.com/342/

  28. Pet Peeve
    Coffee/keyboard

    Uh huh

    And I'm sure she browses the web from behind 7 proxies, too.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Kayla...

    is actually Boxxy...

    So for those of you who don't think she's leet, think again!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And for the rest of you...

      ... who couldn't care about whether she's deluded herself into thinking that being able to drive a computer and commit crimes with it makes her something special... don't bother thinking about it at all.

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      AC@09:48

      OK, *now* I'm scared.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Eric the SD card

    DO

    YOU

    WANT

    TO

    PLAY

    A

    GAME....?

  31. John Tserkezis

    I call bullshit on this one.

    16yo Kayla is actually a fat 40 year old lesbian truck driver called Frank.

    Posing as a 16yo girl on F*c*book, ending up being caught up in this mess.

    Opted to play along instead of being outed.

    Now, *that* I can believe.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Script Kiddies of the Revolution

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

  33. unitron
    Coat

    Yeah, right...

    And her real name is

    Lisbeth Salander

    Mine's the one without the third paperback in the pocket yet.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Have we forgotten the most important thing?

    Underage b&.

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Xyrix had a few things to say about this.

    "Kayla is a troll who bought my old msn i used for irc from mike virus and started pretending she was me. She did it so often that she wound up on my ED page for trolling some admins on an irc. I don't know the bitch, and have never talked to her in my life. Ironically she's friends with d0ct0r though."

  36. The Beer Monster
    Coat

    There is no truth

    ...in the rumour that Rush are to release a new album called 2011 with a track titled "The Temples of Xyrix" either.

    1. lpopman
      Thumb Up

      titular musings

      Yep. With Banks of mighty computers, that dwell within the halls ;)

      Wow, I must be getting old.....

  37. Shane Kent

    My comment had nothing to do with...

    her being a girl. In fact I pointed out how I question the young BOY that took down CNN, etc.

    And it should be againt the law to hack someones email account, the same as it is with postal mail. If I take someones postal mail I am a criminal. And if I plan out taking people's postal mail that makes me an orgainized criminal.

    Just seems weird to me the father knows and doesn't care what the daughter does.

    I am not pro government and industry screwing poeple, but I sure am pro privacy.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's not Kayla...

    ...with her leet skills of deleting her email and web accounts it sounds more like Carolyn C Meinel...

  39. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    RULES 1 & 2

    DO YOU KNOW THEM?!

    Apparently it would seem that Mr. Leyden does not...

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I just saw this old Midsomer Murders episode....

    .... where a computer game was rewritten by a 9-yo boy.

    So a 16-yo must be able to hack HBGary. So this story must be true.

  41. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Quoth the liberal armchair warrior.

      (See title)

  42. Peter Rowan

    I'm Brian

    No, I'm only joking. I'm not really Brian. No, I'm not Brian. I was only - It was a joke. I'm only pulling your leg! It's a joke! I'm not him! I'm just having you on! Put me back! Bloody Romans! Can't take a joke!

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