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An Orange County man suspected of hacking computers was arrested on federal charges related to demands for explicit videos from women and teenage girls.


A man, claiming to be affiliated with an underground gang of hackers, was arrested on federal extortion charges that allege he hacked into dozens of computers, obtained personal data about people using the computers, and then demanded explicit videos from female victims in exchange for keeping their personal information private.

Luis Mijangos was arrested after a six-month FBI investigation into his involvement in computer hacking, identity theft and video nosiness. Mijangos infected more than 100 computers which were used by about 230 individuals, at least 44 of whom were juveniles.

Mijangos used peer-to-peer networks to infect computers with malware that he made appear as popular songs. Once his victim was infected, Mijangos sent instant messages to people in the victims’ address books. The malicious code in the IMs gave Mijangos control of those computers too.

Once he had control of a computer, he would search for intimate images or videos of young women in various states of undress or engaged in naughty acts with their partners. Mijangos contacted the female victims and threatened to send the explicit photos or videos to everyone in their contact lists unless they made additional videos for him. He also told the victims that because he controlled their computers, he would know if they attempted to contact the authorities. He told one victim that she did not want to “mess” with a team of hackers.

Our behavior online is now a primary focus of researchers. One group of researchers believes that, our online behavior is no different to evolutionary behavior, as explained by evolutionary psychology.

Internet behavior is one of the most researched fields in the recent times. However most of the studies have based their research on traditional psychology models, which are good in determining the proximal causes of our online behavior. Researchers from UK are now proposing that our internet behavior is modeled upon evolutionary psychology and suggesting that, such a model would help learn the distal causes of our internet behavior.

Despite the major differences between face to face communication and computer mediated communication, there exist a lot of similarities. To further their claim and motivate fellow researchers, the researchers have made some interesting similarities between typical online behaviors and evolutionary psychology theories. Given below are few of those observations/suggestions. Further research into each of the following, would help us learn, whether we are following our evolutionary psychological behavior, online as well.

Your right to privacy is shrinking, but it’s happening quietly without much publicity. Identity theft steals far more than your privacy.  So far in 2009, over 13 million records have been breached! Here are the top privacy breaches this year.

by Angie Porter
Cyberspace is the new Wild West frontier where sophisticated hacking is like having the fastest gun. Man-in-the-middle attacks are common place, while credit card PIN crackers lead the pack of cyber outlaws. Neither SSL websites nor the “smart” grid can be considered safe anymore. Lucifer, AKA a social engineer, may dwell on your friend’s list within instant messengers or social sites. Even if you manage to avoid tweeting your intentions, botnets, or clickjackers, the vast frontier of cyberspace is shrinking in regards to your privacy.