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The
Internet is especially vulnerable to hoaxes
By
John Moran
Hartford Courant
Don't
believe everything you read on the Internet.
You'd
think that would be standard procedure for anyone with even
a passing familiarity with the Net. But recent events involving
a company called Emulex show the message still hasn't gotten
through.
Emulex
Corp., headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., makes a broad
range of networking hardware and software. The company has
been something of a high flier among technology stocks.
But
when a news release circulated over the Internet, shares
in Emulex came crashing down - at least for a while - losing
more than half their value, or roughly $2.5 billion overall.
The
news release reported that Emulex was revising its quarterly
earnings downward and that its chief executive was resigning.
Problem is, the news release was a hoax.
But
in this hair-trigger world of day-trading and instant information,
it took the truth a while to catch up with the lie.
Plenty
of investors lost money in the upheaval that followed.
It's
comforting to note that authorities appear to have caught
up with the perpetrator. Mark Jakob, 23, of El Segundo,
Calif., has been arrested on charges of wire and security
fraud. Jakob reportedly made about $250,000 when Emulex's
stock price fell.
But
even though this Internet hoax was quickly uncovered and,
in some sense, resolved, we are left with the disquieting
notion that such a fraud is all too easy.
Internet
Wire, the company that apparently first received the bogus
release, is tightening its security measures. As the lawsuits
begin to fly, it's likely that other safeguards will be
put in place.
Still,
there's no changing the fundamental factor that made this
hoax work: creating a false electronic document is trivially
easy.
With
the number of standard typefaces and document templates
in circulation, my documents look like your documents, my
e-mails look like your e-mails - and if they don't, we can
change that with a few mouse clicks.
Indeed,
this is how so many other Internet hoaxes and viruses are
distributed. Consider, for example, the ILOVEYOU virus,
which spread quickly because it appeared to have been sent
by someone known to the recipients. Thus, people were fooled
into clicking on a file attachment that they might have
avoided if it were sent by a stranger.
One
possible solution to this problem is the adoption of digital
"signatures" - actually unique bits of computer code that
can only be created by one person. As a result, when you
receive a signed document, you know that it can only have
come from the author.
Alas,
the infrastructure that would permit widespread usage of
digital signatures is still in development. We need to distribute
the software needed to create the signatures, we need to
establish servers that will allow people to match signatures
with the name of the original author, and we need to teach
people how to use those technologies.
In
the meantime, we're stuck with having to be extremely careful
to check the truth of what we're seeing on the Internet.
And, given human nature, that means we're probably in for
a lot more hoaxes before everyone finally gets the message.
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