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Playboy 'hacker' just a shelf-stacker slacker
"I'll bring down your business unless you pay me... [dramatic pause] .... $100"

By Jo Best

Published: Tuesday 29 June 2004

A Southampton man has been jailed for convincing legendary 'jazz-mag' Playboy that he'd hacked its servers. He managed to extort a whole $100 – yes, that's $100 – from the company, claiming paying up would stop him selling confidential customer data.

Simon Jones, 25, carried out the attack from his bedroom at his parents' house in Hampshire, where he decided to take the billion-dollar company for the princely sum of around £55. Playboy coughed up rather than have the crime overlord sell the details of two of its internet subscribers.

The 'hacker' had no such details in reality, just a list of some names and passwords, but it was enough to convince the Playboy folk that they'd been penetrated by a hacking – although clearly not a financial – whizzkid.

The campaign of cyber terror was brought to an end when the US secret service tracked down the cash-crazed supermarket shelf-stacker and brought him to justice some months later. Jones had asked for the blackmail money to be deposited in his bank account - giving the US secret service a handy clue as to who he was.

He was convicted of blackmail yesterday and has been sentenced to two years in jail for his criminal masterminding, despite a defence which saw him claim he 'wasn't in it for the money' (Ed note. you don't say).

While it might seem Hugh Hefner's smut empire got off lightly with just a $100 bill to keep the hacker at bay, the true financial cost of the fake security breach ran into thousands as the bunny business was forced to review its security arrangements.

Hef's minions had to carry out checks that cost the Playboy bunny considerably, only to discover that their servers were unbreached by Jones, who operated under the pseudonym Paymaster 69 to avail himself of the Playboy mega-bucks.

For a while, the mag also thought it might need a database overhaul that could have reached seven figures.

So what prompted the disgruntled supermarket worker to carry out his fiendish blackmail scheme? The court was told the former science graduate turned hacker was hacked off at not having landed a plum role in the IT industry.