Does no one do any fact checking anymore? Is it no longer considered fashionable to check who you are interviewing? Dan Raywood wrote a story for SC Magazine which ran today about the Hersey company (Editor Note: SC Magazine UK has removed the quote from the online article) being hacked by a chocoholic. Did SC Magazine think, “hey, I know, let’s see what bottom of the barrel “hacker” type we can find to interview”.
They called Gregory D. Evans.
Don’t know who this is? Here is an excerpt from Attrition.org:
A supposed “hi-tech hustler”, “WORLD’S NO 1 HACKER” and convicted felon (Bureau of Prisons #13432-112), Gregory Dante Evans has invented himself as some form of hacker with the ability to break into anything and spin that supposed knowledge into advising companies on security. In reality, Evans and his company have little real knowledge beyond pedestrian hacking techniques found in plagiarized books and beginner hacking texts. His company, LIGATT Security International, offers a “suite” of products that are bloated version of common tools such as ping and nmap. Evans, who plagiarizes content rather than write it himself, is over US$11 million in debt due to his own history of crime and his inability to run a company. Every press release, every video cast, every public communication is full of discrepancies, half-truths and outright lies.
For more on this, Fast Company wrote about Evans and his plagiarism efforts.
Jericho isn’t the only one to note Evans’ widespread word theft. He got wind of it from a book review by Ben Rothke, an information security manager for Wyndham Worldwide, who ran text from How to Become the World’s No. 1 Hacker through the iThenticate plagiarism scanner and found thousands of words from other sources. The Register, a British tech publication, also reported on the wholesale plagiarism, pointing out that Evans included screenshots that cited the original author. In addition, it questioned other Evans utterances, including his claim that he acted as a mentor to hacker Kevin Mitnick while they were both in prison. Mitnick denied it, calling him a “hustler, a grifter.”
SC Magazine doing charity work?
If anyone should know better it would be an industry publication. One would hope anyway. This is a perfect example of cyberdouchery.
Bravo SC Magazine.
/me golf clap
Bravo.
UPDATE: SC Magazine UK quietly deleted the quote from Gregory D. Evans from their article. Here is the original copy (.pdf) from their mobile site. I noticed that the Google cache of the article has been removed as well. Stay classy.
UPDATE 2: Received a response from Dan Raywood.
(Main image used under CC from Mike Schmid)