Teen hackers' exploits

If you believe what he claims, and the police seem to, the 19-year-old in Germany who took over eBay Germany couldn't even be called a hacker. He happened upon some Web sites that described how to do a DNS (domain name server) transfer and "just for fun," he requested a transfer for a handful of sites, including Google.de, Web.de, Amazon.de and eBay.de, CNET reports. Most of his requests were denied, but the one for eBay wasn't. "It is unclear how the domain could have been transferred without the consent of the owner," CNET adds. "The teenager said he did not want to cause damage. Indeed, according to [police], he was shocked when he was told that he had become the new owner of the eBay.de Web address." EBay.de is now back in eBay's hands. Meanwhile, a real hacker, Sven Jaschan, the 18-year-old who admitted he created the Sasser worm that infected PCs worldwide, has been formally charged with computer sabotage, data manipulation and disruption of public systems, the BBC reports. Sven Jaschan, like the eBay hijacker above, lives in Lower Saxony. If found guilty, Jaschan faces up to five years in prison.