Craig Feigin, a 23 year-old student at the University of Florida has recently been arrested for installing some peeping tom style software on unsuspecting women’s computers.

Non-computer people always had to worry when taking their computers in for repair, but for the most part their concern came from being overcharged for extra time or unnecessary parts, but this just goes to show that in today’s modern world there are plenty of other reasons to make sure you fully trust whoever is touching your computer.

Feigin had the reputation around campus for being the go to guy for computer repair, but it seems that he was taking advantage of that reputation and using the situation for a little more than immediate financial gain. In addition to fixing the computers he was also taking it upon himself to install some extra software, and sadly it was not the kind that most would have wanted installed.

One of his victims did however notice some strange occurrences after he worked on her laptop, noting that it was running slower than usual, and also that the battery seemed to be draining much quicker. But perhaps the most important was that she also noticed that the little light that indicates when your webcam is active began to turn on any time she got near her computer.

After which she took he computer to another expert, and this time it was someone who she already knew, someone she could fully trust. Well it turns out that Feigin had installed at least two additional programs which included Log Me In and Web Cam Spy Hacker.

Log Me In, of course is a commercially available program, but it appears that Web Cam Spy Hacker was written by Feigin himself, as the address on the website for that program was his home address, of which he was later arrested at.

Once he was taken into custody, he quickly admitted to this crime, but also admitted to installing these programs on other computers as well. The Gainesville Florida Police believe there are eight or nine other victims. Feigin was arrested and held on $20,000 bond, and has been charged with modifying computer data and disrupting or denying computer system services. In the state of Florida this is a felony charge and can result in prison time.

At the time of his arrest, he had gotten enough video to make more than 20,000 images, which featured the women and anyone else who happened to be in front of those computers in “various stages of undress.” He was also uploading those images to a server located in Eastern Europe, however the police were still unsure if he had been selling those images.

Bottom line, make sure you know and can trust the geek that you allow to work on your computer.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pm under Crime.

Read more entries by Robert Nelson.
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