The hackers, some as young as 12, begin by breaking into newspaper production systems and replacing news of substance with ridiculous headlines such as “Scientists discover breasts cause cancer,” “Sexism confirmed by evolutionary biologists,” “Sarah Palin exists” or “Online hoodies stalking the web” in an attempt to outrage people into clicking on them.

When they do, the ridiculous message promptly causes a buffer overload in the reader’s brain, filling it with an overflow of nonsense and causing them to think such ideas are reasonable, sane and even interesting. In the final stages of an infection, the victim clicks repeatedly on TMZ, hoping for upskirt shots of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.

Hacker “wins” of late have included breaking into the Republican National Committee and replacing its phone scripts with patently insane slanders and mudslinging against Barack Obama, and engineering the hilarious placement of an idiot Alaskan redneck as a Vice-Presidential candidate.

“We need them out on the streets,” said Kevin Hogan of Symantec, “using their energy and practicing their knife skills, not sitting at home getting obese.”

My blog rant: http://tinyurl.com/54t2un