HACKERS LEAK SANTA’S LIST
by Hazed
Shocking revelations this Christmas, as the hacker group who call themselves The Snow Brigade have started to leak portions of Santa’s naughty/nice list to the public.
The information from Santa’s extensive database lists not just the status of each individual but also the reason for the classification. This allows anyone to look up the details of celebrities, politicians and other famous people – and also to find out if their family members, friends, neighbours or work colleagues have been classified as “naughty”. There are going to be some embarrassed people this Christmas.
Galactic Administration officials have been desperately trying to prevent the information from being made public, fearful that their names will be amongst those categorised as naughty. A cursory glance through the bureaucrats’ names shows they are right to be concerned: not so much about the sordid sexual scandals revealed, as the sheer magnitude of the corruption and bribery that goes on as part of their day-to-day dealings.
Here at the Fed2 Star, we would never lower ourselves to print the salacious details of what celebrities such as Brix Chanterel have been up to – not least because nothing the outrageous holo-star could do would surprise anyone.
The hack has been carried out by a hitherto unknown group calling themselves The Snow Brigade. They are a splinter group from the activist collective The Polar Group which appears to have schismed over differences in policy. But nobody really knows who they are. They could be political activists, Martian cyber-terrorists, or just a bored teenager in a bedroom!
It’s unclear at this stage just what the hackers hope to achieve by releasing Santa’s private list. There’s speculation that they are protesting about the intensive surveillance he carries out in order to compile the massive database of information which is used to generate the final naughty/nice list. Or maybe they were just doing it for the fun of it.
Experts are angry that Santa’s security measures have been breached by the hacking group. They say that the techniques used by The Snow Brigade were a mixture of brute-force password guessing, mixed with some social engineering. Several of Santa’s elves have admitted to being fooled by so-called “researchers” who convinced them to hand over their passwords in return for chocolate, and some of those high up in the North Pole hierarchy have been using ludicrously obvious passwords such as christmas, rudolph and bahhumbug.
A spokes-elf for Santa has stated that they take the issue of security very seriously, and will be undertaking a thorough review of their procedures to ensure something like this can never happen again.
But it’s a bit late for that: there’s not much use bolting the stable door once the reindeer are up in the sky!
I, of course, have nothing to worry about because I am always nice. Just ask my newsdroids.
Stop Press: The Snow Brigade have issued threats that if Santa goes ahead with his grotto appearances, where he gives candy canes to nice children and coal to naughty ones, they will blow up the grotto. Santa issued a statement which his spokes-elf read out, saying, “We refuse to give in to such cowardly threats and will be going ahead with the plans for the grotto opening. All children, however their behaviour has been this year, are welcome. We assure parents there is no danger because the grotto is protected by Santa’s special Christmas magic.”
