Stephen glass airmail software#

Further investigations revealed that Jukt Micronics, if it existed at all, was not listed under any of California’s 15 area codes. An official from the Tax Board confirmed that Jukt Micronics had never paid any taxes. Next on our list was the California Franchise Tax Board.

Stephen glass airmail software#

We found no web site, odd for a “big-time software firm.” Our next step was to contact the Software Publishers Association of America. Our first step was to plug Jukt Micronics into a bunch of search engines. The article was a complete and utter hoax perpetrated by one of the magazine’s own associate editors, 25-year-old Stephen Glass. Once inside, the cheeky youth posted every employee’s salary on the company’s web site alongside a bunch of nudie pictures, each bearing the caption “THE BIG BAD BIONIC BOY HAS BEEN HERE BABY.”īut instead of calling in the Feds, Jukt executives, according to The New Republic , decided to hire the teenage hacker, who had obtained the services of an agent, Joe Hiert, described as a “super-agent to super-nerds.” The magazine also claimed that such deals have thwarted efforts to prosecute hackers and that law enforcement officials in Nevada got so desperate that they ran radio advertisements: “Would you hire a shoplifter to watch the cash register? Please don’t deal with hackers.” “Hack Heaven” detailed the exploits of Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who broke through the online security system of a “big-time software firm” called Jukt Micronics. At first it appeared that Forbes Digital had been scooped by a weekly political publication. That was the challenge after The New Republic story, “Hack Heaven,” which appeared in the May 18 issue, proved to be unverifiable. It is even tougher proving that something or someone does not exist. At the time, I worked for the “Tool,” as we affectionately called it, in San Francisco, so I was barely involved in Penenberg’s triumph (other than a couple of frantic and unsuccessful calls to AOL to try and figure out who had created the page for Jukt Micronics) but I pop in the DVD every couple of years just to marvel at Tinseltown’s depiction of our New York offices (vastly nicer than the real deal ) and my colleagues (vastly better looking). If you are curious about the details, Billy Ray’s outstanding film Shattered Glass (starring, among others Hayden Christensen and Chloë Sevigny) is well-worth watching. Obviously, it still can be, but Adam Penenberg, the bulldog Forbes reporter (now a professor at New York University) who broke the story in the two posts republished below and his fearless, razor-sharp editor Kambiz Foorohar (now at Bloomberg) did a lot to dispel that notion. At the time online journalism (or “new media” as it was dubbed) had a reputation for being slip-shod and second-rate. Oddly missing from the account, however, is the fact that the scandal was unearthed not by the New Republic or its vaunted fact-checking process, but by what was then called the Forbes Digital Tool and is now known as. It is a compelling read that strives to be Glass’ personal redemption song.

The second most famous journalistic liar (first-place honors for the New York Times and Jayson Blair) has broken his silence to give an extended interview to Hanna Rosin, who describes herself as his “former best friend.” The resulting “Hello, My Name is Stephen Glass, and I’m Sorry” has been published in the New Republic in honor (if that’s the right word) of that publication’s 100-year anniversary.

After 16 years, two failed attempts to be admitted to the bar (on both different coasts), a self-serving “novel” and a Hollywood movie, the New Republic’s fabulist Stephen Glass is back in the news.