Following up my post from yesterday, I spoke again to my friend who is an IT manager at Turner Broadcasting System in Atlanta (midtown offices). We talked for about 20 minutes at around 3:30 EST but I haven't been able to get in front of a desktop until now. The 6th Fan contest is being run jointly by Turner and Bleacher Report, which are sister companies under the Time Warner umbrella. Normally, his group handles IT issues for certain Turner properties (TNT, Tru TV, and Turner Classic Movies), but they have been tasked to the 6th Fan contest as a special project. Although he is LDS, he graduated from Georgia Tech, not BYU.

In any event, when I first spoke to him yesterday, his head was on a swivel because of all of the nefarious activity swirling the contest at the time. He said their servers were getting swamped by the bots and hacks. There may also have been denial of service attacks, but he wasn't clear about that. As a result, he (and his reports) had been called in to the office on a Sunday afternoon/evening because the bleeding couldn't be stopped remotely. Needless to say, he was quite upset. I mentioned yesterday, as reported by him, that Turner had been in direct contact with the FBI regarding the activities starting Sunday afternoon and that the FBI was reportedly mulling an investigation. Today, he shared the following additional information:

This morning, his boss (a Turner VP) met personally with the agent-in-charge of the FBI cyber investigative squad (part of the FBI Cyber Division) in the Atlanta field office and the deputy United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. The purpose of this meeting was to share evidence and to discuss opening a possible investigation. I assume that the US Attorney was there to advise whether an investigation, if successful, might warrant prosecution under the facts. My friend was not at the meeting and has not spoken directly with the FBI, but he has, at his boss's direction, provided copies of electronic evidence (e.g., logs and some other stuff I didn't understand) to an FBI agent via FTP transfer. The originals have been archived. His boss reports that the meeting went well and the FBI seems receptive to Turner's complaint, although no formal decision to open an investigation seems to have been made yet. The FBI mentioned that they are considering waiting for the contest to conclude to see whether there are any more shenanigans. Although the Cyber Division's highest priority is usually terrorism-related internet activity, this is a relatively high-profile matter that is being pushed by one of the largest and well-known business enterprises in Atlanta.

According to my friend, the evidence (and possible federal investigation) is focused on two categories of conduct: (1) attempted and at least one successful hacking into the 6th Fan website itself from at least two IP addresses in North Dakota; and (2) using bots to defeat the captcha and vote repeatedly from an IP address in Texas. The first category is plainly illegal activity under unauthorized access laws and is the most serious of the conduct that is being considered. The second category is apparently illegal because it is considered circumventing a technological measure that controls access and also could be considered internet fraud because money was involved. He mentioned that the hackers were trying to hide their IP addresses using VPN software or something similar, but it took about 5 minutes to break that. He's kind of a computer geek and had a good laugh at that. I kind of said "whatever."

Obviously neither my friend nor his boss has the final say in whether the FBI decides to investigate. If the FBI does decide to go forward with an investigation, they aren't required to give formal notice to the targets. The next step would likely be a subpoena to the respective ISPs in North Dakota and Texas to determine the actual identity of the hackers. My guess is that will, in turn, lead the FBI to some angry parents in whose basements these jokers likely live (looking at you Scott Quenette a/k/a Bison4Life). Then agents show up at your doorsteps for interviews. When the investigation concludes, the FBI turns the evidence and case over to the US Attorney's office for prosecution.

I asked my guy to let me know if he hears anything about the status and I'll share that here if I find out more. If I had to guess, though, I would think the FBI lies in the weeds on this until the contest is over to see whether these guys pull more tricks for the finals. Any more of the hacking and bot use to influence the outcome of the contest and they pounce.

It's unfortunate that these guys are such sore losers. But what comes around go around. Because this is a public contest and $100k is at stake, it goes beyond a prank into criminal activity.