Virgil Griffith

Infobox_Person
name = Virgil Griffith

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imagesize = 300px
caption = Virgil Griffith, 2007
birth_date = birth year and age|1983
birth_place = Alabama, USA
education = Cognitive science (University of Alabama)
occupation = Hacker
residence =
spouse =
children =
parents =
website = http://virgil.gr/
religion =

Virgil Griffith (born 1983), also known as Romanpoet, is an American hacker, known for his involvement with a 2003 lawsuit with the Blackboard Inc. company and his creation of the WikiScanner. He has also published papers on artificial life. [cite news|url=http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker|title= See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign|date=August 14, 2007|publisher="Wired (magazine)"|author=John Borland|accessdate=2007-08-14]

Biography

Griffith was born in Alabama in 1983 and graduated from the Alabama School of Math and Science in 2002, [cite web|url=http://www.asms.net/events.htm|date=September 3, 2007|title=Alumnus Virgil Griffith Creates and Releases Wikipedia Scanner] and then attended the University of Alabama, studying cognitive science in New College. He was a member of the Mallet Assembly. He transferred to Indiana University in 2004, but returned to graduate cum laude from Alabama in August 2007. [See David Virgil Griffith in cite web
year = 2007
url = http://www.ua.edu/commencement/images/commsummer07.pdf
title = Commencement
publisher = The University of Alabama
accessdate = 29 August
accessyear = 2007
format=PDF] Griffith is now a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. [cite news|url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12823729|date=August 16, 2007|title=Scanner Tracks Who's Changing What on Wikipedia|publisher=NPR] He is affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute as a visiting researcher. [cite web|url=http://www.santafe.edu/profiles/?pid=288|date=March 27, 2008|title=SFI Profile: Virgil Griffith|publisher=Santa Fe Institute]

Griffith has given talks at the hacker conferences Interz0ne, PhreakNIC, and HOPE. It was at Interz0ne 1 in 2002 that he met Billy Hoffman, a Georgia hacker who had discovered a security flaw in the campus magnetic ID card system called "BuzzCard". He and Hoffman proceeded over the next year to learn more about the flaw and attempted to give a talk at Interz0ne2 in April 2003. However, a few hours before the presentation, he and Hoffman were served with a cease and desist letter. Two days later, it was followed by a lawsuit from Blackboard Inc. alleging that they had stolen trade secrets as well as violated both the DMCA and the Espionage and Sedition Act. [cite news|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A48214-2003Apr17|title=Blackboard Gets Gag Order Against Smart-Card Hackers|work=Washington Post|date=2003-04-17|accessdate=2007-08-14] [cite news|url=http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences.php|title=Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA|work=Electronic Frontier Foundation|date=April 2006|accessdate=2007-08-14] [cite news|first=Andrea L|last=Foster|url=http://chronicle.com/free/2003/04/2003041601t.htm|title=At Blackboard's Request, Judge Prevents Students From Discussing Security of Debit-Card System|publisher=The Chronicle of Higher Education|date=2003-04-16|accessdate=2007-08-16] The lawsuit was later settled.

On August 14, 2007, Griffith released a new software utility, "WikiScanner," that tracks Wikipedia article edits from unregistered accounts back to their originating IP addresses and identifies the corporations or organizations to which they belong. [cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm|title=Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'|author=Jonathan Fildes|date=August 15, 2007|publisher=BBC News|accessdate=2007-08-15]

Writing

* Virgil Griffith, Markus Jakobsson, 2005. " [http://virgil.gr/9/GriffithJakobsson2005-MMN.pdf Messin' with Texas: Deriving Mother's Maiden Names Using Public Records] ", ISBN 978-3-540-26223-7.
* Virgil Griffith, Larry Yaeger, 2005, MIT Press. "Ideal Free Distribution in Agents with Evolved Neural Architectures. A-Life 10 Conference".
* Griffith is listed as one of the contributors (as "Virgil G") in "The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms", 2006, ISBN 0-7867-1726-2. [cite web|url=http://www.elonka.com/mammoth/acknowledgements.html|title=Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles: Acknowledgements|accessdate=2007-08-14]
* Two articles in "Phishing and Counter-Measures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft", ISBN 0-471-78245-9.

References

External links

* [http://www.virgil.gr/ Virgil Griffith's homepage]
* [http://www.binrev.com/radio/archive.php?p=5 Binary Revolution webcast] , May 17, 2005
* [http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2003/04/15/acidus/print.html Salon] , April 15, 2003
* [http://www.santafe.edu/events/abstract/345 Santa Fe Institute talk]
* [http://features.slashdot.org/features/03/04/14/1846250.shtml Slashdot interview] , April 14, 2003
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m97_kL4ox0 Polyworld: Using Evolution to Design Artificial Intelligence] , November 8, 2007