Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

Possible explanation #5:
Someone controlling Truong's PC remotely is the fake.

...and managed to pretty much do the controlling while Truong
was at the keyboard? And managed to infect a new PC running
the Tablet PC version of Vista? Hard to believe.

A recent post from one "Stray Cat" relates to my comment above.
I agree that Jones analysis was flawed on this point.
I would welcome a similar refutation of my conclusions
about such malware moving to a new PC with a different OS.

"Stray Cat" wrote:

quote Jones
It would require considerable sophistication for some one to hijack
the "chesspromotion" computer and use it to interact with remote
websites without the real user being aware of it. I do not view
this as a likely scenario.
/quote Jones


I totally disagree with you on your apparent dismissal of the
likelihood of a trojan infection explaining the observations. Your
admitted stated lack of familiarity with the people involved, and
therefore also with their levels of determination, motivation,
time-availability, financial resources and, most importantly,
technical sophistication, renders what might have been, against a
different backdrop, a perfectly reasonable view, into one that is
hard to objectively justify.


Let us hypothetically assume that you possess all the qualities
stated in the preceding para, saving the technical expertise,
which I guess I do not have to go hypothetical about. Are you
honestly suggesting that, given the opportunity for installing
malware such as |Back Orifice v3.X.X|, that you could not have
"pulled off" the sting yourself? Of course you could have, and so
could tens of thousands of other people. There are thousands of
virus-writers "out there", and the sophistication needed for the
surreptitious, mala fide (sic) operation of a backdoor requires
notably less skill than the creation and dissemination of (say) a
handcrafted virus.


Hence the requirement for technical sophistication is not, in my
expert opinion, the limiting factor, but the question of whether
people with the other qualities (motive, determination etc.) exist
in sufficient numbers to make it reasonable to suppose that at
least one of them would have the required skills. Both the stars
the drama are accomplished self-publicists and each may at times
appear abrasive. One of them, in the opinion of many, including
myself - apparently craves notoriety. Solely for the purpose of
assessing whether it is likely that there are literally thousands
of people bearing a grudge against this prostating protagonist,
you could do worse than follow some of the 30-40 links posted by an
unnamed fan in an expiring message, preserved by myself on 12/20 at
http://google.com/group/alt.privacy....8caa3804f5edc1
Strong emotions may be stirred by material that many will see as
scandalous.


In the light of the above, your implied view that it is unlikely
that sufficiently many people exist with a grudge against one or
both of the protagonists for it to be probable that at least one
exists with the technical sophistication to carry out the covert
and extended hijack of the computer of the accused is seen to be at
odds with the available evidence.




--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/