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"AOL's Security Fiction"
AOL's "Web Entertainment" area sports a feedback window asking "What do you like about entertainment on AOL? What do you dislike.... We're here to listen. So tell us what you're thinking."The answer, apparently, was "Hackers are taking over AOL..." That message appears directly above the feedback icon on the area's main screen--sandwiched between two profanity-laced icon captions attributing the hack to "MAFIA," in the screen-shot left in the hacked file library.
After nine such incidents had been reported by the AOL List, Tatiana Gau (AOL's "Vice President of Integrity Assurance") sent an in-house memo urging content providers not to talk to the media in the event that their area is hacked. (The appearance of security would be maintained, if not actual security...) This raises the question: how many additional hacks were successfully covered up before being detected by the media?
At least one thing is clear : Gau's in-house memo was accessed, and sent to the AOL List's author within hours.