This is a disturbing and yet somehow entertaining article about Guccifer, the Romanian email hacker who’s in jail for hacking into the email accounts of the rich and famous.

Why did he do it? His motive doesn’t seem to have been money; he didn’t get any. Maybe he did it just because he could.

One would think he was some sort of computer mastermind. But no, not at all. He merely was a genius and/or incredible persistent at learning and/or guessing the answers to security questions (“security questions” became an Orwellian phrase when Guccifer was involved):

The hacker who signed off as Guccifer (pronounced GUCCI-fer) ”” a nom de guerre coined, he said, to combine “the style of Gucci and the light of Lucifer” ”” turned out to be Marcel-Lehel Lazar, a jobless 43-year-old former taxi driver. He had no expertise in computers, no fancy equipment, only a clunky NEC desktop and a Samsung cellphone, and no special skills beyond what he had picked up on the web…

Instead of burrowing into his victims’ email accounts using computer worms and other hacking tools, the prosecutor said, Mr. Lazar trawled the web for information about his targets and then simply guessed the right answers to security questions. “He is just a poor Romanian guy who wanted to be famous,” said the prosecutor, who leads a cybercrime team in Romania’s organized crime unit.

I guess “infamous” will do just as well. Although, come to think of it, he’s still not exactly a household word.