Apple iBook gets 'hacked' by a pussy cat

An Apple iBook owner suspected his cat had hacked into his password-protected notebook. It turned out he was right -- his cat, which liked sleeping on his keyboard, managed to automatically bypass the computer's security.

On the official Apple discussion forums on Sunday, a user identified as nilscrasher was asking for help because settings and file names -- and even the name of his hard drive -- mysteriously changed while he left the room. The only other person (cats are people too) that had access to his machine was his 14-year-old cat.

This fat cat is day-dreaming on a PC keyboard but you get the picture.

"I have this old cat that likes to sleep on my iBook ... I have set the screensaver to require a password in order to prevent her from entering random keystrokes ... she has somehow managed to circumvent the password and, among other things, rename my hard drive.

"These things happen while I'm making grilled cheese sandwiches or doing my dirty business in the bathroom," nilscrasher wrote.

The discussion thread very quickly generated 85 responses, some of them really rather amusing.

"I'd suggest setting up an account in the cat's name and switch to it before leaving the room ... Kitty wants to play with the computer ... Give her an account so she doesn't mess up yours," wrote Ronda Wilson.

Another good one was from Pete K, who said: "Dude, you gotta think on an animals [sic] level. Every time you leave the room, pee in a circle around your iBook/territory".

As it turns out, the cat really was able to 'hack' into the computer -- because the system contained a flaw in the password protected screensaver, which meant that when nilscrasher walked out of the room, if the cat sat on his warm keyboard, it would gain full access.

"I really just expected somebody to log on here and tell me about something like Keyboard Cleaner. Which somebody did. And I installed it. And now the cat can only turn on the Caps Lock light. And I haven't had many problems since.," said a very satisfied nilscrasher.

I don't think there will ever be a better example to help bang the message home: Patch your systems people or even a cat will be able to break into them.