MSU students who checked their e-mail in the last month might have been surprised to find messages from Men's basketball coach Tom Izzo and President George W. Bush in their inbox.

But these out-of-character e-mails weren't from the high-profile figures themselves; rather, they were the works of a bored 17-year-old high school student from Commerce Township, Mich.

The e-mail spoof from Izzo informed recipients that incoming freshman Kelly Peterson "is the world's coolest person." The e-mail that claimed to be from the president said in a time of national crisis, the university should think of "more positive things," like celebrating an MSU student's birthday.

Acting on a dare, Evan Owski, a Walled Lake Central High School senior, said he pulled off his prank late one school night. He said he did it with the knowledge he acquired from high school and community college basic computer-programming classes.

It only took him about an hour to create a computer program that was capable of sending a message from anyone's e-mail account to about 75,000 university recipients, he said.

"It's probably the most large-scale prank I've done," Owski said. "I'm not really a prankster, but thought it would be fun."

Rich Wiggins, senior information technologist for Academic Computing & Network Services, said MSU has a spam detection system that filters a large number of fake e-mails, but it doesn't catch the ones that look like real e-mail.

"To put it in perspective, we get probably a million incoming e-mails a day, and probably a quarter of them are spam," Wiggins said, adding that the university doesn't have a set disciplinary policy for people who create spoof e-mail. "We really don't have the resources to react every time something like this happens."

Judith Collins, director of the Identity Theft Crime and Criminal Research Lab, said e-mail hacking is quite common, and almost anyone could learn how to do it. She said some states have introduced legislation to access penalties for e-mail spoofing, but Michigan isn't one of them. The state does have an anti-spam law against unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Journalism sophomore Charlotte Schultz was the subject of the birthday message that said it was from the president. She said she thought it was funny, aside from the week of random messages she received from people either questioning her or complaining about it.

"I fell on the ground laughing," she said. "It was hilarious."

Wiggins said it's sometimes hard to distinguish real e-mails from spam.

"We live in a world where e-mail is not authenticated, and you don't really know where it's from," Wiggins said.

But this incident is one in a series of incidents of hacking attempts that have occurred within the university.

In the last month, Wharton Center and the MSU Federal Credit Union were both subject to hacking attempts.

On Friday, the credit union warned its members that it had been the target of a phishing attack, the second in several months, Wiggins said.

Phishing, Wiggins said, is a mass e-mail made to look as if it came from a credible source. Often, these messages look authentic and ask for the recipient to confirm or supply information.

The e-mail to the credit union members suggested that someone had tried to break into the member's account, along with requests to confirm account numbers, passwords and credit card information.

"Phishing is like fishing, like bait," Wiggins said. "They're trying to hook somebody, trying to get them to bite and give them information."

Wiggins said a lot of e-mail students receive is bogus, and they should look at every message and attachment from an unknown sender with skepticism.

"If you send something to 100,000 people, certain people are going to be fooled by it," he said.

Last week, MSU warned more than 40,000 Wharton Center patrons that a hacker broke into a server involved in credit card processing.

The letter was sent to Wharton visitors who used their credit cards as far back as September 2003.

The intrusion, which was discovered April 26, is still under investigation, MSU Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.

Wharton spokesman Kent Love says there's no evidence that credit card data was accessed or copied.

But some students said they're still worried.

"I don't want anyone to get my credit info; that's an invasion of privacy," human biology sophomore Nelly Tomas said.

But the university is taking steps to keep computer hackers away from MSU's network.

MSU offers anti-virus and anti-spyware software to help students safeguard against most viruses and e-mail attacks, Wiggins said.

The university has also begun testing intrusion-detection hardware that blocks off-campus attacks on MSU's computer network.

Owski, who will be attending Northwestern University in the fall, said he's done with pranks - for now at least.

"If I did it again, it would be overkill, and people would be tired of it or annoyed," Owski said.

Amy Davis can be reached at davisam8@msu.edu. Staff writer Mara Deutch contributed to this report.