Briton Gary McKinnon was recently arrested and is awaiting extradition to the US. He is charged with penetrating US military networks and causing huge amounts of damage, although this BBC radio interview with him paints a more subtle picture.
Whilst he did, indeed, penetrate US military computers, he did so with the default administrator passwords of Windows systems that had been connected to the public Internet. Gary is facing 70 years in a US prison. If he goes down, they ought to send the system administrator of those boxes to share a cell with him, because allowing systems like that to hang on a public network is nothing short of criminal negligence.
Anyway, the interview is fascinating, because Gary claims to have been in search of and found proof of US involvement in the use of extraterrestrial technology. Gary talks candidly and lucidly about his experiences and paints a picture of himself as a tragically obsessed individual whose life became synonymous with the pursuit of more information. If he is to be believed, he caused no damage at all, beyond creating a clinical need to reinstall the systems through which he passed, as these had now been compromised and could no longer be trusted. Of course, any system whose administrator password has not been changed before it is connected to a public network is, by definition, untrustworthy and must be regarded as compromised.
Fascinating listening. Check it out.
The $700-900M in damages is obviously an unbelievable lie, since he says he only deleted things once on accident and was just looking.
70 years for this is ridiculous. Instead of actually protecting their system with all the difficulty of simply following the Windows installer prompts, they try to maintain security through legal means.
Go government security!
Geoff, I like the link from your name in the attribution of your comment. Got any more? Is this some form of idol worship?