“My intention was never to disrupt security. The fact that I logged on with no password showed there was no security to begin with.”
- UK Hacker Gary McKinnon, who faces decades of imprisonment and millions in fines for hacking Pentagon computers [BBC]
Mr. McKinnon explained that he was looking for ‘suppressed UFO technology’ that he is sure is being hidden in Pentagon computers.
Yeah they will want to fine and imprison him when they should be kissing his a** for finding ‘the breach in the dike’. Heaven forbid that we should admit that all the hype about our security is just that—-hype!
Mr Mckinnon is a crook and a liar, computer hacking no matter what the reason is a crime and an invasion of privacy at the minimum. We keep playing games with these people because they alway come up with the excuse ” I should’t have been able to do it”. He and his ilk see themselves as some sort of Robin Hood character, when in fact they are just plain criminals. I hope he rots for a long, long time in a cold wet miserable cell.
“I hope he rots for a long, long time…”
Fair enough, but if a clod like McKinnon can break in, who’s minding the store? The real bad guys are a lot less likely to get caught than he was, and they’re not afraid of prison. In his idiotic way, he did us a favor. At minimum the Pentagon now knows who to fire (if civilian) or court-martial for derelection of duty.
I come down somewhere between momma and James. And here’s another case that raises the same questions, only more clearly: Eric McCarty. This guy had been trying to get them to tighten up their security and they wouldn’t listen to him. Or Adrian Lamo – same scenario.
I understand DOF, concerns and I would be concerned too, if I really thought he broke into anything. All the DOD systems have been a triple crusted pain in the ass, just to log into for the last few years at least. Unless these bozo’s have a crypto key and the 8 digit passwords they are just blowing smoke. DOD gets thousands of hits a day from attackers, so what did McKinnion and his scum friends find, a trap. I know you won’t believe me, ok, just jump into http://www.usarmy.mil and have fun if you can. By the way that is an open system that you can actually see.
I’ll take your word on it for military systems – and given what’s about to happen to McKinnon, I’ll pass on testing their security myself. :gulp:
McCarty & Lamo (great name – heh) found holes in government, academic, and business systems and reported them to the relevant system administrators, told exactly how they broke in, and cooperated with investigators when they got into trouble for it. They adhere to a strict set of guidelines for this kind of activity but the law makes no distinction between them and the black hats.
Being a system administrator myself and having been hacked once, I know the real black-hats are smarter than I am. I’d be unlikely to prosecute an email from a white-hat saying; ‘I got into system x using technique y and you need to change configuration z to seal it up’. Partly out of gratitude and partly out of embarassment for missing the detail. :red: