By Dan Ilett, 8 June 2005 13:05
NEWS
A British man suspected of hacking into 53 Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and US military networks is facing extradition today.
Gary McKinnon, 39, an unemployed man from north London, was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Extradition Unit on Tuesday night and taken to a police station in the capital.
McKinnon, known as 'Solo' in the hacking world, is appearing in custody today at Bow Street Magistrates Court on an extradition warrant, on behalf of the US government. The warrant says he gained illegal access and made unauthorised modifications to 53 computers belonging to the US government, including computers from the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, between February 2001 and March 2002.
The US government has said Mckinnon's hacking caused downtime and personnel costs of $1m.
If extradited and found guilty in the US, he faces five years in prison for eight crimes he was indicted for in 2002. Among the charges, McKinnon is suspected of stealing administrator identities, deleting 1,300 user accounts and copying a file containing usernames and encrypted passwords.
Comments
There are 8 comments. Join the discussion
1. Geoffrey Darnton
Are they also prosecuting those responsible for security?
This story is truly incredulous - lax security in so many installations!
... and what about suing the manufacturer(s) of the operating system(s) involved for negligence?
... and what about the requirement by security agencies in the US that they only use operating systems with minimum security certificates?
...and what about the pressure from some software vendors to allow them to shovel onto the market whatever they like without any accountability?
It sounds as though only the alleged hacker may be publicly accountable - a lot more explanations are needed from organizations involved in this case - from the software vendors to those who chose the systems to those who manage security.
2. Jon Swift
Hasn't he been snapped up by MI6 yet?
Is this a reflection of how good he is or low slack the US systems are? Gary McKinnon deserves a reward from the President for highlighting this appalling lack of security in this age of global terrorism
3. anonymous
Give him a job at Cheltenham working for the ministry of defence! He can then spy on the Koreans, Zimbabweans, Iranians, etc as well!
We should be handing out medals to people keeping an eye on the lack of security in the US military, not prosecutions.
4. Iain Howarth
Breaking and Entering is still Breaking and Entering . . .
Whilst I agree with the comments about apparent lamentable systems security, if he were really doing a 'service' he could have notified the systems managers of their problem without causing malicious damage.
I usually lock my car but If someone breaks in a drives it away, even if I left it unlocked (stupid as that may be) they are still committing a crime!
5. Stephen Fry
There is a world of difference between a poorly secured Vauxhall Astra and an integrated high security military network.
This hacker is either a genius or very lucky. Either way his knowledge is worth exploiting and not criminalising.
6. anonymous
Extradition? It's simply an American term for job interview. All they want to know is how he did it.
7. Ion Castro
What were these systems running, Windows? anyway, how typical of the military mind to shoot the messenger and ignore the message, just imagine if he'd had malicious intent or were based in the mountains of Afghanistan!
8. Insane corn
if he were to notify the admin because they are americans they would have still tried to prosecute him