Slashdot Mirror
Adrian Lamo Pleads Guilty
darth dickinson writes "InfoWorld reports that Adrian Lamo, the so-called 'homeless hacker,' pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges that he broke into the internal computer network of The New York Times. The 22-year-old could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine at a sentencing hearing in April." From the sound of things, he just wants to pay his debt to society and put this behind him. It'll be interesting to see if the judge sticks to the suggested sentence or not.
reminds me of the movie. he is a true cyber punk if i ever saw one,
Why?
It seems he crosed the line into illegal hacking. The website gives no reason not to believe the prosecution's account of the case, and to accept that the penalty agreed to is proportionate.
His "exploring" involved the access of "home telephone numbers and Social Security numbers for more than 3,000 contributors to the Times' Op-Ed page." And use of the LexisNexis service without paying for it. He also "set up five fictitious user identification names and passwords inside the Times' system to use to access LexisNexis and then used them to make more than 3,000 searches in February 2002."
While you can quibble about the definition of damage, I feel that what he did is the analogue of theft and trespassing on a massive (albeit electronic) scale. He is remorseful for his actions, and I agree that he certainly should be held accountable for his actions.
This from the CNN article.
I'm sorry man, but the moon wasn't anybody's private property and equipment.
He is a charasmatic hacker. He explains to companies their weaknesses. When he hacked WorldCom in 2001, WorldCom praised him for his efforts.
Apparantly it seems Times doesn't share the same affinity. Now FBI has him as a public menace and threat. I wonder what the talk would be if he was Islamic?
I'm beginning to think that all the FBI does these days is find martyrs, symbolic arrests to illustrate points of model citizen behavior. This is opposed to actually arresting people who do do a lot of damage. Another example, Sherman Austin from Raise the Fist.com, was subject to police raid, extended arrest, and jail sentencing because he posted information in a protest guide (that he didn't author) which contained a small link about explosives.
Too many martyrs. We need a calendar, the martyr-a-day celendar, to list the date when all the different people were arrested. Otherwise we'll lose track and just start accepting this.
The Custom Mary
Turn that lameness filter on yourself, guy. Your analogy is incorrect.
If those kids in your analogy walked up to the window, then used remote controls to change the channel, order other movies (say, about 3,000 of them), reset your TIVO recording selections, and used your tv purchasing service to send themselves some gear, then your analogy would be a little closer to the reality.
He *broke in* to the NYT system. He moved shit around. He used services that cost real money. He *is* a criminal.
In case it's escaped your attention, a good way to determine whether he's a criminal is to ask yourself: "Hmm, arrested? Check. Charged with a crime? Check. Facing fines and prison? Check."
If this doofus isn't responsible for what he's done, no one is.
I've been noticing the use of the phrase "so-called" everywhere lately, and it has me curious. So-called weapons of mass destruction, so-called mad-cow disease, so-called homeless hacker, etc. Quite often it seems to precede terms that are generally accepted rather than something obscure, which confuses me even further. Is there some sort of butt-covering here, like when news agencies go out of their way to refer to the guy seen on video tape committing a crime as an "alleged suspect"? Does it have some specific purpose? Is it just slang? My so-called mind wants to know.
This guy got excessively promoted and praised by SecurityFocus editor Kevin Poulsen (former well-unknown haxor who got busted for his computer activities;). One could find this an extremely suspicious and a coincidental matter. I'm in a serious doubt Lamo lacks the technical skills required to be recognized as a famous cracker. In fact, I've never seen a well-documented case, describing any of his actions on paper. Anxious to do so, though.
If you consider using a proxy that is misconfigured to get into a corporate LAN to poke around a crime, I dont wish to be in the same state as you. He should get probation, the judge should make him get a 20+ hour a week job, and a permanent address for the length of his probation. He should also write an apology letter to NYT. As far as I understand it, he did not even write anything to NYT's hard drives! But if he crossed that line... his sentence should go up. I often find a few bugs in cgi during my normal surfing. I often peek at passwd as uid nobody for shits and giggles. Should i go to jail? http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/ind_display.pl?A ccount=CPR&Template=%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2 e%2e/%2e%2e/etc/passwd%00
Dont you see this as a similiar problem as dumb patents? The blind leading the ignorant in places of power? I just read so many slashdot users who said it is just a crime, do away with Lamo.
Well, fuck off, because obviously you dont understand security and how the internet is a neighborhood.
P.S. I emailed several prnewswire.com people about that hole two months ago. They dont care. Never even answered back.
I knew Adrian a long long time ago. Back when he used the nick 'Magus'...
Long long ago, he was an egomanical Machievallian individual. His skill, I suppose, was with people. Very little programming knowledge, or technical for that matter. He loved attention though. He was a slightly more sophisticated script kiddie, I suppose. Liked playing his games.
I have not spoken to him in years. Nor do I care to. We parted under terms that were less than cordial. Sometimes, when my thoughts do drift to the past, I wonder if he did become the wonderful moral person that people claim he is today. When I knew him, he was starting a downward spiral of alienating people that were close to him and accusing everyone of betraying him. In retrospect, I would have classified it as borderline paranoid schizophrenia.
He was not a moral person then. He did some very immoral and very unethical things. How much does time change a person? I do not claim to know if he is a moral person now. I would not trust his word. I would not advise anyone asking my opinion to trust him. Still, I do wonder what kind of a person he has become.