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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.
no pun intended.
reminds me of the movie. he is a true cyber punk if i ever saw one,
Go to Freelamo.com, a non-profit website DEDICATED to supporting Adrian Lamo.
ALL profits from donations and or merchandise purchases are donated to the Adrian Lamo Defense Fund.
We HAVE to help this guy out. Jail is not right -- what he did was mere curiosity mixed with the desire to HELP these companies fix their network.
He did nothing of REAL financial damage. Please help him today (imagine if you were in HIS shoes!).
Thank you for reading this, friends. We, as a large tech community, have to get behind this guy and show others that mere EXPLORING is not to be looked down upon. What if we didn't explore Mars/Moon?
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
That the hacker is represented by a man named "Hecker"? Only in America...
Because he didn't have a permanent address and occasionally stayed in empty buildings.
Well, at least he won't be homeless for 5 years.
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.
Why didn't he do something useful, like get rid of that obnoxious registration system?
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
"Apparantly it seems Times doesn't share the same affinity"
Would you be like WorldCom or like the Times if a stranger broke into your house "just to test how easy it was"?
OK, mind if we make a hero out of burglar who breaks into your house?
After all, there is nothing wrong if he "EXPLORES" your medicine cabinet and sock drawer, right?
As long as he doesn't do anything of "REAL financial damage" ?
From the sound of things, Adrian didn't want to take the chance of having to spend five years in Danbury or Allenwood.
He didn't create the vulnerabilities in the Times' network, he merely exposed them in the same way he's been doing for years. Adrian hurt no one and owes nothing to society.
According to TechTV's "The Screen Savers" (computer help and trends show, for those not familiar), who have interviewed Lamo several times, he has struck a deal with the Feds to server six months in Federal prison. He was asking for six months of home detention, but he still ended up a heck of a lot better than five years!
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
To me, what he got at was information that should be publically accessible without tresspass.
It is publically accessable without tresspass. But it isnt archived, indexed, cross referenced and made easily searchable, and that costs money. Thats what you pay for when you make LexisNexis searches, or you could do it yourself but it would take a lot more time to do.
His parents mortgaged their home to help defend him. Perhaps this is the reason for the "homeless" label?
Yea, I thought he plea bargained on Monday to a fitting 6 month probation? So did CNN...
http://news.com.com/2100-7348-5135351.html
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.
We HAVE to help this guy out. Jail is not right -- what he did was mere curiosity mixed with the desire to HELP these companies fix their network.
He did nothing of REAL financial damage. Please help him today (imagine if you were in HIS shoes!).
Thank you for reading this, friends. We, as a large tech community, have to get behind this guy and show others that mere EXPLORING is not to be looked down upon. What if we didn't explore Mars/Moon?
Pardon my frankness, but you are full of shit. If you came home and found this asshole sitting in your livingroom watching pay-per-view TV after having gone through all of your cabinets and drawers, would you say:
"Oh, no problem. What you did wasn't wrong. You were just being *curious* about what was in my house. You were just *exploring* when you went through my desk drawers and read all of my personal documents. You were just trying to *help* me by pointing out security vulnerabilities in my patio door and alarm system. Thanks so much!"
NO! You wouldn't. You'd call the cops after chasing the guy out of your house.
This isn't about exporing Mars. This is breaking and entering, pure and simple. It's time that people like this stop thinking the whole goddam world is here just to satisfy their personal "curiosity". To be perfectly blunt, you can take your Adrian Lamo Defense Fund and cram it up your ass. I want to see this guy do the maximum stretch as a lesson to other "curious" fellows.
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.
Well I have been waiting for this news for a while now. I know Adrian much more as a person then a hacker. It saddens me to see him plead guilty and possibly go to jail but I knew he wouldnt fight if they charged him with actions that he did do.
One thing though that is hard to convay exspecially in text is his increadible sence of moral ethics. When we look at a name attached to the word hacker we have a certain mindset an image of all the hacker refrences we have at our disposal and apply that to Adrian. In this case that image is way off base. While I could list why I think he is an activly good person instead of the passive good/passive neutral people that make up the bulk of our society it still would not do him justice.
If you ever have the chance to talk to him for a good 20 minutes take the oppertunity, sit down and buy him a drink. By the end of the conversation you will walk away feeling that in his case he really shouldnt get the maximum sentance.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
W1LL 0WNZ UR NETW0RK 4 F00D?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If someone walked into my home or jimmied the door to gain access, and stood in my living room to say "by the way, your door sucks", he's guilty of trespassing at the very least. This guy is no different. There is nothing that gives him or any other hacker a special "permit" to go where they do not belong just because they claim to do it "for the greater good". He deserves some kind of punishment.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Wow, I didn't know he had tagged the New York Times building with spray paint, smashed pumpkins at their door, shot their windows with a bb gun and smashed their mailbox with a bat! Yes, in that case, I think he should go to jail. It isn't as if he had just accessed a computer through the internet...
As was pointed out in posts about Kevin Metnik - the glory days of cracking systems past quite a few years ago.
Back then people sent passwords in plain text, there were no firewalls, nfs was as vulnerable as eggs laid on a freeway. Practically nobody paid any attention to security issues.
And this illustrates exactly why the crackers have done all of us a service.
There are enemies in this world... but they are not people like Adrian Lamo.
Without the crackers our systems would still be as vulnerable as they were 15 and 20 years ago. People would still take risks that any normal person would consider insane. In fact, a lot of people, perhaps the majority, still have a lot to learn.
So again I say - thank Gawd for the crakers and guys - keep up the good work. Keep pounding home the point that people must pay attention to proper security. Without consequences for lax security it is clear they won't do a damn thing.
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.
Well, look at the bright side - at least he won't be homeless anymore.
Does anyone know if Adrian's court documents have the phrase
"LAm0, U R PWN3D!" on it?
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.
YOu are interpreting the crime incorrectly. He is not charged for using or accessing public information, he is charged for stealing access to a pay-for-use service and charging the cost to the New York Times. The information on LexisNexis is available from various sources and is (mostly) free to all, but LesixNexis goes to a lot of expense to gather all this information in one place, catalog it and make it readily available - FOR A FEE. In truth, the information would be almost impossilble for you or I to get otherwise. LexisNexis provides a valuable service - and that is the point - it is VALUABLE, was stolen by Lamo, and paid for by the NYT without their consent.
There is absolutely no difference than if Lamo had stolen $100,000 in cash from the Times and used the money to pay his LexisNexis bill.