Slashdot Mirror
World's Biggest Hacker Held
Hieronymus Howard writes "The London Evening Standard is reporting that the "worlds biggest computer hacker" has been arrested in London.
Gary McKinnon, 39, was seized by the Met's extradition unit at his Wood Green home.
The unemployed former computer engineer is accused of causing the U.S. government $1 billion of damage by breaking into its most secure computers at the Pentagon and NASA. He is likely to be extradited to America to face eight counts of computer crime in 14 states and could be jailed for 70 years. Apparently he broke into U.S. military computers to hunt for evidence of a UFO cover-up."
From what I've been able to tell over the years, the damages in these cases is almost completely made up. The FBI loves to post huge numbers on cases like these because it makes them look important. More realistic estimates based on administrator time and business lost due to the servers being unavailable tend to be far lower.
I read the internet for the articles.
To be fair, the cost of finding and fixing trhe holes should not be included. After all, it was broken before he got there.
Not to mention that they should be found and fixed regardless of any intrusions.
=Smidge=
Not to mention trying to figure out where all those holes in security came from and patching them.
Yeah, that makes sense. Pawn the cost of fixing your security holes on the guy who found them.
If my house ever gets burglarized, I'm going to try to get the burglar to pay the contractor to fix the "hole" the burglar got in through.
Maybe it's just me, but any device connected to any other device is no longer to be considered as secure.
I would have guessed that the gubbermint's "most secure computers" would be airgapped, but apparently that is not the case. Or, perhaps, the author of TFA is being just a bit sensational and overdramatic. ;)
"Most of the alleged hacking took place in 2001 and 2002. At one stage the US thought it was the work of the al Qaeda terror network. "
OK, so this must have been some serious stuff going down for them to think that he was al Qaeda. Or was it?
"Friends said that he broke into the networks from his home computer to try to prove his theory that the US was covering up the existence of UFOs. "
Uh oh, we're talking mentally off here.
"He is accused of a series of hacking offences including deleting "critical" files from military computers. The US authorities said the cost of tracking him down and correcting the alleged problems was more than £570,000. The offences could also see him fined up to £950,000 if found guilty on all charges. "
Here it comes, the big bill for this mentally off "al Qaeda" operative. "Lesse, captain, I spent my lunch hour running a scan." "Aha! We'll bill that time as worth £50,000!"
"Prosecutor Paul McNulty alleged that McKinnon, known online as "Solo," had perpetrated "the biggest hack of military computers ever". He was named as the chief suspect after a series of electronic break-ins occurred over 12 months at 92 separate US military and Nasa networks.
Ah, it gets better. This guy must have been hot stuff! They think he's some kind of master criminal or something. Or al Qaeda maybe.
"It is alleged that he used software available on the internet to scan tens of thousands of computers on US military networks from his home PC, looking for machines that might be exposed due to flaws in the Windows operating system.
Many of the computers he broke into were protected by easy-to-guess passwords, investigators said. In some cases, McKinnon allegedly shut down the computer systems he invaded. "
WHAT?! He's just a script kiddie??! All this fuss over some guy port scanning Windows boxes??
"The charge sheet alleges that he hacked into an army computer at Fort Myer, Virginia, where he obtained codes, information and commands before deleting about 1,300 user accounts.
Other systems he hacked into included the Pentagon's network and US army, navy and air force computers. "
So let me get this straight. Some nutcase into UFOs uses script kiddie technology to port scan Windows boxes and somehow manages to get into the Pentagon and the military? Are you kidding me? Either they are running Windows boxes with easy to guess passwords and insecure networks, or else they should have charged him with a lot worse stuff than standard port scanning. Or maybe the reporter has no clue what he did, but this doesn't add up.
The only thing that does make sense is the U.S. military thinking a script kiddie UFO chaser was a master criminal at work...
Unless the Pentagon and NASA have VERY VERY silly systems, their *really* important computers are simply *not* accessible to hackers. I really can't believe that truly ensitive systems wouldn't just be air-gapped from the world.
Sure, it's possible to hack intelligence agencies but it I'd put money on it failing to get you the really juicy stuff!
The guy is smart enough to cobble together scripts and guess passwords so he can get into computers run by US Military Intelligence ("The World's Biggest Oxymoron", by the way)...
And what does he look for? UFO information! Now he's facing 70 years in prison.
Come on, that must be the equivalent of tipping a Coca-Cola machine onto yourself.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Yep. It's still illegal. But while it's illegal for a burglar to enter your unlocked house, you're no less of an idiot for leaving it unlocked. And exaggerating the scope of the break-in ("he diabolically circumvented the integrity of the house by adjusting the rotational position of the entry affordance!") has as more to do with CYA (in the case of the homeowner, perhaps to collect insurance) than it has to do with the guilt of the burglar.
Good thing you're not an editor. First, www.dictionary.com shows that the malicious definition of 'hacker' is deprecated. Next, www.webster.com shows both meanings, as you say, but (as with most lexicons) the more common or more proper definitions are listed first. Notice that the malicious definition is listed last. Furthermore, in the context of the offending article, the term 'hacker' is jargon, and is therefore subject to definition by the particular field to which the jargon term belongs: computer technology. Therefore, Webster, OED, and any other general-knowledge dictionaries' definitions of said term are superseded by the generally-understood meaning within the field of computer technology.
A respectful computer expert (that is, a computer expert that respects the skills, opinions, and decisions of other computer experts) would understand the distinction between the usual news article's use of the term 'hacker' and the more correct term as I have described it. However, the average lay-person will not understand the distinction, and will be left with a negative connotation whenever encountering the word 'hacker'. Therefore, as a hacker (in the non-malicious sense), it is my duty to defend myself, and others like me, by communicating to insensitive publications the inherent offensiveness of careless use of the term 'hacker'. If a publication receives a request like mine (see GP), and chooses to respond to it as you have, it is an indication of the publication's insensitivity and intentional alienation of a significant non-malicious worldwide subculture. Therefore, if I do receive a response from either of the publications I've contacted today, and it's similar to yours, I will do whatever is in my power to spread the word about their discriminatory practices. Not that I want to do that - I hope that my letters will incite changes in the treatment of the term 'hacker'. In any case, I'm doing my part to ensure that 'hacker' loses its negative connotation, since the correct definition of it describes me, and others like me, much better than 'computer expert', 'computer enthusiast', 'geek', 'nerd', 'programmer' (et. al.). If ethnic groups can be defensive about what they wish to be called, then subcultures should have the same right.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic