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Hacker McKinnon To Be Extradited To US
Vainglorious Coward writes "When UK hacker and Asperger's sufferer Gray McKinnon lost the judicial review of his case it seemed likely that he would be extradited to the US to face charges of hacking almost a hundred systems causing $700,000 worth of damage. Today the UK home secretary rejected his last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition adding that 'his extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith.' McKinnon's relatives are expressing concerns for his health, with his lawyer going so far as to claim that extradition would make the 43-year-old's death 'virtually certain.'"
700k of damages would be 700,000 dollars worth of meetings, reviews, reports and studies about what happened, why it happened and how to keep it from happening again. Plus the time of the investigation.
Yes, in GP's example that would be analogous to the cost of the locks and alarm system (installment fees).
$ make available
On the contrary, the systems would have been examined, wiped and then put back into service, and that's 100 different systems. Doing this, especially on federal systems where there are lots of rules about how to do it, is expensive. That it averaged $7000 per system really doesn't surprise me.
I have no sympathy for this guy. You don't get to damage someone else's property then whine that it turned out to be expensive to fix.
Every single computer he had access to will have to be rebuilt to ensure he didn't leave anything on there. Your bed analogy while seemingly accurate on the surface, isn't really applicable. It's more like someone has a lab of ultra-sensitive, expensive equipment, and someone forgot to lock it. You walk through the door (that's marked 'Private: No trespassing'), fall asleep on the floor, then run away in the morning when found by staff. It might look like nothing was damaged, but the lab can't take the chance and so everything has to be checked, incurring a massive bill for down-time, and for staff to examine everything.
What you do not seem to understand is that once the security of a system is compromised, _everything_ in that system is suspect. Forensics must be performed to attempt to determine what exactly happened, which information was compromised, what kind of backdoors or rootkits were placed, etc. Security auditors are not cheap. Wiping and rebaselining computers could result in loss of information that took lots of money to gather (scientists are not cheap either). Do this across enough systems and $700k is quite possible.
As an aside, if you look at my earlier argument, you might assume that I am against extradition but then in this one, I appear to be for extradition. Neither is the case. I am simply arguing against incorrect assumptions. I do not wish to state whether or not I am for or against extradition at this time.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen