Slashdot Mirror
'Iceman' Gets 13 Years For 2nd Hacking Offense
Hugh Pickens writes "Computerworld reports that Max Ray Butler, who used the hacker pseudonym Iceman, has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for hacking into financial institutions and stealing credit card account numbers, the longest known sentence ever handed down for hacking charges. This isn't Butler's first time facing a federal hacking sentence. After a promising start as a security consultant who did volunteer work for the FBI, Butler was arrested for writing malicious software that installed a back-door program on computers — including some on federal government networks — that were susceptible to a security hole. Butler served an 18-month prison term for the crime and fell on hard times after his 2002 release. In desperation, he turned again to cybercrime and by the time of his arrest in September 2007, he had built the largest marketplace for stolen credit and debit card information in the world."
12 Years, 11 months of the sentence for using the pseudonym Iceman.
Yeah, blame the criminals for exploiting a system...
Um, yes. That does make sense.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
"It is a shame that someone with so much ability chose to use it in a manner that hurt many people," Dembosky said in an e-mail message."
That in light of
"Butler served an 18-month prison term for the crime and fell on hard times after his 2002 release, he said in a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday. "I was homeless, staying on a friends couch. I couldn't get work," he wrote. In desperation, he turned again to cybercrime."
I'm not saying he's right, but it does highlight something interesting about finding work as an ex-con.
Yes, I absolutely blame the criminal. After all, many of us here on slashdot have the technical ability (or could get it easily: some of these folks are really smart) to do this same type of criminal activity. They don't do it because they aren't criminals. Who the heck else would we blame but the person responsible for committing the crime? Now, if you want to talk about "the system" (justice system, not the banking system) and how unfortunate it is that it is nearly impossible to get a job after being in prison once - yes, that is tough and the summary alludes to the "hard times" iceman fell on probably due to the stigma of his earlier crime and resulting prison sentence. This can, and often is, extremely difficult to overcome and can mean years of living on handouts from relatives, living in campgrounds, etc. (can you tell I have a brother in law who has been through this?). However, the fact remains that the crime is the responsibility of the criminal and not the banking system. If the credit card system was more secure, this criminal would have went after the next most lucrative thing.
If you really want to reduce fraud, make the banks financially responsible for it. As it is, there's little incentive for the industry to increase their security.
I'm not saying this guy shouldn't be in jail. We should absolutely punish those who take unfair advantage of the system. But if we really want results, we should fix the system.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's right the guy who got caught with the performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France had a warrant issued for him today for hacking. I don't know what it is over but maybe his attempts to tamper with the committee who tested him maybe. I don't know all the info but I just saw it on the news channel.
Nevermind here it is
France Issues Arrest Warrant for Cyclist Floyd Landis
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/sports/cycling/16landis.html
PARIS — The United States cyclist Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but the fallout from his doping case has lingered.
Thomas Cassuto, a French judge, issued an arrest warrant for Landis last month, in connection with a computer hacking case, said Astrid Granoux, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, which is handling the matter.
“That means he would be arrested if he came to France,” Granoux said Monday, adding that the warrant had not been distributed outside of French territory.
Landis, who raced for the Ouch Pro Cycling Team last year, parted ways with the team last fall. He could not be reached for comment Monday.
Cassuto is seeking to question Landis about the data hacking that occurred in the fall of 2006 at the Châtenay-Malabry antidoping lab, which is the facility that conducted the tests on Landis’s urine samples from the 2006 Tour.
A very public dispute between Landis and the lab’s officials was the crux of Landis’s defense in his doping case, which ended in his being barred from the sport for two years. Landis and his defense team had alleged that the lab’s testing procedures were sloppy, so its test results could not be trusted.
Pierre Bordry, the lab’s director, said a security breach of the facility’s computers occurred because hackers wanted to obtain data to discredit its scientists. He said that some of the stolen data had been altered to make it seem as if the lab had made errors.
In November 2006, lab officials filed a formal complaint saying that its computer data had been stolen and used in Landis’s defense. That confidential data was also sent to other labs and news media, officials said. A subsequent search of the lab’s computers turned up a Trojan horse, which is a program that allowed an outsider to remotely download files.
Investigators concluded that the program could have originated from an e-mail message sent to the lab from a computer using the same Internet protocol address as Arnie Baker, Landis’s coach.
Landis and Baker, who continue to insist that Landis did not use performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour, deny being involved in the computer hacking.