20 Years For Gonzalez In TJX Hacker Case

alphadogg writes "Hacker mastermind Albert Gonzalez was sentenced Thursday in US District Court to two concurrent 20-year stints in prison for his role in what prosecutors called the 'unparalleled' theft of millions of credit card numbers from major US retailers. US District Court Judge Patti B. Saris announced the concurrent sentences in two 2008 cases against Gonzalez, 28, a Cuban-American who was born in Miami, where he lived when the crimes were committed. Gonzalez and co-conspirators hacked into computer systems and stole credit card information from TJX, Office Max, DSW and Dave and Buster's, among other online retail outlets, in one of the largest — if not the largest — cybercrime operations targeting that sort of data thus far. They then sold the numbers to other criminals. Gonzalez pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in two cases related to those thefts last December and the following day entered a guilty plea in a third case involving hacking into computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems and the Hannaford Supermarkets and 7-Eleven chains."

Comments

This sparks an interesting idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why this hasn't been done before, but, everyone with any technical know-how would agree that Linux is the best operating system in the world. Also, as we know, Microsoft is breathing its last, pathetic, dying breath, terrified as Linux usage continues to sky-rocket. But with this popularity comes a cost - Linux becomes a target for hackers like this. Now, we all know that Linux is the most secure operating system, but there is a negligable chance that there is a bug *somewhere* that can explioted, and when we talk about trojans, it's the user's that are the weak link in the chain. Well, I propose a fix: Honestylux.

Basically, you can only develop software for Honestylux if you promise not to write malicious software. Thats it. Anyone can use it, but thats fine because the software is guarunteed 100% safe - even if it contains bugs, they will never get exploited, because developers have promised not to exploit them. I vote it as a branch of Ubuntu, which is probably the easiest to use of the various Linux flavours.

I'm just perplexed that this hasn't been done before!

Re:You got my hopes up

[GodfatherofSoul]

OT but I'll try to paraphrase a really obscene exchange of Alberto's perjured Senate testimony. This is where they gave him a week to "correct himself":

Schumer: "So, you're saying this information was publicly available even though there is no evidence of what you're saying."
Fredo: "Yes, I told a reporter."
Schumer: "Oh! You did! Which reporter did you tell at which outlet?"
Fredo: "Um, it wasn't really me, it was someone who worked for me."
Schumer: "Oh! So who did you tell in your staff to alert the media?"
Fredo: "I don't recall."
Schumer: "Well, which media outlet did they alert."
Fredo: "I don't recall."