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Man Behind Hacks of Bush Family and Other Celebs Indicted In the US

Posted by Soulskill on from the bet-you-wish-you'd-stood-in-bed dept.

New submitter criticalmass24 writes: 42-year-old Marcel Lehel Lazar, better known as Guccifer, the hacker that gained unauthorized access to email and social network accounts of high-profile public figures, has been charged in the United States. According to the Department of Justice, "[F]rom December 2012 to January 2014, Lazar hacked into the e-mail and social media accounts of high-profile victims, including a family member of two former U.S. presidents, a former U.S. Cabinet member, a former member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a former presidential adviser. After gaining unauthorized access to their e-mail and social media accounts, Lazar publicly released his victims’ private e-mail correspondence, medical and financial information, and personal photographs. The indictment also alleges that in July and August 2013, Lazar impersonated a victim after compromising the victim’s account." The full indictment can be read online.

11 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Ain't that a bitch? by korbulon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Having complete strangers being able to pry into all your personal data and intercept your private communications.

    Why there oughta be a law, mister. There really should.

  2. Do it right next time by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want to invade the privacy of people and sniff through their most intimate of details, get a job with the government.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Do it right next time by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, there's a number of things the Government retains a monopoly on, by intent. Argument by hypocrisy doesn't make sense for criticism of the government*.

      "Want to forcibly enter people's homes? Get a job with the government."
      "Want to kill another human being? Get a job with the government."
      "Want to demand money from another person? Get a job with the government."

      These are normal behaviors practiced by parts of every government in the world(except maybe Lichtenstein, the Vatican, etc). Now I'm all for shutting all the bullshit the NSA does down, and wish our democracy was better engineered to allow that, but the structure of the argument you're using is absurd.

      *I know it's a joke, this post is more directed at the people modding it insightful, as if this is some meaningful argument.

    2. Re:Do it right next time by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The difference is maybe that a legitimate government does all that with a warrant and oversight. You know, where a judge has to ponder whether it's ok to violate someone's privacy. The older ones here may remember the time when we had a government like that.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Do it right next time by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      With a job like this, your moral integrity becomes crucial, at least in my opinion. You are given a LOT of power. You may do what others may not do. You are granted permissions that others don't get for good reason, because it is easy to abuse them and it is hard to prove that abuse. NOT abusing such power in such an environment takes a pretty high personal morality.

      "Liking" and "wanting" something is not per se a problem. The reason WHY you like and want to have a job like this, is. Personally, I love hacking. It's fun and rewarding to outsmart a server's logic and to outwit the programmer who came up with its locks. It's interesting to pit your mind against that of the admin trying to secure it. It's not a moral question whether you like breaking a server's security. The moral question is where you do it and what you do when you succeed. The "good" moral way is to do it on machines you have the permission to, and to stop the moment you broke the lock. The "bad" way is to do it on machines you don't have permission for or to not stop and sniff through the files you just opened up. Essentially, to force an analogy with doors and locks, do you stop when the door is open and tell the owner who asked you to test whether his lock can keep someone out that he should get a better lock (preferably with a few tidbits of information what to look for in a good one), or do you first take a trip through his (or her, depending on your preference) underwear drawer?

      Likewise, I don't think that wanting to join a force where you might at some point get to invade someone's privacy is a problem itself. The question is why you want to join such a force. Because you want to outsmart a criminal, or because you want to sniff through the private belongings of anyone, criminal or not.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  3. Re:Password by halivar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Believe it or not, if someone's front door is unlocked, you still have to knock.

  4. The real news by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If my email gets hacked is the federal government going to extradite someone from Europe to charge them?
    The real story here is special treatment for special people. For some reason the department of justice thinks the invasion of privacy of political and media elites is a worse crime than the invasion of the general publics privacy. It's so transparent it's laughable.

    1. Re:The real news by timrod · · Score: 5, Informative

      I get what you're saying, but in this case it sounds like the Romanians arrested him first for hacking the emails of a member of the European parliament from Romania, probably to keep him leaking any sensitive information he might've seen. In fact, the article states that Lehel had hacked the Bush family emails in 2013 and had publicly taken responsibility for the hack after he leaked the information, and the government didn't care. To me, it sounds like the US Government only got involved because of Colin Powell. Powell was indirectly involved in the hack on the Romanian MP, in that emails between him and the MP were found and leaked. Powell is currently on the board of directors of Salesforce.com, which is an S&P 500 index stock and publicly traded.

      If he happened to get any non-public information regarding Powell's company, that could easily cause real monetary damages and would probably constitute wire fraud, which they indicted the hacker on.

      The government also said (in the article) that they don't know whether they'll try to extradite him or not. Right now, all they've done is indict him, and as every law professor will tell you, "A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich."

  5. Re:So Disappointing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's the beauty of the two party scam... one hand washes the other. These guys will never pay for their crimes.

  6. I am your elected representative by fulldecent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Speaking on behalf of Slashdot, the nerds and computer enthusiasts, we ask:

        "How did he get caught?"

    --

    -- I was raised on the command line, bitch

  7. Re:Counter-NSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hacking some e-mail addresses with no data leaks gets you 3-4 years. Stealing millions of EUR, plus kidnapping some people, plus trying to bribe some football teams to "lose" a match gets you the same sentence. And people say there's justice in this world. Pfft.

    While I agree that there is some disparity between the punishments mete out between those two crimes, it says right in TFS that "Lazar publicly released his victims’ private e-mail correspondence, medical and financial information, and personal photographs." If that doesn't count as a data leak, then please explain to us what does.