Ouch. Having an off day, Carl? Check out this dick-swingin' cOmrade:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/23/technology/23HACK.html
New York Times/National September 23, 2000
Youth Sentenced in Government Hacking Case By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — A 16- year-old from Miami who repeatedly penetrated [!] computer systems of the Defense Department and the space agency has been sentenced to six months in juvenile detention. The Justice Department said he is the first juvenile hacker to be sentenced to serve time.
The youth, Jonathan James, pleaded guilty in federal court in Miami on Thursday to two counts of juvenile delinquency. Had his crimes been committed by an adult, they would have constituted felonies and drawn a sentence of 10 years or more, said Assistant United States Attorney Richard Boscovich.
Attorney General Janet Reno and the United States attorney, Guy A. Lewis, issued statements signaling a tougher stance toward young computer intruders whose deeds might once have been deemed pranks.
"Breaking into someone else's property, whether it is a robbery or a computer intrusion, is a serious crime," Ms. Reno said. "We take computer intrusion seriously and are working with our law enforcement partners to aggressively fight this problem."
Mr. Lewis said the case marks a turning point for dealing with juvenile computer crime, at least in South Florida. "Given the appropriate case, we will aggressively prosecute to the full extent of the law," he said.
As a juvenile defendant, Jonathan James might have remained anonymous, best known for his Internet name, cOmrade. But the youth's father, Robert, a computer-systems analyst, disclosed his son's name after the guilty plea. The father said that he wanted people to have an accurate picture of his son and his misdeeds.
"I've been in computers for 20 years, and I can't do what he was doing," Mr. James said in an interview with The Miami Herald. "He didn't do anything destructive."
The authorities disagreed. They said the teenager invaded 13 computers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., on June 29 and 30, 1999. Among other things, he downloaded software and stole data, leading to a three-week shutdown of some computers.
Brian Dunbar, a space agency spokesman, said today that the affected computers "were not related to command and control in any way," so there was no chance of, say, rockets being launched or satellites being thrown out of orbit. But the Justice Department said NASA incurred more than $40,000 in labor and replacement costs.
>From late August to late October 1999, the defendant invaded computers used
by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Defense Department agency that
monitors threats to the United States from nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons as well as conventional arms. He intercepted more than 3,300
messages and at least 19 user names and passwords, the Justice Department
said.
He was arrested last January. The authorities declined to say how they caught the teenager, although his father said the government and the youth's Internet service provider traced computer calls to the family home using technology similar to telephone Caller ID service.
Jonathan James was sentenced a day after Jonathan G. Lebed, a 15- year-old from Cedar Grove, N.J., settled a federal civil-fraud action by agreeing to repay more than $270,000 that investigators said he acquired by manipulating the stock market on the Internet.
And the United States attorney's office in Los Angeles on Thursday charged Jason Diekman, 20, of Mission Viejo, Calif., with hacking into computers at several universities as well as NASA. He is accused, among other things, of stealing hundreds of credit-card numbers to buy thousands of dollars worth of clothes, stereo equipment and computer hardware.
Jonathan James's lawyer, Ted Klein of Miami, said he was disappointed that the youth's father had identified him. Mr. Klein called his client "a good, smart boy who made a big mistake," and said that the ease with which he invaded government computers showed there was a security problem. Mr. Klein said he hoped the authorities would house the youth in an institution "where he can use his talents and develop into a productive citizen." [... as opposed to one where he's beaten up on a regular basis - pk]
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