Interesting, this is the first i have heard of this case.

Hacking Government PC's should carry a lofty punishment.

If he was able to get into it, he deserves a job with the US government. Not jail time.

"Hacker Trashes U.S. Army PCs"

He didn't thrash anything he just hacked into them to see if the government was covering up UFO's...if he wanted to damage them he could of did some serious damage.

I gotta agree with the above post. The US should hire him on in lieu of criminal punishment. Anybody who can hack those systems is seriously talented.

Instead of jail time how about a tour in Iraq.

Hacking into the goverment PC's isnt hard. It's the not getting caught part that makes a good hacker.

Hacking goverment computers in a "critical" time? Are they joking? When would not be a critical time for them then? LOL
I don't think it was his fault if their "defense" was a 4 word password for login! Regarding the "damage" they claim he did, what did he actually do? Or are they reffering to their "forced" action to increase the password to 8 letters or even installing a proper firewall? They should have done that BEFORE someone breaks in, not AFTER! Also the man used a dial-up modem, not even broadband! I can imagine the "security" these systems had!
Give the man a break, give him a hefty fine and a warning and let it go. The so called "government" employees were apparently useless to do their job! The above suggestion of hiring him does not sound bad afterall, does it?
Finally the people who were responsible for the computers' security but apprently they were not, they should serve some jail time and not someone who did manage to login not once, but 3 times in the same systems!? What did they do after his first attempt then? Nothing! Great security!

Though... In his defense, if he was able to hack in and just look around there are others that could hack in and not just look around. He should actually be getting off a lot lighter as a thank you for showing how vulnerable they were. I am not saying what he did was right and that he should be let go, but because he helped show a flaw (in a messed up way, but hey if you wanted to know something and it was right there waiting for you to look...) in their security. Oh well...

I would imaging tracking a hacker who is using a dial up connection would be a little more difficult given that the IP address would always be different.

Are you kidding me? This man broke into government systems. Whether he did any damage or not, it's still illegal!

And that is why i said give him a hefty fine not jail time. Come on! There are serial killers that get 30 years or even less for good behaviour, and he will get 70!??? You must be out of your mind or something! Also tracking someone through dial-up or ISDN or broadband is exactly the same, the ISP ALWAYS know which telephone number dials in before they assign an IP address to it. I mentioned the dial-up modem because the hacking procedure would be so much more difficult due to the time it would take him through the connection to do whatever he was doing. Extremely small speed, especially from UK to US!

Also illegal is speeding on the roads, smoking near non-smoking signs, etc, thousands of things that we all do each day, some without even knowing, would you accept a 70 year sentence for that? Also by hacking in a computer you are not risking peoples lives like speeding on the road (your car can be considered as a weapon you know), so in theory if a hacker gets 70 years in jail, someone speeding should get at least 100 for life endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon!

Ok darkguset you have no clue what your talking about. The unclass government PC's are behind hardened firewalls and subject to a pretty heavy GPO / security requirements. Passwords are not "four letter" but instead 16 with at least two upper, two lower, two numbers and two "special characters". The only way to "hack" into these systems would be some bot/script off a website run by someone with local admin rights or through deliberate phishing attempts to get login / system info. And the only way to "take down" a network like that is to screw with the firewalls / routers, or start shutting down the AD servers. All of which require a concerted effort and deliberate malicious intent. Dude probably thought he could get something worth a damn off those systems.

This guy should go to jail for awhile, if to do nothing else but to set a precedent / make an example to anyone else wanting to do something stupid. Don't screw with US Government / DoD computer systems -EVER-, its like playing Russian roulette when all six chambers have a round in them.

Except the information for national defense and military weapons/installations could endanger far more lives than someone speeding or drunk driving. Don't be stupid.

Though I am of the mindset they ought to put him on payroll just for being able to hack it.

Hacking government computers, especially from another country, should = death imo.

You kidding me? Rapists and child molesters don't get death sentence and a hacker will?

I doubt you were be saying such if this was a American hacker who tarted North Korea or Iran. Then you would probably be praising him and find it absurd to hand him over to his certain death.

Besides if hacking government's is to much for you to handle do you think we should stop all of our intelligence programs that spy on other nations? Would our spies or even our whole intelligence agency be executed if it were up to you? They have a much larger effect than any lone hacker like this one on trial.

He may have gotten a job offer and foolishly turned it down. Had a friend that hacked into a collage and they found him. He was given two choices. Trial or parttime Admin. He chose admin.

He hacked 4 times because he is an Asperger, not because he was a criminal. Aspergers are obsessive with some things, and he probably wanted to hack the place in different ways and compare results.

Also, what kind of damage did he cause? $700.000 damages to 2.000 computers equals to $350 for PC, so it's not like he destroyed them. I bet that most of the damage is actually the amount of money spent trying to identify him!!!

He may have gotten a job offer and foolishly turned it down. Had a friend that hacked into a collage and they found him. He was given two choices. Trial or parttime Admin. He chose admin.

I bet most of the $700,000 dollars was spent on the pretty illustration to go into the classified file so Mr Bush could understand and follow the story.

HAHA! if the US army had half a brain they would lock him in a laboratory and get him to help develop their security!
not saying that what he did was right, they COULD treat it like jail and not pay him or anything. but they should defiantly try to learn from the kid

The big question is, did he uncover the secret files showing where they keep the shot-down Marsian UFOs?

There are no UFO files. It's all just a stupid ****ing distraction for the masses that are bored with their lives and need something ridiculous to keep their minds on instead of asking the many crucial questions people should be asking our government.

Seriously us security is just joke. It much harder get acces or stole something from half the companies in the world then from US government or military. There are thousands reports about that each year.
And fringing down whole military network with 2000+ PCs lmao.
That would mean hack to each of them and do something like format drive on all of them. Anything else should be matter of minutes or at worst hours to fix. Ofcourse this would require actually hire some really good system admins and have good tuned monitoring in place.
Remember last year faulty network card bring down whole network for one of US government agencies, imho should take less then hour to find and solve issue.

Just because you can locate and possibly abuse security flaws doesn't mean that you can effectively fix them as well. He's just a petty criminal really. If he'd brought my company's network down for 24 hours I doubt he'd even get jail time, but then again we're not as dependant on computers as any nations standing army.

I say we should make an example out of him and give him a very harsh punishment and let the public know. Then secretly hire him while everyone thinks he got life or something.

I cant believe how many people are saying hire him. I can promise everyone that this douchebag would have no idea hwo to strengthen security, and sure as hell not even close as well as the guys that the DoD already hires. All he would be is another $100,000 of my money and a huge liability to the United States Government. They need to put him away for 10 years, and make sure that the country he is released to commits to revoking any access to the internet for life.

Just cause he can use a few prebuilt hacking tools doesnt make him a security professional. It just makes him a careless douchebag. Otherwise everyone in the world would be hacking the pentagon.

Wow, so many ignorant comments from people that have no clue of US military procedures or resources. Believe me, when they estimate that $700K worth of damage was done that might have been an understatement. If HQ servers get shutdown, it can restrict access to some very critical information that is needed for quick decision making around the globe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Information such as intel reports that could have possibly saved lives, how much money do you think that is worth? The man may be gifted, but you can't say that he didn't know what he was doing was illegal.

There have been several cases such as this in the past. Most of the time the estimated damage is greatly exaggerated. Most hackers do it as a challenge, not maliciously, and the term hacker used to be imbued with some sort of honour until crims started embezzling money, etc... Seriously, how could a simple trawl for info cause all those PCs to crash!? It would be counterproductive. They won't hire him because he isn't a US national. They ironically trusted Hussein more than they trust the British. And yes, their own intel and security services do this. But they are a group. In a world of Transnationals and "National Security" it is individuals who suffer.

Wow, so many people commenting without a real knowledge of what this guy did or didn't do. His $700,000 damages was from deleting the wrong log file while covering his tracks. He didn't shut any servers down nor harm any equipment. The bulk of the damages cost is from trying to figure out to what he gained access. He gained access to the network with a dialing bot with a range of known numbers for the base which housed the network. The terminal he gained access to should have been removed from the network years before this incident since it had minimal security and no firewall. He simply brute forced his way in once he had the direct phone number.

He went back several times because each time he gained information, it opened more questions. He got caught when he went back a final time to get evidence of what he found. Who knows where this story would be if he succeeded in gaining the evidence he was seeking.