Teen does time for NASA, military hacks
A 16yearold Miami resident who hacked into military and NASA computer systems will serve six months in a detention facility for his offenses
A 16-year-old Miami resident who hacked into military and NASA computer
systems will serve six months in a detention facility for his offenses.
It's the first instance of a convicted juvenile hacker having to serve
time for acts of juvenile delinquency, the Justice Department announced
Thursday. He owned up to a number of computer intrusions dating from Aug.
23, 1999, to Oct. 27, 1999.
The teenager goes by the name "cOmrade" on the Internet, but his real-world
identity was not released.
He made his way into a military computer network used by the U.S. Defense
Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). He also gained unauthorized access to a
server located in Dulles, Va., and installed backdoor access, according
to a Justice statement.
The backdoor program collected more than 3,300 messages distributed
by DTRA staff. In addition, the hacker discovered at least 19 user names
and passwords of the computer accounts of DTRA employees — 10 of which resided
on military computers, Justice said.
The teen also accessed 13 NASA computers at the Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala. He retrieved and downloaded proprietary software
from NASA worth about $1.7 million. NASA uses the software to support the
International Space Station's physical environment. Computer systems at
NASA were forcibly put out of business for 21 days in July 1999 to deal
with the security breaches.