The Gary McKinnon case
p2pnet.net News:- Is a British hacker, who says he was able to get into key US defense establishments because of poor security, a criminal or a victim?
Gary McKinnon, who`s now facing possible extradition to America, told ZDNet UK he was trying to prove the US Defense Department knows of the existence of extraterrestrials.
Later he was driven by suspicions about federal policies and actions in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, says ZDNet, going on:
McKinnon, who is out on bail pending an extradition hearing later in July, said that he was `frightened` to find U.S. defense systems were open to `people from all over the world`.”
Those in charge of the system, McKinnon said, had used “image-based installation techniques where most of the machines have the same BIOS, the same hard drive, the same hardware specification” just applied across different systems.
“So you don’t even need to become domain administrator,” ZDNet quotes him as saying.
“That’s 5,000 machines all with a blank system-level administrator password.”
McKinnon said there was no malicious intent in anything he did.
“They might say that my installing a remote control program opened them up,” he said, “but it didn’t. The access was already there. I didn’t even have to crack passwords.”
He faces charges alleging. “fraud and related activity in connection with computers” and covering the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and NASA and if extradited and convicted, could be sentenced to up to 70 years in jail.
McKinnon, 36, was charged by a grand jury in New Jersey with intentionally damaging a federal computer system, according to a statement released by the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, says a 2002 ZDNet story.
Among other hacks, he’s, “believed to have attacked the Earle Naval Weapons Station, a U.S. Navy command center responsible for supplying munitions to the Atlantic fleet, three times between April 2001 and September 2001,” it says.
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See:-
key US defense – UK hacker extradition hearing, p2pnet, June 29, 2005
Gary McKinnon – Free Gary McKinnon, July 14
extraterrestrials – The NASA hacker: Scapegoat or public enemy?, ZDNet Insight, July 13
ZDNet UK – Alleged hacker: U.S. defense sites poorly secured, July 13, 2005
ZDNet – DOJ indicts alleged British hacker, November 12, 2002
July 16th, 2005 at 12:01 am
McKinnon, who is out on bail pending an extradition hearing later in July, said that he was âfrightenedâ to find U.S. defense systems were open to âpeople from all over the worldâ.”
Ok you can’t hack something that is wide open already. Its like getting sued for tuning into a radio station.