Hacking Indictment
It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these sorts of news stories:
A Romanian man has been indicted on charges of hacking into more than 150 U.S. government computers, causing disruptions that cost NASA, the Energy Department and the Navy nearly $1.5 million.
The federal indictment charged Victor Faur, 26, of Arad, Romania, with nine counts of computer intrusion and one count of conspiracy. He faces up to 54 years in prison if convicted of all counts, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, on Thursday.
Faur was being prosecuted by authorities in Romania on separate computer hacking charges, Mrozek said, and will be brought to Los Angeles upon resolution of that case. It was not known whether Faur had retained a lawyer in the United States.
Philosopher • December 4, 2006 1:42 PM
From the article link:
“main goal was to break into U.S. government computers because they are some of the securest machines in the world.”
Uhmm, really? I’ll never know, but according to another idiot who got caught says that a lot of US government systems are easy to break into.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4715612.stm
“Hackers” like Faur and McKinnon probably know just enough to get themslves into trouble without understanding that the likelihood of prosecution is partly related to the chances of a successful conviction rather than the seriousness of their crime. Faur and his like certainly deserve to be punished but hopefully they won’t get decades in jail for being stupid.
I wonder if the System Admins on the hacked boxes were disciplined?