I have been following this story for some time now and it is a fascinating story too. http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6142770.html http://www.p2pnet.net/story/10731 This guy was/is a UFO nut and hacked into several computers and guess what? The dumb bastards in charge of the some of these high security organisations had even left blank passwords. I believe that this guy was genuinely into UFOs and was poking about. This is one of his interviews: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3681938.stm http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8339565504006440232&q=Gary+McKinnon Around the 14 minute point he offers some tips to these fools and one of them is ace. "First of all have a password " So what we have here is NASA and US military computer networks using blank passwords. This guy is going to get nailed for this but it just goes to show how utterly stupid and complacent these organisations are. This one is well worth keeping an eye on, his wiki profile is here and also has some other great video and audio clips: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon The guy should not have been doing what he was doing but 60 years and possibly a spell in the Hotel Gitmo??? I think NASA should hire this dude to shore up their very poor security.
He was at InfoSec, a conference in London I attended. He was on the panel and relived the moments of hacking in to the systems. He's pretty cool I have to say. I hope they won't get him under terror law but just civil - at least that way he'll see daylight as a free man again.
Yeah I seen the video of that conference mate (I think it's on his wiki) The spokesman guy is very knowledgable, Robert Schifreen. I believe McKinnons intentions were not malicious but he will get hammered. They will set an example and I'm afraid he will be it. A shame as he does seem a nice guy. This is basically a push towards Internet 2 controlling just what people can and can't see online. Things are beginning to move fast and this is just another cog in achieving that aim.