U.S. Computer Hacker Gets Three-And-a-Half Years for Stealing iPad User Data.
U.S. Computer Hacker Gets Three-And-a-Half Years for Stealing iPad User Data.
(Reuters) -
A computer hacker was sentenced on Monday to three years and five months in
prison for stealing the personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users,
including big-city mayors, a TV network news anchor and a Hollywood movie
mogul.
Andrew
Auernheimer, 27, had been convicted in November by a Newark, New Jersey, jury
of one count of conspiracy to access AT&T Inc servers without permission,
and one count of identity theft.
The sentence
imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton in Newark was at the high end of
the 33- to 41-month range that the U.S. Department of Justice had sought.
Prosecutors
had said prison time would help deter hackers from invading the privacy of
innocent people on the Internet.
Among those
affected by Auernheimer's activities were ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood movie
producer Harvey Weinstein, prosecutors said.
"When
it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was
trying to make the Internet more secure, and that all he did was walk in
through an unlocked door," U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said in a statement.
"The jury didn't buy it, and neither did the court in imposing
sentence."
Auernheimer
had sought probation. His lawyer had argued that no passwords were hacked, and
that a long prison term was unjustified given that the government recently
sought six months for a defendant in a case involving "far more intrusive
facts."
The lawyer,
Tor Ekeland, said his client would appeal. He said the Computer Fraud and Abuse
Act doesn't clearly define what constitutes unauthorized access.
"If
this is criminal, then tens of thousands of Americans are committing computer
crimes every other day," Ekeland said in an interview. "There really
was no harm."
Auernheimer
was handcuffed at one point during the sentencing, the lawyer said. He said his
client may have been "tweeting" on his phone, and the U.S. marshals
took it away.
Ekeland is
also a lawyer for Matthew Keys, a deputy social media editor at Thomson Reuters
Corp who was suspended with pay on Friday.
Keys was
indicted last week in California on federal charges of aiding the Anonymous
hacking collective by giving a hacker access to Tribune Co computer systems in
December 2010.
The alleged
events occurred before Keys began working at the website Reuters.com. Ekeland
on Friday said Keys "maintains his innocence" and "looks forward
to contesting these baseless charges.
INTERNET
TROLL
Prosecutors
called Auernheimer a "well-known computer hacker and internet
'troll,'" who with co-defendant Daniel Spitler and the group Goatse
Security tried to disrupt online content and services.
The two men
were accused of using an "account slurper" designed to match email
addresses with identifiers for iPad users, and of conducting a "brute
force" attack to extract data about those users, who accessed the Internet
through the AT&T servers.
This stolen
information was then provided to the website Gawker, which published an article
naming well-known people whose emails had been compromised, prosecutors said.
Spitler
pleaded guilty in June 2011 to the same charges for which Auernheimer was
convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.
Gawker was
not charged in the case. In its original article, Gawker said Goatse obtained
its data through a script on AT&T's website that was accessible to anyone
on the Internet. Gawker also said in the article that it established the
authenticity of the data through two people listed among the names. A Gawker
spokesman on Monday declined to elaborate.
AT&T has
partnered with Apple in the United States to provide wireless service on the
iPad. After the hacking, it shut off the feature that allowed email addresses
to be obtained.
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