Former Northeastern student pleads guilty to hacking NASA, others

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,2294,500222509-500318460-501790855-0,00.html

BOSTON (June 29, 2000 5:48 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - A
former computer science student pleaded guilty Thursday to hacking a
host of private and government targets, including the military and
NASA.

Ikenna Iffih, 20, who studied at Northeastern University, could have
faced up to 20 years in prison, but under a plea agreement will serve
no more than six months.

Sentencing was set for October. Iffih, who was born in Nigeria, could
also be deported.

Iffih broke into computers belonging to the Defense Logistics Agency,
which supplies and services the military, and accessed servers at the
Interior Department and at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. Once inside the NASA computer, Iffih installed a
"sniffer program" that let him capture users' names and passwords.

Prosecutors said national security was never threatened.

But federal prosecutor Allison Burroughs said: "Hackers are notorious
recidivists. The only thing you can do is catch them when you can and
hammer them."


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Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
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