Brit sentenced in Daily Mail hacking plot

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/14034.html

By: Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 16/10/2000 at 19:25 GMT

Former Daily Mail employee William Culbert approached the Daily
Express with an exclusive offer to disable the Mail's operations for a
week in exchange for 600,000, but earned himself eighteen months in
the slam instead.

Culbert apparently sought revenge against his former employer after
shift changes caused him to resign.

He threatened to use his insider knowledge of the Mail's crummy
computer security to disable operations for up to a week. "I have the
knowledge and the access to take everything down and I can take it
right down." The effects of this attack would last up to a week
because "they are not terribly efficient....they do not have a backup
system".

The Mail has since invested 63,000 in computer security which it
undoubtedly needed all along.

Express production manager Paul Rudd tipped the coppers, who for three
weeks tapped Culbert's phone until they could gather enough evidence
to prosecute him.

Culbert's lawyer said the defendant was suffering from some manner of
depressive illness brought on by the shift changes which inspired his
resignation from work.

But Southwark Crown Court Judge Peter Fingret addressed Culbert,
saying he was "satisfied from everything I have seen and heard that
you were planning to bring down the operations of one of the principal
newspapers in this country," and that he had devised a
"carefully-prepared plan to use your expertise and show that you could
do the damage you claimed."

Well, it was worth a shot.....

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