Alleged eBay Hacker Free On Oversight

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article/0,2198,3531_578781,00.html

By Brian McWilliams
February 2, 2001

The computer whiz kid arrested for attacking San Jose-based Ebay
(Nasdaq: EBAY) and other Silicon Valley Internet companies found
himself temporarily free again Friday, thanks to a bureaucratic
oversight.

Although he pleaded innocent to all charges last week, Jerome
Heckenkamp, the 21-year-old former computer network engineer at Los
Alamos National Labs, was unable to come up with the $50,000 dollar
bond by the February 1 deadline set by a judge at a pre-trial hearing.
So on Thursday, Heckenkamp dutifully drove himself from his home in
Los Alamos to Albuquerque, N.M. where he turned himself into US
Marshalls.

But according to his father, Thomas Heckenkamp of Pewaukee, Wisconsin,
the alleged computer criminal got a pleasant surprise before being
shipped off to jail in California.

"They handcuffed him, put shackles on his ankles, and put him in with
a bunch of prisoners who were going to be transported. Then, a couple
hours later somebody official came by and said `you're unarrested,'"
said the elder Heckenkamp.

According to his attorney, Jennifer Granick, New Mexico court
authorities released Jerome Heckenkamp after discovering that, due to
a bureaucratic oversight, they hadn't yet received a warrant for his
arrest from prosecutors in San Jose. Granick said she will attempt to
make arrangements with the the federal court that will enable
Heckenkamp to remain in Los Alamos until his next court date, February
12.

"This incident demonstrates that Mr. Heckenkamp is more than willing
to take the conditions of his pre-trial release seriously -- even more
seriously than the system itself. He's shown that he is a responsible,
diligent person who follows what he's told to do. I don't think it
does anybody any good for him to sit in jail while his case is
resolved," said Granick, a lawyer who specializes in defending
computer crime cases and who is currently clinical director of the
Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

Heckenkamp failed to raise the $50,000 bond despite efforts by
supporters who have created a legal defense fund on his behalf as well
as a web site, FreeSK8.org that proclaims his innocence and blames "a
restless and unrelenting Federal Bureau of Investigation" for
Heckenkamp's arrest. SK8 is the hacker nickname Heckenkamp used while
a student at the University of Wisconsin.

Heckenkamp has denied charges that he hacked into Ebay, Exodus,
ETrade, Qualcomm, Lycos, Juniper Networks, and Cygnus Support
Solutions in 1999. He contends that someone else remotely hijacked his
dorm-room computer, which was running an unpatched version of Linux,
and committed the crimes unbeknownst to him while he was a graduate
student.

Prosecutors haven't detailed what evidence they have linking him to
the crimes, which they claim resulted in nearly a million dollars
worth of damages to the ecommerce firms. But US attorneys say
Heckenkamp has admitted to computer crimes while at the university and
agreed to a one-year suspension from its graduate school. They also
say he was fired from a student job after he admitted illegally
trespassing on an Internet service provider in 1997.

As a condition of his pre-trial agreement, Heckenkamp is prohibited
from using the Internet and from visiting his family in Wisconsin.
Thomas Heckenkamp said he offered to put his house up as collateral on
the bond, but his son refused.

"He's a very unusual kid. I think the FBI has found that out by now
and maybe the court system is finding that out too."

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