NASA hacker gets 21 months in jail

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Aj Effin Reznor <aj () reznor com>

www.msnbc.com/news/699760.asp

Feb. 4, 2002 A prolific computer criminal who admitted breaking into
NASA computers was sentenced to 21 months in prison on Monday. Jason
Allen Diekman, who went by the nicknames "Shadow Knight" and "Dark
Lord,"  was also ordered to pay $88,000 in fines and restitution.

The 20-year-old Californian admitted to hacking computers at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and other NASA computers at
Stanford University during November 2000.

IN HIS GUILTY PLEA, Diekman admitted breaking into hundreds of
computers at an impressive list of government and university
institutions. On the list: Stanford, Harvard, Cornell University, the
California State University at Fullerton and University of California
campuses in Los Angeles and San Diego, according to the U.S.  
Attorney's California Central District office.

The judge (Dean D. Pregerson) told the defendant that what he had done
was very disruptive and caused tremendous harm to a number of people.
... In fact, the judge called his conduct 'insidious,' said Assistant
U.S. Attorney Arif Alikhan, chief of the district’s Computer Crimes
Section. So I think the judge acknowledged the seriousness of the
offenses.
       
Even while Diekman was free on bond after pleading guilty in the NASA
case, he used his home computer to gain unauthorized access to
computers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Alikhan said.
       
He later pleaded guilty to that crime — which included spending 8,000
minutes of conference call time stolen from AT&T. Much of that time
was used trying to arrange fraudulent wire transfers through Western
Union, Alikhan said. He said Diekman was trying to wire money to
himself using stolen credit to fund the transfer.

Also after the initial guilty plea, Diekman admitted breaking into
machines at Bay Area Internet Solutions Inc., an Internet service
provider in San Jose. According to Alikhan, Diekman and others then
managed to get copies of various company databases that contained
account information and passwords.
       
The NASA computer systems at Stanford that Diekman broke into were
used to develop sensitive satellite flight control software that
controlled NASA satellites, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
       
Diekman has been held in a federal jail without bond since his arrest
in the OSU hacking case on April 18, 2001.



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