Fed sites hacker could spend a decade in jail

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/20766-1.html

By Wilson P. Dizard III 
GCN Staff
01/03/03

NASA's inspector general has announced that William Douglas Word of 
Pelham, Ala., faces up to 10 years in prison after entering guilty 
pleas last month to 17 counts of defacing government Web pages and one 
count of possessing counterfeit or unauthorized credit cards. 

Word pleaded guilty to defacing sites of NASA, Defense Department 
agencies, Interior Department and the International Trade Commission, 
among others, according to a grand jury indictment handed down in the 
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Much of the 
criminal activity occurred in late 1999, the inspector general said. 

Word originally was charged with 40 counts of malicious injury or 
destruction to a means of communication operated by the government. 
The NASA IG's office investigated the crime together with the Defense 
Criminal Investigative Service, the Naval Criminal Investigative 
Service and the FBI. James E. Phillips, U.S. attorney for the Northern 
District of Alabama, prosecuted the case. 

Word "was rolled up in a group of hackers that decided to turn 
themselves in after we got close to confronting them," a NASA official 
said. "This was the typical hacker case where they were demonstrating 
their skills."

Word is to be sentenced April 24. 



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