Briton pleads guilty to US nuclear lab hacking attack

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=126141

by Bill Goodwin 
31 October 2003 

A teenage computer student has pleaded guilty to hacking into IT
systems at an American nuclear weapons laboratory.

Joseph James McElroy, 18, a first-year undergraduate at Exeter
University, admitted hacking into 17 computer systems at the Fermi
National Accelerator laboratory at a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates
court in London on Friday.

The court heard that the teenager hacked into Fermilab computers on 25
June 2002 and used them to store hundreds of gigabytes of copyrighted
film and music files.

McElroy later told police that he had devised a hacking tool with a
group of friends and fellow hackers, and had password protected the
files so that they could be shared among the group.

Technicians at the laboratory, which is responsible for ensuring the
safety and integrity of US nuclear weapons, discovered the problem
after noticing that scheduled back-ups were taking longer than normal.

The laboratory, near Chicago, was forced to close the affected
computer systems down for three days and spend £20,000 in repair
costs. Although research data was left inaccessible while the repairs
were carried out, no data was lost, the court heard.

The teenager was arrested at his parents home in London following a
joint investigation by the Department of Energy and Scotland Yard’s
Computer Crime Unit.

He told police that he and a group of hacker friends had been breaking
into university computer systems and using them to store and
distribute film and music files.

McElroy claimed he targeted universities because he thought that they
did not have to pay internet access charges, and made a point of not
hacking into corporate systems.

The court heard that McElroy was under the impression that the
Fermilab computers were owned by a university, and had not realised
they were part of a US government laboratory.

Fermilab has admitted it had a flaw in its authentication systems and
has since made improvements.

The case was adjourned pending reports pending pre-sentencing reports
from the probation service.

McElroy did not gain access to classified material or endanger
national security, lawyers said.



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