ProtestWarrior Hacker indicted

In January of last year, the hacker group collectively known as the "Internet Liberation Front" gained illegal access to the ProtestWarrior server, stealing thousands of credit card numbers in order to commit massive credit card fraud. The following month, ProtestWarrior discovered the identity of the perpetrators: Jeremy Hammond and a ring of hackers recruited through his criminal front at hackthissite.org.

ProtestWarrior performed a forensic analysis of the intrusion and contacted the FBI, which immediately launched an investigation. With the collected evidence, the FBI was able to execute a search warrant on Jeremy's residence on March 16, 2005.

In response, Jeremy launched freejeremy.com (since taken offline) where, among other nonsense, he claimed to be a target of political harassment by the FBI. Considering his political motivation for targeting ProtestWarrior, the blatant hypocrisy of his charge resulted in an immediate and sustained public backlash. Within a few months Jeremy took his site down.

On May 23, 2006, a grand jury at the U.S. District Court in Illinois handed down an indictment against Jeremy Alexander Hammond for hacking into the ProtestWarrior server.

The indictment reads in part, "Between January and February 2005, defendant HAMMOND accessed ProtestWarrior.com's server without authority on multiple occasions in an effort to obtain information not otherwise available to him or the general public, specifically credit card numbers, home addresses, and other identifying information of the members and customers of ProtestWarrior.com."

The specific violation is of Title 18, US Code, Sections 1030 (a)(2)(c) and 2. Per our understanding of the law, Jeremy faces a possible fine and imprisonment for up to 5 years.

ProtestWarrior will be releasing more details as they become available, including:

*chat logs between Jeremy and his cohorts' discussing their grand plans for -the stolen credit cards -the PW server -PW's database -previous attack on PW HQ -other conservative sites they planned to attack

*video of Jeremy at DEFCON boasting of his plans to commit "electronic disobedience" and credit card fraud

*details of his violent criminal history including his arrest for assaulting a police officer and an arrest for punching his female roommate in the face

From the other FR post it appears that the indictments should go much farther:

"Upon discovering the hack, we immediately began collecting information on the breach and managed to penetrate Jeremy's inner circle. We then collected evidence that more than 5,000 credit card numbers had been stolen by Jeremy and the "Internet Liberation Front" and that they were planning on doing the following:

*charge hundreds of dollars per stolen credit card number as donations to various left-wing organizations by using an automated donation submission script

*send the entire ProtestWarrior HQ database (complete with usernames, passwords, and operation details) to left-wing groups hostile to ProtestWarrior (including the entire contents of our mail server)

*upload all credit card numbers and other sensitive customer information to hundreds of anarchist and left-wing sites (specifically Indymedia) as a downloadable zip file

*anonymously send press releases and material to thousands of media contacts to boast of the malicious hack and the millions of dollars defrauded, and to publish any and all sensitive information regarding the ProtestWarrior organization

*erase the entire PW server

*launch simultaneous attacks on other conservative sites"

It seems to me that we're looking at multiple conspiracy charges, and since they were planning to publicize the acts, terrorism charges (since they were also planning to hit other conservative sites). If this guy and his cohorts aren't facing 30 years worth of indictments in another week I'll be severely disappointed.

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