Posted on 06/08/2005 7:37:08 AM PDT by infocats
British man accused of breaking into military, NASA computers
LONDON - A British man accused by the United States of hacking into scores of military computers and disrupting operations was arrested in London on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing, police said.
Unemployed programmer Gary McKinnon, 39, is accused of gaining illegal access to 53 computers owned by the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. Army and Navy between February 2001 and March 2002. He was taken to a central London police station and is due to appear in court on Wednesday for an extradition hearing brought on behalf of the U.S. government, London police said in a statement.
In November 2002, U.S. prosecutors charged McKinnon with hacking into government and private-sector computers, causing $900,000 of damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Aren't intranets secured from the Internet links within these organizations?
Why would highly classified documents even have a network cable attched to the computer on which they reside?
"The 39-year-old entered Bow Street magistrates’ court dressed in light green combat trousers, blowing kisses to the public gallery."
I'm sure he will be blowing kisses in a US jail for quite some time. See ya schmuck!
"Why would highly classified documents even have a network cable attched to the computer on which they reside?"
Sounds to me like he didn't get into the Secure Network for classified documents, only the unclass.
They don't.
I think the article text tells the story ..."sensitive but not classified," and "easy to guess passwords." Classified traffic is carried on separate networks.
Sounds like he was using a simple network scanning tool and guessing at passwords. What an idiot.
"Sensitive" and "classified" are two entirely different things. Sensitive could be things like personnel information, budgetary and policy documents, and the like. Classified information is the stuff with real military value.
If policies and procedures are followed correctly, a hacker from the outside world should never be able to get access to classified information.
Aren't intranets secured from the Internet links within these organizations?
If there is classified information on any computer on those networks, there should be no physical connection outside that net. In situations where a computer may have occasional classified content, two sets of disk drives (one classified, one unclassified) are used, and any network connections are physically unplugged when the classified disks are in use.
Why would highly classified documents even have a network cable attched to the computer on which they reside?
Again, if procedures are followed correctly, they wouldn't.
George Lewis (NBC) just reported from London that McKinnon said he was just trying to show how easy it was to break into US computers and that he was looking for evidence of a UFO coverup.
or Michael Jackson
But if you don't equipt the machines holding the classified documents with a network connection at all then that means people have to physically sit at that machine to view the classified documents. It becomes nothing more than a glorified filing cabinet. What if someone across the country suddenly needs to view a classified document?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.