New York Times Hacker Surrenders To Face Federal Charges

internetweek.com ^ | Updated Tuesday, September 9, 2003, 8:00 PM EDT | George V. Hulme, InformationWeek

[NotQuiteCricket]

Hacker Adrian Lamo, 22, surrendered to federal authorities in California on Tuesday to face charges stemming from his alleged breach of the New York Times network in February 2002.

Patty Pontello, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, confirmed that Lamo surrendered to the U.S. Marshall's Service at federal court in Sacramento. Lamo was booked and is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows Tuesday afternoon, Pontello said. Pontello expects Lamo will be sent to New York to face the charges against him.

Lamo became famous following his widely publicized hacks into corporations such as Yahoo, WorldCom, ExciteAtHome, and the New York Times. At the Times, Lamo allegedly breached the company's internal network and accessed a database holding the personal information of 3,000 employees, as well as that of many famous editorial contributors, including Jimmy Carter and Robert Redford.

In all of these breaches, Lamo would hack into the business' network and then contact the company and offer free help to fix the security lapse that enabled his entry. He held off going public with information about the breaches until the holes were patched. Many companies that Lamo hacked into expressed gratitude for his actions. In the days following the WorldCom hack, spokeswoman Jennifer Baker thanked Lamo for working with the company's security team to fix the misconfigured router that made his entry possible.

The New York Times wasn't so pleased. "We consider the breach of The New York Times Company's internal corporate network in February 2002 to be a serious security matter, and have been cooperating with the FBI and local authorities in their investigation of Adrian Lamo," The New York Times Company said in a statement provided by spokeswoman Christine Mohan.

[NotQuiteCricket]

First off - tell me if I was bad for not excerpting.

Second off - If you walk through a neighborhood, and find a door unlocked, then call the house owner to let them know that their door is unlocked - should you then be arrested?

[martin_fierro]

FYI

[DainBramage]

Calling to tell them its unlocked and entering and making yourself at home are two different things.

[Jack Wilson]

First off - tell me if I was bad for not excerpting.

I don't think freerepublic has a requirement, but in my opinion, full articles should not be posted - an excerpt followed by a link is what I recommend.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the ping.

This is very interesting: "At the Times, Lamo allegedly breached the company's internal network and accessed a database holding the personal information of 3,000 employees, as well as that of many famous editorial contributors, including Jimmy Carter and Robert Redford."

Carter and Redford are two of Americas greatest sellout bozos. They hate America/Americans and work 24/7 to weaken our country.

[Liz]

Lamo hacked into open networks and then helped to patch the holes.....so he says. The question is what exactly he did with the personal and business material has was able to retrieve. The presence of the Feds, (although i-net crime is a Federal offense), and local authorities, leads one to believe he did more than find and lock-up doors to nets w/ valuable data.

[adam_az]

Lamo is a loser who associates with black-hat hackers on the Internet Relay Chat network.

Imagine if a bank robber were caught red handed, and said he was just trying to help the bank fix their security.

His excuse sucks.

[Navy Patriot]

1: Not NYT source & short so no harm done.

2: You should not be trying doorknobs.

3: This guy should have posted everything on the net rather than shakedown the Slimes. That would have been the most effective treatment of them.