AT&T Hacker Andrew Auernheimer sentenced to 3.5 Years in prison
Grey
hat hacker Andrew Auernheimer, also known famously as “weev” has been
handed a sentence of 41 months in prison for the AT&T hack and has also
been fined 73,000 dollars as restitution by a New Jersey district court. The
hack had led to the theft of personal information and credentials of more than
114,000 iPad users including many prominent personalities.
It
all started in June 2010 when weev along his congregation of computer experts
known as Goatse security exposed a security flaw in the iPad user data
base of AT&T. After exposing the security
loophole, he gave the details of the hack and the leaked data to the website Gawker,
which then published them in an article while also mentioning the high profile
persons whose emails had been hacked.
He
was apprehended in January 2011 by the F.B.I. after the investigation was
handed over to them and he was to be charged with a single count of conspiracy
of unauthorized access to a computer and one count of computer fraud. His
co-defendant Daniel Spitler was let out on a bail and he pleaded guilty
to the same charges and awaits a sentencing.
Auernheimer was convicted in November last year by a jury in Newark,
New Jersey on one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access and a count
of identity theft. The range of the sentence could have been from 33 to 41
months, and the court went with the higher one in this case as prosecutors were
of the opinion that high prison serving time would lead to repetition of such
acts by hackers.
Prominent
people affected in the AT&T hack included New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, ABC news anchor Diane
Sawyer and a Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
According
to the prosecutors and related officials, the hacker chose to go with the
security flaw exposing theory after he found that he was in deep waters. U.S.
attorney Paul Fishman commented that “When
it became clear that he was in trouble, he concocted the fiction that he was
trying to make the Internet more secure, and that all he did was walk in
through an unlocked door,” and that “The jury didn’t buy it, and neither did
the court in imposing sentence.” Moreover, prosecutors have termed Auernheimer
as a well known computer hacker and internet troll and that his intent had been
to disrupt the services on the internet.
Auernheimer
had protested against the sentence and his lawyer had asserted that since no
passwords had been stolen there was no need of a long term prison sentence. He
also quoted a similar case where the defendant was let off with six months
prison for much serious intrusion.
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