[ISN] NASA hacker gets 21 months in jail

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Wed Feb 06 2002 - 00:37:48 PST

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    Forwarded from: Aj Effin Reznor <ajat_private>
    
    www.msnbc.com/news/699760.asp
    
    Feb. 4, 2002 A prolific computer criminal who admitted breaking into
    NASA computers was sentenced to 21 months in prison on Monday. Jason
    Allen Diekman, who went by the nicknames "Shadow Knight" and "Dark
    Lord,"  was also ordered to pay $88,000 in fines and restitution.
    
    The 20-year-old Californian admitted to hacking computers at NASA's
    Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and other NASA computers at
    Stanford University during November 2000.
    
    IN HIS GUILTY PLEA, Diekman admitted breaking into hundreds of
    computers at an impressive list of government and university
    institutions. On the list: Stanford, Harvard, Cornell University, the
    California State University at Fullerton and University of California
    campuses in Los Angeles and San Diego, according to the U.S.  
    Attorney's California Central District office.
    
    The judge (Dean D. Pregerson) told the defendant that what he had done
    was very disruptive and caused tremendous harm to a number of people.
    ... In fact, the judge called his conduct 'insidious,' said Assistant
    U.S. Attorney Arif Alikhan, chief of the district’s Computer Crimes
    Section. So I think the judge acknowledged the seriousness of the
    offenses.
           
    Even while Diekman was free on bond after pleading guilty in the NASA
    case, he used his home computer to gain unauthorized access to
    computers at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Alikhan said.
           
    He later pleaded guilty to that crime — which included spending 8,000
    minutes of conference call time stolen from AT&T. Much of that time
    was used trying to arrange fraudulent wire transfers through Western
    Union, Alikhan said. He said Diekman was trying to wire money to
    himself using stolen credit to fund the transfer.
    
    Also after the initial guilty plea, Diekman admitted breaking into
    machines at Bay Area Internet Solutions Inc., an Internet service
    provider in San Jose. According to Alikhan, Diekman and others then
    managed to get copies of various company databases that contained
    account information and passwords.
           
    The NASA computer systems at Stanford that Diekman broke into were
    used to develop sensitive satellite flight control software that
    controlled NASA satellites, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
           
    Diekman has been held in a federal jail without bond since his arrest
    in the OSU hacking case on April 18, 2001.
    
    
    
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