UK hacker's case before Law Lords

[cosplay]

New update:

Law Lords consider UK hacker case




Extraditing a Briton accused of the "biggest military computer hack of all time" to the US would be an abuse of proceedings, the law lords have heard.

Lawyers for Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon told the House of Lords US authorities had warned him he faced a long jail sentence if he did not plead guilty.

The systems analyst is accused of gaining access to 97 US military and Nasa computers from his London home.

Known as Solo, he was arrested in 2002 but never charged in the UK.

John Reid, home secretary at the time, granted the US extradition request.

His lawyers told London's High Court last year that he was subject to improper threats and extradition would breach his human rights.

Two judges found no grounds for appeal.



'Longer sentence'
At the House of Lords on Monday, David Pannick QC, representing Mr McKinnon, said US authorities had warned his client he faced a life sentence rather than a couple of years in jail unless he agreed to plead guilty and to extradition.

Without co-operation, the case could be treated as a terrorism case, which could result in up to a 60-year sentence in a maximum security prison should he be found guilty on all six indictments.
With co-operation, he would receive a lesser sentence of 37 to 46 months, be repatriated to the UK, where he could be released on parole and charges of "significantly damaging national security" would be dropped.

A US embassy legal official quoted New Jersey authorities saying they wanted to see him "fry".

'No threat'
Mr Pannick said it was not disputed that the courts could refuse to extradite people if they considered there had been an abuse of process.

Mr McKinnon has never denied accessing the computer networks between February 2001 and March 2002.

He said he was motivated by curiosity and only managed to get into the networks because of lax security.



Mr McKinnon further explained that he believes the US military has reverse engineered an anti-gravity propulsion system from recovered alien spacecraft, and that this propulsion system is being kept a secret.


In that sense, Mr McKinnon said he sees his own hacking as "humanitarian." He said he only wanted to find evidence of a UFO cover-up and expose it. He called the alleged anti-gravity propulsion system "extra-terrestrial technology we should have access to".
"I wanted to find out why this is being kept a secret when it could be put to good use," he said in the BBC interview last year.

Gary McKinnon's search turned into an obsession, an addiction. As he probed high-level computer systems in the United States, his life in Britain fell apart. He lost his job, and his girlfriend dumped him. Friends told him to stop hacking, but to no avail.

"I'd stopped washing at one point. I wasn't looking after myself. I wasn't eating properly. I was sitting around the house in my dressing gown, doing this all night."

Clare Montgomery QC, representing the Home Secretary, argues no threats were made, and the extradition should go ahead.
Judgment is expected within three weeks.

Net lockdown
Eventually, Mr McKinnon got sloppy. He started leaving behind clues. At one point, Mr McKinnon began posting anti-war diatribes on the screens of the US government computers that were his targets. He has insisted, however, that he never attempted to sabotage any operations.



When Britain's hi-tech crime unit finally came for him 2002, Mr McKinnon was not surprised. He told the BBC: "I think I almost wanted to be caught, because it was ruining me. I had this classic thing of wanting to be caught so there would be an end to it."



He thought he would be tried in Britain, and that he might get, at the most, three to four years in prison.
Then, later that year, the United States decided to indict him with charges that could mean up to 70 years in a US prison. It has never been entirely clear why it took US officials until 2005 to begin extradition proceedings.



Gary McKinnon's been fighting extradition ever since, on the grounds that he never intended anything malicious by his hacking. He's been free on bail, but it has been a strange kind of freedom.
For a period he had to sign in at his local police station every evening, and could not leave his house at night. The court also forbade him from using any computer connected to the internet.
Mr McKinnon remains contrite about what he did, although he has admitted that he thinks US officials are making him a scapegoat. He has said that in the course of his hacking, he found evidence that hundreds of others from around the world were also trying to hack the same networks.




His supporters say that instead of prosecuting him, the US government should thank him for pointing out massive computer security lapses in critical systems.


As for his quest to find evidence of a UFO cover-up, Mr McKinnon has said that he found some circumstantial evidence online to back his claims, including what he said are photos with what he speculated were alien spacecraft airbrushed out of the picture.



He said the photos in question were too large to download to his own computer.
When the BBC asked him if he ever felt like hacking again, Mr McKinnon replied, "No, not at all." He said he wished he had listened to his friends when they told him to stop.

[r0mm3L]

ahakag nawong aning taohana, nerd kaau

instead of prosecuting him, the us governemnt shoud thank?

it turned out to be penetrating/vulnerability testing

us government should pay him

trabaho mana sa mga network security specialist they know how to hack, but they are not suppose to destroy the system

they hack just to test.

im his supporter hehehe JK

[cosplay]

ah! naa na may supporter diri... i thought nga mo daghan noon ang anti hackers pero it seems nga he is becoming more popular than notorious.. hahahaha..

[GOSPELofROCH]

paytera wahahaha

[r0mm3L]

haha, di ko supporter oi, joke rana

I'd stopped washing at one point. I wasn't looking after myself. I wasn't eating properly. I was sitting around the house in my dressing gown, doing this all night

murag di gyud cguro ko mo tuo nga lax ang security nila

mas mo tuo ko nga secured sila but the hacker is just so persistent and genius hehe

ive heard, encrypted data will b decrypted for 6 to 8 months using B**t* f**c* *tt*ck (if my sources are correct) hehe

[radiostar]

hahahaha.... @idol oie.. grabeha.. sa tanang comment.... idol nimo kay criminal.. haha... mao man ni ang reason why many people become criminals.. because people idolize criminals...

na.a man siyay punta... that means ma hack rajud ang system nila. idol nako siya kay iyang nasulod that means dile safe maka alarma na e ilis ang system

[cosplay]

Kung encryption lang, I don't personally think that he used something like brute force attack since
certain types of encryption, by their mathematical properties, cannot be defeated by brute force. An example of this is one-time pad cryptography, where every bit has a corresponding key bit. A brute force attack would eventually reveal the correct decoding, but also every other possible combination of bits, and would have no way of distinguishing one from the other.


Also, kung imong i analyze, don't you think that they could have detected the open network na in just about a few days? Grabeha anang months oie na continuous connection na wala nila ma detect ang connection nga nagpadayon man lang... usually, minutes ra na ang hacker mag stay sa network unless he wants to be traced back by the network... i think lang na he carefully analyzed the structure using some clues and solved the entire encryption on his own... (of course this takes a lot of time especially if there are more than one pc to crack down.. he indeed is determined..)

[cosplay]

Also, RSA claimed that 1024-bit keys are likely to become crackable some time between 2006 and 2010 and that 2048-bit keys are sufficient until 2030. An RSA key length of 3072 bits should be used if security is required beyond 2030. This means that wala pay naka crack sa RSA 1024-bit nga key before 2006, so I don't think that the US military had such a technology. It may be something of relevance to TWINKLE or TWIRL or an extracted collision point from MD5CRK.. ambot lang.. speculation man sad ni nako kay wala man ko beside Mckinnon when he did the thing.. hahahahaha... "beside" jud...?

[r0mm3L]

Kung encryption lang, I don't personally think that he used something like brute force attack since
certain types of encryption, by their mathematical properties, cannot be defeated by brute force. An example of this is one-time pad cryptography, where every bit has a corresponding key bit. A brute force attack would eventually reveal the correct decoding, but also every other possible combination of bits, and would have no way of distinguishing one from the other.


Also, kung imong i analyze, don't you think that they could have detected the open network na in just about a few days? Grabeha anang months oie na continuous connection na wala nila ma detect ang connection nga nagpadayon man lang... usually, minutes ra na ang hacker mag stay sa network unless he wants to be traced back by the network... i think lang na he carefully analyzed the structure using some clues and solved the entire encryption on his own... (of course this takes a lot of time especially if there are more than one pc to crack down.. he indeed is determined..)

naa gyud btaw type of encryption that cannot be defeated by brute force but naa bay encryption can be defeated by any kinds of attack overnight? ambot lang

wala sad ta kbaw everytime he's doing his malicious activity pwede ma disguise na dili melicous

since im not a genius liek him, i only know one: spoofing

i bet this darn nerd knows many

[cosplay]

hahahahaha... mao gyud... he IS a nerd... pero nice ang iyahang knowledge to share and make better stuffs than using it for bad deeds...