A teen-ager was sentenced to six months
in jail Thursday after pleading guilty to federal charges of hacking
into NASA computers which support the international space station.
The teen, now 16, also admitted he had
illegally entered a Pentagon computer system, intercepted 3,300 e-mail
transmissions and stolen passwords.
The Justice Department said the young
man, whose name was withheld because of his age, was the first juvenile
hacker to be incarcerated for computer crimes. He was known on the
Internet as "comrade" and will serve his sentence in a Florida
detention center. He was 15 when the crimes occurred.
"Breaking into someone else's
property, whether it's a robbery or a computer intrusion, is a serious
crime," Attorney General Janet Reno said.
Chris Rouland, who monitors computer
attacks for Internet Security Systems Inc. in Atlanta, said the case was
unusual in that the youngster was caught, not that he managed to break
into the computers.
Rouland said the case reflects growing
technical sophistication among hackers: "This is a great bellwether
as to the state of security where juveniles can traipse across computer
systems with little or no fear."
In a plea bargain, the young hacker
admitted to entering 13 computers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Alabama, for two days in June 1999 and downloading $1.7
million in NASA proprietary software that supports the space station's
environmental systems.
NASA said it cost $41,000 to check and
repair the system during the three-week shutdown after the illegal entry
was discovered.
In August and October 1999,
"c0mrade" entered the computer network run by the Defense
Threat Reduction Agency, which monitors the threat from nuclear,
biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons.
Had the hacker been an adult, he could
have been charged with wiretapping and computer abuse crimes. As part of
his sentence, he must write letters apologizing to the secretary of
defense and the administrator of NASA.
