Miami: Teen Sentenced in Computer Hacking Case

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Thursday September 21 4:24 PM ET Teen Sentenced in Computer Hacking Case

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Miami court on Thursday sentenced a 16-year-old youth to six months in a detention center after he admitted hacking into military and NASA (news - web sites) computer networks, forcing a three-week shutdown of the space agency's systems, the U.S. Justice Department (news - web sites) said.

The juvenile -- known as ``comrade'' on the Internet -- pleaded guilty in a Miami district court to two acts of delinquency that, had he been an adult, would have been violations of federal wiretap and computer abuse laws, according to a Justice Department statement.

His name was withheld because of his age.

He admitted that between and August and October 1999 he broke into a military computer network in Dulles, Virginia, used by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which guards against nuclear, chemical, biological and conventional weapon attacks.

He intercepted more than 3,300 electronic messages and gained at least 19 names and passwords of DTRA employees, including at least 10 on military computers.

``Comrade'' also hacked into 12 NASA computers located at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama in June 1999.

He downloaded NASA proprietary software from NASA worth about $1.7 million that supported the International Space Station (news - web sites), including control of temperature and humidity in the living quarters.

The data theft led to the shutdown of the NASA computer system for 21 days in July 1999.

``This case, which marks the first time a juvenile hacker will serve time in a detention facility, shows that we take computer intrusion seriously and are working with our law enforcement partners to aggressively fight this problem,'' Attorney General Janet Reno (news - web sites) said in the statement.

The judgement also requires the youth to write apologies to the Defense Department and NASA.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), September 21, 2000


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