haha I cant beleave this

A British teenager has narrowly escaped jail after sparking a nuclear panic by hacking into a top secret United States weapons laboratory.

Joseph McElroy, 18, who on Monday was ordered to serve a 200-hour community punishment order, bypassed the facility's electronic security systems with sophisticated software he had developed and nicknamed Deathserv.

McElroy wanted to use the advanced network's power to download and store films and music from the internet.

London's Southwark Crown Court heard that in June 2002, he used a special password to protect his collection and cover up his "parasitic" invasion.

But so many of his fellow hackers also accessed the system at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois that it began to slow down. Technicians discovered the breach and "pressed the panic button". Fearing a terrorist attack, the computer was closed down for three days and the US Department of Energy sounded a full-scale alert.

Officers at Scotland Yard's computer crimes unit were contacted and quickly traced the then-16-year-old student to his east London home.

McElroy, now a first-year engineering undergraduate, pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorised modification of the contents of a computer.

Judge Andrew Goymer told him he ought to "think yourself lucky" he was not going to jail. "Computers are an important feature of life in the 21st century. Government, industry and commerce, as well as a whole variety of other institutions, depend upon the integrity and reliability of their computers in order their proper and legitimate activities can be carried on."

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www.smh.com.au...

Looks like he is a genius and one very lucky man.

If this happened here in U.S., we would probably never hear from him again.

Yeah, pretty smart kid. Actually, wow, I am very impressed that he did this, and ironically, all he wanted to do was use its' power to download stuff. LOL! Funny...yeah, he is very lucky, he should be imprisoned..

-wD

how many virus/ backdoors /worms could have been in all those music files? (im not a computer wiz or nothing).

there was obviously more than one hacker involved.

I do believe the kid himself only wanted to download music and stuff, that sounds like a computer nerd to me

I've recieved 3 virus alerts today from sky and telescope mail serv.

I'm sure this kid made a deal to now work with the govt. to avoid jail time.
It's the govt's way of getting the best hackers to work for them.

Interestingly enough, famed (reformed) hacker, Kevin Mitnick will be speaking about computer security on Coast to Coast AM on Tuesday, February 10. You can also visit, defensivethinking.com for further information.

These are the folks we need to Employ, not punish.

They are the real power in the coming world.

If we do not get these folks on our side, then we are sunk.