Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon loses latest US extradition battle

Originally posted by BorgHoffen
Why do we have to pay to imprison this guy,

I see no one in prison yet... its been 8 years...

Every patriotic American should demand this guy is extradited already he attacked our military while we were at war making him an enemy combatant.
He is guilty as sin and the fact all his claims come directly from the disclosure project should shine some light on what he really seen ..... nothing.

He purposefully targeted military computers and deleted accounts, left them backdoored so anyone else could access them and left threats promising to keep doing it.

As well as the financial damage you have to wonder who he was really working for the Chinese, Russians maybe even North Korea.

It's time justice was served.

Shamanator drinks the kool-aid 24/7. Ten bucks says one day he'll be gunning down his own beloved American citizens, because his trustworthy Government told him they were 'Terrorists'. I take solace in the fact that you are going to hell my friend.

Do you know how many script kiddies are out there mindlessly "hacking" IP addresses whom have no clue who is sitting on the other side of the firewall? This kid got attention because he got something. He got attention because he is rocking the boat somehow.

Maybe he is a very intelligent brit who assaulted our computer systems during a time of war and beat 300 of me. That would piss any general spending $20M on three layers of firewalls and $50M on physical security.

There is more to this story than some kid who got past a few firewalls.

Originally posted by paul76
Gary McKinnon hacked into NASA and got caught, simple. He should face up to his consequences like a man and stop acting like a yellow belly. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
[edit on 27-2-2009 by paul76]

But their claiming he did $800,000.00 of damage!?!?!?And they havent showed any evidence of that.

He feels prison would finish him off?

Perhaps he should have thought about this while doing obviously illegal computer hacking. He KNEW what he was doing was very wrong, and he did it for years.

And yes, it makes me worried about our own security, it's sort of sad.

I don't know what bothers me more about this case, the fact that they are actually going to extradite a British national, or that some of my fellow ATSr's are cheering him on as he's led to the gallows.

It is painfully obvious that Gary is a patsy. A simple script kiddie who didn't actually follow any kind of procedure with his "hacking". (And I use the term hacking very loosely.) Had his crime been committed by a real hacker, there would have been a very extensive evidence trail that he would be able to use for his defense. Even though he was on dial up, issuing commands from the exploited computers to other servers on the net would have taken advantage of the connection on the exploited computer allowing him to document or save any evidence he was trying to achieve. Simply put FTP was available.
He did state that others were also exploiting these systems at the same time as was visible via a netstat command on the exploited system. (netstat -an in a cmd prompt will show connected hosts and the ports being accessed, and firewalls do not block user generated external connections, so ftp would have been functional.)

Beyond Garys obvious inefficiencies and lack of any kind of hacker discipline, he actually interacted with users on the other end. These are not the signs of someone "with a clue". His statement that he smoked a lot of dope at the time, is a shallow attempt to illustrate immaturity from my point of view. Many chronic smokers are able to function to equal or greater capacity than the average sheeple.

I believe Gary was a conspiracy theorist, just like many of us on this board. So in effect, one of "us". I agree he was "Dumb as a post" to actually exploit a system in the fashion he did. His lack of a proxy, IP spoofing or even doing this via a 3rd party system is testament to his complete lack of self preservation. However even though what he did was wrong, not only procedurally, but morally as well, doesn't change the fact that he was after the same information many of us are actually on this site to achieve.

DISCLOSURE of ET, alternate energy sources, basically the truth of what is being repressed by the powers that be.
Is it not a far greater crime to repress these potential technologies, at the peril of all of humanity, keeping us all slaves to the energy consortium's for the benefit of the very few?

If, in the distant future, the truth of ET visitations, cold fusion, anti gravity and a host of other planet saving tech becomes available to the public, and truth about its repression is made available, I truly hope that the same level of compassion is shown to those that have repressed this technology as is being shown to Gary.

So, in conclusion, as some are chanting that he should "get what he deserves" and "I hope he has to do a lot of time", consider that just being on this board, puts you into the "dissenter" category and as you proclaim your innocence others will be chanting that they hope YOU get a lot of time and "get what you deserve" for the crime of not agreeing with the powers that be.

To be very clear, I agree that what Gary did was a crime and as a crime it should be punished for the crime it is. I also agree that he should be tried for his crime in the country that he committed this crime. So I don't agree with his extradition.

Before you say "if it happened to you", I need to point out I run a bank of web, dns and mail servers which are attacked by hackers daily. So I am well versed on both sides of this issue.

Thanks for reading.
..Ex

Click here for more information.

reply to post by v3_exceed


He deserves a fair trial, and the prosecution has to prove he did any real damage. That said and done, he was an idiot for opening up his big mouth and admitting he did what has been charged against him. This will not be an easy case to defend, as he has given many interviews about what he did and how he did it. If there is a penalty for stupidity, Mr McKinnon would pay the maximum.

I am not cheering for him to go to prison, as that is not who I am. I do think people should know when to keep their mouths shut, and not start crying when they do have to pay the piper. He should of grabbed the three year deal (if it was truly offered to him) as now he has upset a lot of people and will undoubtedly get a stiffer sentence if he is found guilty. I am sure some people in his jury pool will be sympathetic to the conspiracy theorists, and that is what he should hope for.

The large amount of money claimed is because for the US prosecutors to prosecute him, they have to show at least $5,000 dollars of damage per PC. How you can cause $5,000 dollars worth of damage to a PC by accessing with a default password I’m not sure. If he deleted data that wasn’t backed up maybe but come on $5,000 per PC.

Actual charges

This case received a lot of press because of the NatWest 3 case, highlighting a somewhat unequal extradition relationship.

This case comes down to this, an idiot hacks US military system with a kiddie script. Now there are a couple options for the head of US military security to do. Hold thier hands up and confess to being unqualified (who put him in charge) and a bigger idiot than McKinnon and resign. Or make the case out to be something it’s not and claim to have saved the day.

In my opinion the only charges that should have been brought in this case is against the US security staff from the head down to the PC techs for failure to do their jobs securing the US.

Originally posted by northerngateUS security staff from the head down to the PC techs for failure to do their jobs securing the US.

The secure stuff is NOT accessible from the internet with ordinary dial up

reply to post by Shamanator

Patriotism is commonly defined as love of and/or devotion to one's country. The word comes from the Latin, patria, and Greek patritha.

-Wikipedia

1.
1. A nation or state.
2. The territory of a nation or state; land.
3. The people of a nation or state; populace: The whole country will profit from the new economic reforms.
2. The land of a person's birth or citizenship: Foreign travel is restricted in his country.
3. A region, territory, or large tract of land distinguishable by features of topography, biology, or culture: hill country; Bible country.
4. An area or expanse outside cities and towns; a rural area: a vacation in the country.
5. Law. A jury.
6. Informal. Country music.

-www.answers.com

I'd say I'm as patriotic as it gets, Shamanator.

I believe that my people of my country as important to me as myself, and my family.

I believe that Gary McKinnon is as patriotic as it gets, regardless if he tampered with military PCs.

Did he harm anything? Barely, he used a very simple PERL exploit which should of been patched up by the military, but apaprently they're so busy spending money on technology we'll never see that they forgot to make sure no one could find it, on a hair of a chance he did.

I believe as I being a patriot to my _PEOPLE_, I would find the GOVERNMENT of the UNITED STATES Of AMERICA is at fault, NOT Gary.

And as far as the other poster said,


He had no ethics what so ever, when hacking into a military PC it is highly advised you hide your IP, regardless if you're on a dynamic IP, and probably the safest way, use a WiFi hotspot, do it a coffee shop. So unfourtanetly the whole situation could have been avoided, but he does have Aspergers, so I think we all should accept the fact he has somewhat a form of autism, and fixates on certain things quite easily.


Give him a break.

And stop thinking as all of America, "Patriotic" because our government is a rocks throw from corrupt.

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by northerngate
US security staff from the head down to the PC techs for failure to do their jobs securing the US.

The secure stuff is NOT accessible from the internet with ordinary dial up

Hmmm... So does that mean that US Military system he accessed is a publicly accessible system, if so then aren’t the charges against him false?

Or is this just another double standard, I shouldn’t lose my job because it’s not a secure military system but when it comes to running kiddie scripts for default passwords it is a secure military system.

Good job those boys at NASA where awake or those default and blank passwords would still be there.

Originally posted by Helig

300 computers compromised (rough estimate based on news stories)

65k/yr salary -- average pay for a technician

31.25/hr -- hourly rate

4 hrs per machine -- general time frame to sort out a single machine
37,500$ -- total for 1 person putting in 4 hours of time on each of the 300 compromised machines

1200 -- total hours necessary to sort out 300 compromised systems

4 hours to type passwd in a command shell

no wonder the system was compromised with that sort of tech support

video here

he talks on images of cigar shaped craft in space

www.metacafe.com...

reply to post by v3_exceed
I agree with you almost except for the part that he ( Gary) commited a crime....that just depends on what side of the fence you are on.Of course there is gonna be some laws broken,but thats needed to expose and change things. But look who wrote the laws, they did it to protect themselves. As for the ones saying he's a criminal .GET OFF OUR SITE !! You that come here looking for answers or info that people like Gary risk to get and are being jailed and killed for exposing the lies.....grrr.....