Alleged Pentagon hacker arrested

Alleged Pentagon hacker arrested
British man accused of breaking into military, NASA computers

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 7:49 p.m. ET June 7, 2005

LONDON - A British man accused by the United States of hacking into scores of military computers and disrupting operations was arrested in London on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing, police said.

Unemployed programmer Gary McKinnon, 39, is accused of gaining illegal access to 53 computers owned by the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. Army and Navy between February 2001 and March 2002. He was taken to a central London police station and is due to appear in court on Wednesday for an extradition hearing brought on behalf of the U.S. government, London police said in a statement.

In November 2002, U.S. prosecutors charged McKinnon with hacking into government and private-sector computers, causing $900,000 of damage.

They charged him with seven counts of computer fraud. If found guilty, he could face up to $1.75 million in fines and 70 years in jail.

When the U.S. charges were announced in 2002, McKinnon's lawyer Karen Todner issued a statement saying her client would fight extradition to the United States.

"We won't be making any comment until after the hearing," Todner told Reuters late on Tuesday.

In announcing the indictment in November 2002, U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty charged that McKinnon, known online as "SOLO," had perpetrated "the biggest hack of military computers ever, at least ever detected."

Authorities said at the time that a series of government break-ins occurred over 12 months at 92 separate U.S. military and NASA networks across 14 states, including two at the Pentagon. McKinnon also was accused of hacking the networks of six private companies and organizations.

McNulty said that McKinnon used automated software available on the Internet to scan tens of thousands of computers on U.S. military networks from his home computer, looking for ones that might be exposed due to flaws in the Windows operating system. Many of the computers he broke into were protected by easy-to-guess passwords, investigators said.

In some cases, McKinnon allegedly shut down the computer systems he invaded, McNulty said. According to the indictment, the total damage, including the cost to reinstall software on the affected computers, was estimated at $900,000.

Investigators said McKinnon downloaded sensitive, but not classified, information about subjects that included Navy shipbuilding and munitions. There was no evidence that he offered the information to foreign governments or terrorist organizations, McNulty said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.