Friday, July 13, 2007

On Wireless Hackers and The Law (Again)

This week, an appeals court upheld the sentence of one of the Lowe's hackers. He got 9 years, the longest sentence given to a hacker in the U.S. ever!

In case you don't already know, two hackers broke into a Detroit Lowe's store via open WiFi access point and were attempting to steal credit card numbers from Lowe's transactions. By all accounts, this attack would have worked but for the fact that the 2 men were arrested before they could return to collect the card numbers.

As I read this, it put into perspective for me just how completely dumb the arrest of Sam Peterson (also in Michigan) was.

1 comment:

Will.i.am said...

It does not pay to be a wireless hacker in Michigan. Perhaps they should stay in Minnesota (I think that is where the TJX wireless hack happened which was at some Marshalls store.)

Also I agree on the Sam Peterson deal. He was not even attempting to be mischievous. He was just using a service that was offered for free without being a customer. It would be kind of like stopping of at a Mcdonalds and using the restrooms and not buying anything.