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Hacker Gary McKinnon Interviewed
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jul 24, 2005 02:49 PM
from the not-quite-the-x-files dept.
from the not-quite-the-x-files dept.
G0rAk writes "The BBC World Service has a half hour audio interview with British hacker Gary McKinnon. As recently reported on/. and BBC News, Gary was arrested and freed on bail pending extradition proceedings to the U.S. There, he faces charges of gaining unauthorised access and causing criminal damage to military computers in his search for evidence of UFO coverups and anti-gravity technology of extra-terrestrial origin. In a very candid interview, Gary re-affirms that he had no malicious intent, was amazed at the ease with which he penetrated the networks, explains in detail what evidence of UFO coverups he saw, describes a personal journey through hell as he became obsessed with the project and how very scared he is that he could be facing up to seventy years in a Virginian jail. A bit of a nut, perhaps. But a fascinating listen that helps a lot in making that judgment. The Interview can be listened to with RealPlayer from 11:32 GMT (06:32 EST) on Saturday until the same time next week."
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Another NASA Hacker Indicted 164 comments
eldavojohn writes "Earlier this year, UK citizen & hacker of NASA Gary KcKinnon was extradited to the United States (also interviewed twice). Now, another hacker has been indicted for hacking more than 150 U.S. government computers. Victor Faur, 26, of Arad, Romania claims to have led a 'white hat team' to expose flaws in U.S. government computers. It seems everyone else has been busy hacking into government systems while I've been wasting my time playing Warcraft." From the article: "The breached computers were used to collect and process data from spacecraft. Because of the break-ins, systems had to be rebuilt and scientists and engineers had to manually communicate with spacecraft, resulting in $1.36 million in losses for NASA and nearly $100,000 in losses for the Energy Department and the Navy, prosecutors said. Several suspected NASA hackers have been dealing with law enforcement recently."
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Thank you Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
>to believe the word of someone who breaks into military
>computers to look for evidence of UFOs.
Breaking into a government computer to look for evidence for UFO's is a perfectly rational decision. If you believe that there's a conspiracy to hide information and that there's no legitimate way to obtain that information, going after it in this way makes perfect sense. (Allowing yourself to be caught doing it is pretty dumb, but he readily admits to having been dumb on that count.)
While he may be wrong, that doesn't make him insane or unreliable.
The fact that he claims not to have found the evidence he wanted - outside of a photograph of a weird looking aircraft and the phrase "non-terrestrial personnel" in a document - makes him seem all the more reliable. He's not a crackpot falling over himself to misenterpret or invent data.
He's just a guy who went too far following a reasonable (if wrong) idea, and the care with which he described what he did observe is admirable. If all the UFO nutters were as precise as him, there'd be a lot fewer UFO nutters out there.
>"I see people breaking into these comptuers all the time."
>Was that before or after you were pulled into the mothership
>and shown the proof that we never landed on the moon?
LTFI.
That's exactly the sort of thing he didn't say.
(I was expecting to hear something similar myself.)
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:4, Insightful)
He got into a bloody cemetary ffs! He only got in because the military personnel there were too stupid to change the default password. He used his own email address for god's sake!
a 70 year penalty for something a script kiddie can do is more than harsh: it's outrageous.
Parent
Re:Thank you Gary (Score:5, Insightful)
You've lost that fight; time to move on to one you have a chance of winning. Language use changes, and hacker has changed to mean cracker, as well as programmer or other similar geeky type. For that matter, the former is *all* it means to the public. Carry on calling people hackers if you wish, but most people will get entirely the impression.
Parent
Anti-Grav? (Score:5, Funny)
He's in for it (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to say, though, that even if the government computers were wide open, finding documents about UFO's seems like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/ [cyvin.org]
Interview Transcript and Article. (Score:5, Informative)
70 years is too much but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the "horror" of his extradition, don't blame uncle sam. The British government is big enough to tell our government to piss off if it felt such a thing weren't warranted. The main reason that we don't do such a thing to our citizens is that most countries that would want our people sent over to them wouldn't give them a fair trial, and that's not inherently because they're American. A Chinese is probably no more like to get a fair trial in Mugabe's Zimbabwe than an American. Foreign governments know that if our people attack them, that our law enforcement will arrest them and prosecute them, even if the country is hostile. The feds threatened to arrest the Americans who defaced Chinese websites after the PLA-Air Force brough our AWAC down early in Bush's first term. Few governments, China's especially, would do that to their own people.
Every so often I get some dumbass at my university trying to get me to teach them those "mad skillz" of h@x0ring that apparently all CS majors have. My interest was always in programming, not in things like that. They even have the gall to look at me like I'm the asshole, when I tell them that I've never bothered to learn such things, that I feel that what they want to do is morally wrong and that they should learn to actually respect others' privacy and property. The same people would probably wonder what the hell is wrong with someone who asked them to teach them how to use a jimmy to open up some frat boy's car so they could screw around in his mustang. IMO, there's really no difference.
Re:70 years is too much but.... (Score:5, Funny)
You have just disqualified yourself from any position in the current US Administration.
Parent
Re:70 years is too much but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that it true that simple trespass is met with automatic violence in most parts of the world. In many places there are strong social customs that treat trespassers as a guest unless there is evidence that the trespasser has bad intent.
In english commonlaw there is a clear distiction between criminial and civil trespass. Basicly, you have to break in for trespass to be a crime. If you walk in the front door and then leave, it is rude, but not a crime. Also, under English common law the property owner can ask the trespasser to leave, but they are not allowed to force them off the property. The police must be called if the trespasser refuses to leave. Of course, if the trespasser threatens the owner the minimal amount of force to defend yourself is allowed.
As far as I can tell, while most people don't want strangers bounding into their living room, only the USA has the "old west" shoot 'em first and ask questions later mentality.
Parent
I call B.S. on some of what he says (Score:4, Insightful)
I will agree that $900,000 of damage seems a bit of out line, however.
Re:I call B.S. on some of what he says (Score:5, Funny)
M
Parent
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
My Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
This is based on several factors in his story, including the ease with which he was able to penetrate this system as well as the total lack of understanding of the English language common to people in positions of authority in the U.S. Federal government.
First off, I have had the displeasure of being party to audits by the Office of the Inspector General and am familiar with their standards for assessing IT policy based on the security level of content being housed on the server. They are fairly standard, highly regimented, and include every possible protection someone could have imagined 3 years ago.
While these requirements do not automatically extend to military networks, they are regarded as being less stringent than military networks (for instance, you will commonly see references to 'military grade standards' when receiving proposals from other contractors).
One specific requirement of an OIG assessment is evidence of the enforcement of a password security. They check to see whether users are required to have passwords, how often passwords expire, how many characters should be in each password, the minimum number of characters that must be non-alphanumeric, etc.
The type of content Mr. McKinnon accessed surely would have been classified secret if it referred to a non-public military capability, and would probably be top secret if it referred to something of extraterrestial origin. 100% of servers containing secret documents are hardened against attack in public agencies, and I would assume the same is true with the military.
All this leads me to believe it is extremely unlikely Mr. McKinnon saw what he thinks he saw, or else he is probably not being truthful in his description of how he cracked the system. I prefer to think of this in the former, but cannot really render judgement without seeing the source materials.
The other reason I am extremely skeptical of the idea Mr. McKinnon understood what he was seeing is that people in positions of authority in the U.S. Government and in the military tend to be unable to understand English to the point they are bordering on illiterate. This is not an exaggeration, I know of several agencies that require all of their SES officers to attend remedial English classes as a requirement for employment. These people commonly use words with total disregard for their meaning, their memos often communicate instructions which are exactly the opposite of their intended message, and most importantly, they give names to things which are wholly inappropriate.
If Mr. McKinnon saw a memo referring to non-terrestrial officers, we can only guess at what that term may mean. My guess is that it refers to aerial or naval forces, but it really could be anything.
M
How funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
guys waving guns (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said tho the mulsim's are focusing on this event eventhough it was a mistake and complete ignore the 80 some civilians that islamic extremist kill with intent this weekend in Eygpt.
Parent
Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware, or this may become the "normal times".
Parent
Re:Thankful only trying to extradite him (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Transcript? (Score:5, Informative)
He says he is just a geek
He says he didnt damage systems, but the US gov considers it damage if you even have to make changes once you know the system is comprimised
He was a hairdresser, then got an "Access certification"
Then he started doing research in UFO research
He believes there is anti-gravity propulsion that was recovered by alien spacecraft
He continues sounding like a nut about UFO technology that the USA now uses
Claims he wants to provide the free energy that the US army uses to the rest of the world
He "hacked" by accessing computers with blank admin passes (windoze)
Allegedly there was mulitple people on the same networks
Haha...he knows this from netstat, there was connections all over
Apparently he found proof because people were airbrushing out UFO's from satellite images
Also an excel spreadsheet with "non terrestrial officers" on the list
Hahahahahaha she asked if he was doing a lot of drugs during this time, and he said he was smoking a bit of weed
He stopped washing himself at one point he said
He left his job and lost his girlfriend
But he lived with that girlfriend even afterwords (what a pimp!)
Somehow they bring Iraq and 9/11 into this
He got busted after playing videogames all night
Americans started talking about extradition, so thats when he was getting concerned, it somehow jumped from 2 years to 4 years to 18 years to 70 years.
He thinks he is a scapegoat for all the hacking going on
Parent
Re:Long sentence (Score:4, Informative)
1) It's common to stack sentences over here. A murderer might end up facing several consecutive life sentances.
2) Prison guards have a very, very strong lobbying presence in California (not sure about the rest of the US). They frequently agitate for longer prison time, no matter what the crime.
(a repulsive and immoral practice, imho)
Parent
Re:Hack this format (Score:5, Informative)
rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/worldservice/interview.ra
use mplayer to download it:
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile interview.rm rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/worldservice/interview.ra
then convert to wav:
mplayer interview.rm -ao pcm -aofile interview.wav
use lame to convert to mp3:
lame -h interview.wav interview.mp3
Parent