Police swoop on 'Hacker of the Year' 223
AcidAUS writes "The Swedish hacker, Dan Egerstad, who perpetrated the so-called hack of the year, has been arrested in a dramatic raid on his apartment, during which he was taken in for questioning and several of his computers confiscated. Egerstad broke into the global communications network used by embassies around the world in August and gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts."
Access credentials were sent through his node! (Score:5, Informative)
He acquired access credentials to 1000 email accounts used by embassies. He did so by becoming an exit node of the TOR anonymizing network and reading the unencrypted exit traffic. That may have been in violation of the law, but does not constitute "breaking into the global communications network used by embassies".
Re:Wouldn't this technically be a cracker? (Score:2, Informative)
Those have been the definitions for at least the past 20 years now and the only people who would argue that are old fat hippie open source programmers who think they are hackers when in fact they are just geeks.
Re:What a moron! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What a moron! (Score:2, Informative)
You get pulled in by the police, if you're really not guilty, the only smart thing to do is cooperate.
I disagree with that. Get an independent lawyer FIRST! They could be just looking for a goat, and you were fingered. Police generally know so little about computers, and would only look at a geek as a sub-species. The more you talk, the more it can be twisted.
RIAA for example. Your PC could have been hijacked. No mater what you say you will be viewed as guilty unless you're lucky enough there is enough evidence left to show you were setup and they bother to look for it.
I have no idea if he is a criminal, but criminal or not, get a good lawyer ASAP. Then cooperate with your lawyers guidance.
Dramatic Raid indeed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a moron! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Just what is he? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't usually reply to my own stuff, but here's Wired's report on the raid and what Egerstad actually did [wired.com].
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
But here's a few gems for you.
1) He became a tor node.
2) All the data he examined was on his own computers.
3) Everything on the computers belonged to him.
4) As a responsible tor node person, he examined the contents of it.
5) Refer to number 3. Also in the US, he could be found responsible for
people using his tor node to traffic in say copyrighted works or child
abuse. So he would really pretty much HAVE to inspect the contrents of
his traffic to make sure that no illegal activity was taking place.
6) What law is it you think he broke?
Re:What a moron! - bad advice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"Broke in?" (Score:2, Informative)