British UFO enthusiast in trouble for hacking into Pentagon computers

Brit hacker fights being sent to U.S.



BY ELLEN TUMPOSKY
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS


Gary McKinnon

LONDON - A British computer whiz who allegedly hacked into Pentagon and NASA networks because he thought they were hiding evidence of the existence of UFOs is fighting extradition to the United States.
Gary McKinnon, 39, is out on bail after appearing at Bow Street Magistrate's Court in London yesterday for an extradition hearing. He was first arrested in 2002 after being indicted by a U.S. grand jury on eight counts of computer crimes in 14 states.

At the time of the indictment, Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said McKinnon was "charged with the biggest military computer hack of all time."

It was not clear why the extradition case took so long to get to court.

McKinnon - known online as "Solo" - allegedly accessed 97 U.S. government computers, stole passwords, deleted files and shut down military computer networks, crashing 300 computers at Earle Naval Weapons Station in Colts Neck, N.J., shortly after 9/11.

His lawyer, Karen Todner, said he could face 70 years in U.S. jails and would contest the extradition.

"The treatment of other British nationals under the American judicial system inspires little confidence," she told reporters. She said his motivation for hacking was to try to prove the existence of UFOs and expose the poor security of U.S. government systems. Many of the systems had easy-to-guess passwords, she said.

According to British press reports, McKinnon, who was unemployed but had worked as a computer engineer, dressed like his hero, glam rocker David Bowie, and believed that U.S. defense networks were concealing evidence that aliens had visited Earth.

He allegedly did his hacking from home using software downloaded from the Internet.

Janet Boston, representing the U.S. government, told the court yesterday that McKinnon had caused $700,000 in damage. "On one instance, the U.S. Army's military district of Washington network became inoperable," she said.

McKinnon is due back in court next month and in the meantime is barred from accessing the Internet. - source

Maybe it's just me but the truth about UFO's is not worth going to jail over.

Nice, but will do no good if doesn't tell anyone what he got to read. Someone ask the guy before he goes to jail for 40 years.

if he did get any good information i think he should tell all the newspapers and get the media all over the goverment and this may end up in more people hacking the gav then we will definetly get sommin

i like to see them sweat

Government and military computing systems that contain the data we all want to see are stand alone systems. They can not be accessed through public networks. Some of these computing systems are networked by they are closed networks. You have to be inside to access them. This guy is just a nobody playing with common crack tools that got into a few government networks. The government is playing up the damage so they can prove to everyone that they actually catch and prosecute people for this. They may have even set him up with ground operatives pretending to be his elite buddies.

Someone from Edwards AFB just told me that he saw this story on CNN but they didn't mention anything about the UFO aspect of it. "Figures..."

F*ck the media!

Originally posted by meshuggah1324
Someone from Edwards AFB just told me that he saw this story on CNN but they didn't mention anything about the UFO aspect of it. "Figures..."

MSNBC however, did mention the UFO motive behind it.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

So what does this tell us about CNN?

It tells us that CNN s*cks.

Nothing but praise for the man. the governments of ALL countries are
collecting information about individuals and large concerns. Whilst some
non-thinking members of the public thing that this is, 'OK-acceptable', they are thoughtlessly ignoring the grand-children and great-grandchildren who
will suffer loss of democratiic rights due to the timid response of
citizens of the country in question.

those who have no time for this governmental route has better
examine what 'rights and priviledges they have lost over the last
2 or 3 decades. Write thm down, you will be amazed at what the
future holds for your children. If yoou claim that you 'love and adore'
your offspring, then take action NOW to arrest the governmentls secret
trickery, cheating, and power gathering clandesting actions.

I say Good On Him!

But i disagree with the OP, If i had Balls Of Steel to hack into Pentagon and NASA networks, to find truth about Aliens/UFO's, and if i did find something, i would go to prison - no questions asked.

Although, its probably easier to say that, rather than actually doing it

Hmm the other poster was right. This hacker claimed that he saw mention of off world navy personnel in the military computers, i.e. 'non terrestrial' navy personnel out in space and that he was downloading a picture of a cigar shaped UFO when someone discovered him on the network and booted him off. Problems with this story:

1. oh yea high tech CIA government computers are going to have a folder marked "c:\my documents\FUN UFO Folder" that he just happened to access and see "photos of UFO's"....please if the government has alien technology and UFO's I highly doubt they are storing photos of them in encrypted family photo albums on their networks, this is just ludicrous.

2. This guy is an expert hacker that perpetrated what the u.s. gov't calls the greatest hack of 'all time' on both the u.s. gov't AND nasa and yet you're telling me what eventually led to his demise was that he "miscalculated the timezones", i.e. he 'accidentally' logged into a gov't computer during a 'day shift' and was remotely controlling the person's windows while the gov't employee was watching from his side and calling security.
This is utterly bogus for the following reasons: this guy supposedly was in there for a while, not sure if it was weeks or months or more and must have had the schedule pinned down. How hard is it to calculate that if you're in England logging in at 8:00pm at night then most likely it's the day shift in the U.S. and you're going to get caught. This is utterly and outrageously bogus, I don't believe a single word of this bogus story.

3. Lastly, just as a previous poster has said it is absolutely wantonly and outrageously PREPOSTEROUS to assume that the most sensitive data in the history of the existence of MANKIND itself would be connected to a local network that's susceptible to outside attacks. It's like some high ranking majestic level illuminati/reptiloid elite general at a air force base just says "yea guys this here computer has databanks pertaining to extra terrestrial existence on earth and also has my personal photo album of UFO screenshots, so make sure you guys connect this sucker to the local ethernet high speed provider so I can surf google and youtube from this desktop"....absolutely BOGUS. Any computer or servers housing something THAT bloody sensitive would be on closed circuit networks with absolutely no connection to the outside and thus impenetrable unless you physically infiltrate the facility and physically hack INTO the system by splicing their fiber optics and connecting some docking port to it to download all the info ala James Bond.
Think about it, you actually think a top secret government computer with "photos of ufos" and acknowledgement of E.T.'s would be connected to the internet, for what so the reptiles at the base can check their Facebook messages and gmail?

Please man this whole thing is a giant flaming preposterous JOKE!

There's an interview with this McKinnon guy on youtube, pretty interesting.

www.youtube.com...

And if someone can tell me how to embed youtube videos on ATS I'd really appreciate it. I'm not a computer dummy but I haven't been able to figure out what the youtube video code is.

reply to post by flybynight



Thanks for the video - Very Interesting... Argh I wish i knew how to hack..



[edit on 24/12/2007 by JDN24]

[edit on 24/12/2007 by JDN24]

reply to post by Delta 38


My personal belief is this guy hacked into the computers, not looking for anything in particular, got caught, and invented the whole ufo part to it to try and get support to stop him doing the time for the crime he did. He personally feels like a fraud to me.