Man convicted in massive database theft (moved from ATSNN)

Scott Levine, the owner of Snipermail.com has been convicted on 120 counts of unauthorized access to data, two counts of access device fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He has received 640 years in prison and fines of $30.7 million although he will receive a much lighter sentence due to federal guidelines.
He stole approximately 1.6 billion customer records from data-management company Acxiom Corp. He nor anyone at his company have been charged with identity theft.



This is a great news and a step forward to holding those who mine this information accountable for their criminal actions. I hope that it will start to deter others from doing the same.
The one question that I have that the article fails to answer is what, if anything was done by Scott Levine and Snipermail.com with this information?

According to Web Pro News

Web Pro News

"Snipermail employees flipped into plea bargains with federal prosecutors. They testified that Mr. Levine utilized a security flaw in Acxiom's ftp server and accessed personal records for scores of people. After adding that data to Snipermail's existing database, Mr. Levine approached Experian about buying him out."

It was all about increasing the size of his database to make his company look more valuable. From what I have read, most of his database was junk with very little worth. This stolen data gave his original database more credibility.

6 other employee's of Snipermail plead guilty to conspiracy charges associated with this case and provided the evidence against Mr. Levine.

Sounds like he was a rotten businessman and individual that finally got his just dessert.

[edit on 8/15/05 by Qwas]

Thanks Qwas,
Did a search but could not find anything on what they were using the data for.
I agree though, He got what he deserved. I just hope that the fed's do not decrease the sentence too much as we need to set an example of him to try and stop this. We are hearing of new break-ins on a weekly basis.
It is only a matter of time before we all get robbed in one way or another.

What we need is to have the executives of companies like Acxiom prosecuted for having security leaks.

If these companies want to be in the business of storing our personal data, then they are the ones who should go above normal means to secure that data.

It's amazing what all data they store about you and me. And they sell this data about you and me (our buying habits, etc) without us making a cent.

Just wondering where this man can be reached through Post and Email?

Dallas

The problem is that virtually every buissness that you deal with on a daily basis is vulnerable one way or another. Even the state and federal goverment information databases are vulnerable to exploitation.
Exploitations can be anything from OS vulnerabilites (can we say Microsoft ), to hardware, firewall vulnerabilities. You also have the employee weaknesses as well as social engineering weakness.
I am in the network, ISP security field and I have to fight this on a daily basis. Everyday someone somewhere finds a way to get around security. An example take a look at a news article that I posted a week ago about how simple security feature to have bank ATM's verify that the card being used was the one issued by the bank. Guess what, they don't and it is costing a bank over 1 million dollars a month.
www.abovetopsecret.com...'

that isnt the first time that axciom was hacked. Search for "Daniel Bass" or "Dan Bass" in google news. He cracked into their database due to an unprotected password file on the anonymous ftp site.