Adrian Lamo, the 22 year-old hacker who broke into the New York Times intranet as well as other companies' computer systems over the years, turned himself into authorities and has been released on $200,000 bond. By breaking into the Times site via a backdoor, Lamo had access to personal information, such as employee Social Security numbers and phone numbers of various contributors, like Warren Beatty (Op-Ed, folks), as well as incurring $300,000 in costs, and then the Times called the FBI on Lamo. Lamo has tried to offer his services to companies his broken into, trying to show them the flaws in their system. In the Times article about Lamo, U.S. Attorney James Comey offers this analogy: "It's like someone kicking in your front door while you're on vacation and running up a $300,000 bill on your phone, and then telling you when you arrive home that he had performed a useful service by demonstrating that your deadbolt wasn't secure enough."
Published Sep 10, 2003
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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