| IT manager will serve five months for hacking |
Print this story |
An Orange, California, IT manager who earlier pled guilty to hacking into his previous employer’s computer network was sentenced Monday to five months in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said this week.
According to a plea agreement dated August 30, 2004, Mark Erfurt broke into the computer systems of Santa Clara, California’s Manufacturing Electronic Sales Corp. (MESC) on January 23 and 24 of 2003. During that time, he deleted data, read e-mail, and downloaded a proprietary database from the network using the PC Anywhere remote control software, the agreement says.
Erfurt also pled guilty to obstructing justice during the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s subsequent investigation by overwriting backup tapes that contained evidence of the break-in, the agreement says.
In addition to the five-month prison term, Erfurt was also sentenced to five months of home detention and three months of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $45,000 in restitution. Erfurt could have been sentenced to a maximum of 5 years imprisonment for the break-in, as well as 20 years for obstruction of justice, the U.S. Attorney says.
Sending a Message
"We hope that cases like this send a message that hacking into the computer network of your former employer is not an HR issue," says Christopher Sonderby, chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit. "It is a federal crime that could subject you to imprisonment."
At the time of the break-in, Erfurt was an employee of an MESC competitor, Centaur, based in Irvine, California. He remains an employee at the company, Centaur Chief Executive Officer Bruce Cahill confirmed this week.
"This was a private individual that happened to use a computer system at our office," Cahill says. "We’re not involved in this."
MESC could not be reached for comment on this story.
|
| Indigo Preview from Microsoft - Mar 18, 2005 0:3 IST |
|
Microsoft plans to release the first preview version of Indigo this week, giving developers a chance to test-drive the new communications subsystem for Windows.
|
| Local search index rom Google - Mar 17, 2005 23:58 IST |
|
Google has created a program to let businesses create or update listings on its Google Local index, the latest enhancement the Mountain View, California, vendor has made to one of its most popular search services.
|
| Phishing and Pharming Law - Mar 8, 2005 17:37 IST |
|
A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last week would allow prison time of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 for people who design fake Web sites for the purposes of stealing money or credit card numbers. The Anti-Phishing Act of 2005, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), would outlaw "phishing," in which scam artists design Web sites to look like real banking or e-commerce sites, then e-mail spam to people saying they need to re-enter their account or credit card numbers at the bogus site.
|
|
|
|
|
