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“The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

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Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#41

Post by ceejayoz »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are supposed to prosecute, convict and sentence on the facts of the case, not the likeability of the defendant

You must be very new on this Earth if you think it actually doesn't matter who the defendant is and how he behaves. Motives matter, so does evaluation of the probability that the crime will be repeated in the future. weev did everything to show he intended to harm AT&T and his only regret is that he didn't harm them more. That's not exactly a way to get lenient sentence.

"We are supposed to" isn't the same as "we don't".

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#42

Post by DannyBee »

rdl wrote: post #25
DannyBee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. First, it's going to be appealed to an appeals court :) 2. Generally, if you are smart, you don't bring wildly unsympathetic defendants to SCOTUS at all (IE you don't go to war over them). There are cases it doesn't matter, but one of the reason we ended up with so many 4th amendment exceptions is, IMHO, because of the habit of bringing really unsympathetic people/facts to SCOTUS back when we had justices like O'C…

Obviously it goes through the process, but I think the feds will push to keep CFAA as well, so it's going to go all the way. 41 months is long enough for that; if he'd gotten a 3-6 month sentence the process wouldn't have had time, so maybe weev's "troll the courts" strategy had some merit. While weev himself is highly unsympathetic, his actual "crime" in this case is quite sympathetic -- it was technically trivial a…

FWIW: I don't think SCOTUS will bother taking the case if he loses his first appeal.

IAAL :)

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#44

Post by objclxt »

zalzane wrote: post #6

Every time I see a ruling like this, I can't help but think that future historians will view this time period in the same way that present day historians view the crusades/religious persecution/witchhunts of the past millennium. It's amazing how much point of view can change perspective.

I don't think this particular case is black and white. Judging by my Twitter feed, a number of security researchers and white hats feel the same way I do: the law as it stands is not good, but what Weev did was also really, really unhelpful and borderline stupid.

Rather than disclosing to AT&T, he leaked it directly to Gawker, and discussed how to potentially abuse the data he had (by shorting the stock, selling the e-mail addresses he had collected to spammers, etc).

The sentence is absolutely disproportionate. But there are so many ways in which the guy could have handled himself better. I think a lot of people in the infosec industry are simultaneously angry at the sentence but not massively empathetic with the defendant.

What I'm trying to say is that as a test case or campaign to change the law it's far from ideal.

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#45

Post by rdl »

smsm42 wrote: post #39
rdl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing is that weev genuinely doesn't care if he gets 41 months vs. 36 months. This is a long troll by him; by being a troll, he brings more attention to the case, maximizing lulz, and bringing bigger guns to bear in his defense. If he'd gotten 3-6 month suspended sentence, even if you thought that was a bit much for essentially incrementing numbers, you'd probably not care much. If he were facing life in…

If he doesn't care why should I? I know many security researchers who aren't trolls and they are doing fine. When it happens to somebody who isn't purposefully self-destructive, then it may be a better case for concern.

aaronsw? Same CFAA.

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#46

Post by smsm42 »

drhayes9 wrote: post #27
numbsafari wrote: post #19

If you are driving down the street, and notice that I put the deadbolt onto my house backwards (so that it locked from the outside), is the appropriate thing to do to let yourself in and walk around looking at all my stuff and then call the local news station and invite them in along with you, or is it to call the police or leave me a note letting me know I've got a problem?

I think a more useful analogy is this: there's a large municipal building in town that stores a lot of its citizen's vital records, and they've been slipshod on security. You gather evidence about just how slipshod they've been and turn it over to a journalist. Conflating what weev did to someone walking around inside your house brings in too many emotional triggers about private property. He wasn't in someone's hous…

You don't "gather the evidence", you rather take the records for 100,000 citizens, put them on a truck and dump them in the frontyard for a local newspaper, after considering how much you could sell it for and deciding it's probably more fun to just cause public embarrassment. If you wanted just to show the system is insecure, 2 records would be enough. Stealing 100K of them is not something you do if your goal is just "gathering the evidence".

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#47

Post by tomp »

smsm42 wrote: post #35
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are supposed to prosecute, convict and sentence on the facts of the case, not the likeability of the defendant

You must be very new on this Earth if you think it actually doesn't matter who the defendant is and how he behaves. Motives matter, so does evaluation of the probability that the crime will be repeated in the future. weev did everything to show he intended to harm AT&T and his only regret is that he didn't harm them more. That's not exactly a way to get lenient sentence.

He didn't intend to harm AT&T; they discussed selling the URLs or shorting the stock, that would amount to harm, but they didn't do it in the end, so his intent is pretty obvious.

If I was dealing with such dickheads as the AT&T and the US prosecutors, my "last" wish would be to harm them more, too.

Edit: typo, changed "with" into "wish" in the last paragraph.

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#48

Post by rdl »

DannyBee wrote: post #42
rdl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it goes through the process, but I think the feds will push to keep CFAA as well, so it's going to go all the way. 41 months is long enough for that; if he'd gotten a 3-6 month sentence the process wouldn't have had time, so maybe weev's "troll the courts" strategy had some merit. While weev himself is highly unsympathetic, his actual "crime" in this case is quite sympathetic -- it was technically trivial a…

FWIW: I don't think SCOTUS will bother taking the case if he loses his first appeal. IAAL :)

So the most likely route for a case like this to SCOTUS would be split circuit? I doubt this is the last CFAA case.

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#49

Post by flyinRyan »

objclxt wrote: post #44
zalzane wrote: post #6

Every time I see a ruling like this, I can't help but think that future historians will view this time period in the same way that present day historians view the crusades/religious persecution/witchhunts of the past millennium. It's amazing how much point of view can change perspective.

I don't think this particular case is black and white. Judging by my Twitter feed, a number of security researchers and white hats feel the same way I do: the law as it stands is not good, but what Weev did was also really, really unhelpful and borderline stupid. Rather than disclosing to AT&T, he leaked it directly to Gawker, and discussed how to potentially abuse the data he had (by shorting the stock, selling the…

Sounds like a bunch of victim blaming to me. So the guy is an idiot, is that enough to go to prison now?

Re: “The AT&T Hacker” Sentenced To 41 Months In Prison

#50

Post by flyinRyan »

numbsafari wrote: post #16
afreak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steubenville rapists will probably get less time.

Not to defend them, because what they did was reprehensible, but they were charged as juveniles. This guy is an adult. If the two guys from Steubenville had been over 18, the sentences would have been considerably higher.

What a horribly screwed up system that seeks maximum penalty for a guy who wanted the public to be able to see the research they actually pay for but charge rapists as juveniles as if rape is less evil if you're less than 18 when you commit it.
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