IT securityHacker of U.S. defense computers about to be extradited to U.S.

After the computer network at the Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey was breached and crashed just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, investigators thought it might be part of a larger al-Queda plot against the United States. Investigators worked around the clock to figure out who had been in and out of the system that runs the weapons station for about five months, stealing passwords, installing remote access software, deleting data, and ultimately shutting down the network of 300 computers for an entire week. That weeklong shutdown meant that for that period of time — in the aftermath of attacks on the United States — the station could not do its job of replenishing munitions and supplies to the Atlantic fleet. Computerworld’s Sharon Gaudin writes that government officials asked themselves whether the break-in organized by a nation-state? A terrorist group? After throwing critical resources at the probe when the government was already investigating not only the 9/11 attacks but the anthrax killings, investigators did not track the breach to al-Qaeda. They tracked it to an unemployed system administrator in the United Kingdom — Gary McKinnon, who was subsequently charged with hacking into 92 computer systems at the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, and NASA.

It has been seven years since the break-ins and about six since the charges were leveled against McKinnon, 42, of London. Since then, he has been fighting extradition to the United States, but just last week the highest British court dismissed his latest appeal against the extradition. McKinnon, who has said he broke into U.S. military computers hoping to uncover evidence of UFOs, plans to appeal the decision to the European Court of Human Rights. According to his attorney, Karen Todner, it is the last appeal he can file.

Scott Christie , who at the time was an assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey, was the first prosecutor brought into the case. Christie, who now leads the information technology group at law firm McCarter & English LLP, said McKinnon simply is “grasping at straws” with his latest appeal. “I think it reinforces the fact that arguments against extradition had no merit and that he is continuing to avoid the inevitable,” said Christie, who worked with investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on the case. “It is a very significant intrusion case, because it reinforces the fact that a lone individual who is motivated can cause significant damage to the military preparedness of this country. It showed unfortunately that security on computers at military installations was not as robust as it should have been…. If that’s in fact true, it gives one concern as to what organized groups with sophisticated hacking tools who may be sponsored by organized crime or foreign governments could achieve in this area.”

Christie said that since the naval station’s system was shut down on the heels of 9/11, it reinforced people’s worst fears. And because of the seriousness of the attack and the possibility that it could have been linked to a terrorist organization, the government threw a lot of resources at the problem — resources that could have been used in the 9/11 investigation. “The concern was there,” said Howard Schmidt, who began working at the White house as the vice chairman of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board in 2002, in the midst of the McKinnon investigation. “When these things take place, you never know till the very end what their motivation is…. You don’t know if it’s a nation-state or a terrorist group. You have to work it as if this was the most important case you ever worked. There is a finite amount of resources. This pulled big resources that could have been used for other things.”