Hacking Crimes - Assessing Penalties
Your group is a committee of prosecutors, computer scientists, and members of the hacking community who oppose malicious and destructive hacking. You have been asked to evaluate specific hacking cases and recommend penalties and any other appropriate actions (e.g., probation, denial of use of computers, etc.) Tell what other information, besides what is given below, you consider relevant and how your decision would depend on it. Most of these are all real cases. The unauthorized access in each case is illegal, and you may assume that the right person was caught. The law allows long jail sentences for some of these offenses. However, you do not have to use any existing law to determine the penalty. Decide what you think is reasonable and explain your reasons.
Group 1: A 17-year old was charged with hacking the Los Angeles Police Department's anti-drug Web page and putting pro-drug slogans and images on the site. He admitted to hacking Web sites of the U.S. Commerce Dept. and an Internet security firm.
Group 2: The Melissa virus (see Sec. 7.2.1). The virus was spread in e-mail attachments. It sent large volumes of e-mail, clogging systems. Several companies shut down their e-mail systems for a few days to remove the virus. The man responsible was 30 years old.
Group 3: A 28-year-old college student was charged with breaking into military and government computers, gaining control of a NASA system, and interrupting business at an Internet service provider. He did not disrupt national defense or meddle with satellite controls.
Group 4: A 15-year-old boy, MafiaBoy, hacked into some of the largest sites in the world, including eBay, Amazon and Yahoo between February 6 and Valentine's Day in 2000. He gained access to 75 computers in 52 networks, and ordered a Denial of Service attack on them. The DOS attacks shut down these web sites for several hours.
Group 5: A 16-year-old boy broke into 12 Defense Department computers. He did not destroy any files. It appeared he looked around at various directories, then exited.
Group 6: A 16-year-old boy hacked into computers that controlled communications for a local airport, rendering the system unusable for six hours. The airport used a backup radio system; flights were delayed but there were no mishaps.
Group 7: A 27-year-old man hacked into computers that controlled communications for a local airport, rendering the system unusable for six hours. The airport used a backup radio system; flights were delayed but there were no mishaps.
Group 8: A twenty-three-year-old Cornell University graduate unleashed the first Internet worm on to the Internet. He released 99 lines of code to the internet as an experiment, but realized that his program infected machines as it went along. Computers crashed across the US and elsewhere.