Jonathan James

Jonathan James

Jonathan Joseph James (born December 12, 1983 in Miami ; † May 18, 2008 ibid) was an American black hat hacker . He became well known under the nickname c0mrade when he broke into servers of the United States Department of Defense when he was only 15 years old .

Life

Hacker career

“I just looked around, played around. What I enjoyed was the challenge of seeing what I can achieve. "

- Jonathan James in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service

At the age of six, James started playing games on his home PC ; in middle school he was able to switch the operating system on his own computer from Microsoft Windows to Linux .

Between August 23 and October 27, 1999, James - who was then living in Pinecrest , Florida - broke into various computer systems, including those of the BellSouth holding company and the Miami-Dade County School Board . A hack into the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) system brought him into the focus of federal authorities: He had installed a backdoor on a server in Dulles , Virginia , which he used to place a sniffer . This enabled him to intercept over 3,300 incoming and outgoing confidential messages from DTRA employees as well as numerous user names and passwords of other employees - at least ten of them on official military computers.

In January 2000, he also succeeded in breaking into the network of the Marshall Space Flight Center and, associated with it, downloading the protected environment control software worth 1.7 million US dollars , which controls the temperature and humidity on board the International Space Station . After the hack was discovered, NASA was forced to shut down its computers for three weeks. The security updates cost the aerospace agency $ 41,000. James later stated that he only downloaded the software for advanced training in the imperative C programming language and stated, "The code itself was crappy ... certainly not worth $ 1.7 million as they claimed." He: “The government hasn't put too many security measures in place on most of their computers. They lack serious computer security. I know Unix and C like the back of my hand because I've read all these books and been at the computer for so long. But the hard part isn't getting in. It is difficult to understand what it is that you are doing. "

Arrest and trial

On the morning of January 26, 2000, agents from the Department of Defense and NASA, as well as local police officers, went through a coordinated operation to raid James' childhood home and seize evidence. Six months later he was officially charged before negotiating an understanding with prosecutor Guy Lewis on September 21 : he pleaded guilty to two counts of juvenile delinquency and received only a mild sentence for it. James was sentenced to six months of house arrest with a probation period extending up to his 18th birthday . He was also banned from using computers for recreational purposes and instructed to write apology letters to NASA and the Department of Defense. He became the first teenager in the United States to be sentenced to imprisonment for computer crime . Legal experts noted that due to the scope of his offenses, he could have faced at least ten years' imprisonment if convicted under adult criminal law. Both the prosecuting prosecutor Guy Lewis and the then United States Attorney General Janet Reno issued statements after the trial, in which they stressed that this case was evidence that the Justice Department was willing to punish juvenile computer criminals relentlessly and severely.

Jonathan James later broke his parole when he was tested positive for drug use. He was then taken into custody by the United States Marshals Service and flown to a correctional facility in Alabama . He was imprisoned there for six months.

death

On January 17, 2007, the retail group TJX Companies announced that it had been the victim of a large-scale intrusion. The hackers had infiltrated a system that managed the data and numbers of credit and debit cards , checks, and exchange transactions. A total of around 45.7 million customers were affected. In addition to the numbers, personal information such as the social security number of the respective customer and 451,000 driver's license details were also downloaded. The hack was made possible thanks to an unsecured wireless local area network in one of the shops. In the course of the following months, a hacking ring of at least 13 people around the leader Albert Gonzalez was smashed. The group is also said to be responsible for further intrusions at various retail and restaurant chains as well as at Barnes & Noble .

James - who, according to his father Robert, was suffering from depression at the time - was friends with some of the hackers involved, including Christopher Scott, and so he was again targeted by investigators. Although he denied all allegations, a search of his home and the homes of his brother and girlfriend by the United States Secret Service took place in early May 2008 . A suicide note and a legally registered firearm were found on him; both were left on site. Less than two weeks after the house search, Jonathan James shot himself in his shower on May 18, 2008. He left a new, five-page suicide note in which he again emphatically affirmed his innocence in the TJX case. Still, he was sure, the federal authorities would make him a scapegoat . He also wrote:

“I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today and this letter will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I've lost control of this situation and this is my only way to regain control. "

However, the case files archived in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts describe an unindicted accomplice who worked directly with Scott, although only the initials JJ are known. Robert James believes these point to his son Joseph. The allegations state that Scott and JJ parked in front of an OfficeMax (office supply retail) store in Miami in 2004 and tapped their WiFi . They would have intercepted an undisclosed number of credit and debit card magnetic strips - including the bank identification numbers and encrypted personal identification numbers . They would have both forwarded them directly to Gonzales, who succeeded in decrypting the PIN code with another hacker.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Interview with Jonathan James anonymized because of his minority at the time by the Public Broadcasting Service in 2001 , on pbs.org (Public Broadcasting Service). Retrieved January 23, 2013
2. ↑ Kevin Poulsen : Former Teen Hacker's Suicide Linked to TJX Probe , September 7, 2009 on wired.com . Retrieved January 26, 2013