Legal Consequences

“[Most hackers,] by the time they reach a certain age, [are either in jail or very rich,]” states a detective of Systems Solutions Group (SSG, 2005). Jonathan James hacked into NASA causing them to shut down their network for 3wks, which cost them $41k. James was later suspected of a wave of network attacks in 2008. Not wanting to be convicted for crimes he did not obligate, he committed suicide the same year. (Goyal, 2012) Albert Gonzales collected almost 200 million credit card and ATM machine numbers. Along with health insurance cards and fake passports, Gonzalez’s crimes totaled in over $4 million stolen. He was later sentenced to 20 years in prison, for hacking into TJX Companies and Cyber Crimes 4 Heartland Payment. (Suddath, 2009) Crimes committed behind computers are not always given a huge jail sentence, if caught. Kevin Minick, the best hacker in world, began hacking computers when he was twelve years old. He moved onto the LA Bus System causing him to never pay for another bus fee. He is known for hacking the FBI, DEC, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and Siemen. When freed from prison after 5 year sentence, he created his own security company, Mitnick Security (Goyal, 2012) In 2011, McAfee, a security software company, informed 72 victims of the world’s largest cyber-attack. The victims included the United Nations, the United States, and the International Olympic Committee (Gilbert, 2011). With every crime, there comes a law. In 2004, the Computer Software Privacy and Control Act was created. This law made it “it unlawful for any person to transmit to a protected computer owned and operated by another person” (HG.org, 2013). The law also prevents any person of collecting and transferring personal information about an owner or operator. The Fraudulent Online Identity Sanction Act, introduced in 2004, is a copyright law if a person knowingly provided materially false contact information in making or maintaining the registration of a domain name used for violation (HG.org, 2013).