Romanian Hacker Indicted for Hacking DOE

An idiot hacker breached the swiss-cheese like security of Sandia National Labs and NASA computers to install IRC bots on the hosts. He supposedly did it to prove that he could hack into the “securest” computers. Well, he picked some networks with rather poor security and he got busted. It may take two years to extradite him to the United States, but we will wait. He faces over 50 years of jail time.

From Pravda here:

A Romanian man has been indicted on charges of hacking into more than 150 U.S. government computers, causing disruptions that cost NASA, the Energy Department and the Navy nearly $1.5 million.

The federal indictment charged Victor Faur, 26, of Arad, Romania with nine counts of computer intrusion and one count of conspiracy. He faces up to 54 years in prison if convicted of all counts.

The U.S. government alleged Faur was the leader of a hacking group called “WhiteHat Team,” whose main goal was to break into U.S. government computers because they are some of the securest machines in the world.

After hacking into and taking control of the computers, Faur programmed the machines to operate as chat rooms so he could communicate with other WhiteHat members. And Faur searched for passwords that WhiteHat members could use to gain unauthorized access to other computers.

The compromised computers were used to collect, store and analyze scientific data including data from spacecraft in orbit and deep space and to evaluate new technologies. The machines were located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C, reports AP.

After the hacking, scientists and engineers had to manually communicate with spacecraft and the computer systems had to be rebuilt.

First, its totally cool that Pravda, the old Soviet news system has more accurate information on this incident than CNET. CNET says here that the extradition can take over two years, and also adds that the idiot hacker was busted because he was flashing bragging messages on the compromised systems saying that he had L337 skillz and stuff.

And this is yet another story of the horrible cyber security for our national nuclear laboratories.