Hacker of Sarah Palin's E-mail Found Guilty

since the charges are non-violent, and if it's his first offense, he'll probably just do probation or house arrest at worse.  unless of course, if it's a hanging judge that tried him or would sentence him.  then a few years from now, he'll be making a lot of money (legally).

I figured he's gonna write a book entitled "How I Hacked Into Sarah Palin's E-mail".  Hahahaha, and the book will surely sell like pancakes.

that's one way of making real money.  and it'll probably sell like crazy.  it'll probably be a one-hit wonder.   

some people are really keen on ways to make money

yeah, I'd like to have that trait, myself.  so, I can switch career into something that'll make me some real dough.   

you and me both... are in the wrong career. LOL.

Reminds me of a Pinoy hacker who was caught hacking into sensitive US government departments.
Rather than jail him, believe he was hired by Uncle Sam.

A Filipino Linked to 'Love Bug' Talks About His License to Hack

The New York Times October 21, 2000  By MARK LANDLER

MANILA, Oct. 19 — Did Onel de Guzman create the "Love Bug," the most destructive computer virus in history?
"I admit I create viruses, but I don't know if it's one of mine," he said in an interview here. "If the source code was given to me, I could look at it and see. Maybe it is somebody else's, or maybe it was stolen from me."

Mr. de Guzman, 24, understands that in the information age, fame is fleeting. With his notoriety vanishing like so many 1's and O's in cyberspace, this Filipino computer school dropout wants the world to know he is a brilliant hacker — a mastermind who can turn a PC into putty.

But Mr. de Guzman has a problem. His claim to fame is the suspicion that he created a computer bug that hopscotched around the world, causing an estimated $10 billion in damage as it paralyzed computers from the Pentagon to the British Parliament. In many countries, that would have landed him in prison.

The Philippine authorities filed theft and other charges against Mr. de Guzman, but dropped them in August because of insufficient evidence. The case against him was weakened because at the time, the Philippines did not have laws governing computer espionage.

Now it does — which means that if Mr. de Guzman confesses, he could wind up back in legal trouble. So this shy, spiky-haired young man is playing a risky game of wink and nod: giving occasional interviews in which he refuses to own up to the virus, but tries to cash in on the dark glory it confers.

"There are so many computer geniuses out there," said Mr. de Guzman, as his lawyer monitored his remarks. "But I think I have become part of the history of the Philippines. That cannot be erased."

Mr. de Guzman said he no longer hacked. But he still practices "cracking," which he describes as gaining unauthorized access to passwords, serial numbers and other numeric codes. He said he used the technique to download unlicensed software from the Internet, rather than paying for it.

"Cracking does not destroy," he said. "You know what effect you are going to have when you crack."

Mr. de Guzman said he saw nothing wrong with purloining software, just as he has no moral qualms about the damage caused by viruses. He said software makers, notably Microsoft, were to blame for the Love Bug debacle because they licensed products vulnerable to sabotage.

"For programmers like us, it is not wrong," Mr. de Guzman said, speaking in Tagalog. "I'm the user; I buy the product. If I use it in a wrong or improper way, why should I be blamed? I bought the product."

People who follow the computer industry said such amoral attitudes were typical among computer hackers, whether they lived in the teeming neighborhoods of Manila or the low-rise sprawl of Silicon Valley. Indeed, until last spring, Mr. de Guzman was an unremarkable young man struggling to complete the requirements for a computer science degree at a technical college here.

On May 4, an e-mail bearing the title "I LOVE YOU" began popping up in computers in Asia. When opened, it destroyed graphics and other files. The e-mail program, commonly called a virus or worm, spread by sending itself to all the other e-mail addresses in a computer's database. Within hours, it had followed the rising sun to newsrooms, brokerage firms and government offices in Europe and the United States.

"I was at home sleeping," Mr. de Guzman recalled. "When I woke up, I heard it on the news. It didn't mean anything to me."
Manila quickly became the focus of a feverish worldwide hunt for the author of the virus. The police identified Mr. de Guzman as their prime suspect after a local Internet service provider traced an unusually heavy volume of data traffic to a computer in the home of his sister. Mr. de Guzman at first said he might have released the virus by accident. Now, he says, he does not know how it got out.

Mr. de Guzman said he became a suspect because of a thesis proposal he had submitted to his college. The proposal, which laid out a method for stealing passwords to gain free access to the Internet, was rejected. Mr. de Guzman said his professors were close-minded.

"They did not want to believe that I had created a program that exposed a hole in the operating system," he said. "They couldn't accept that I was able to do that. I told them, but they didn't want to accept it."
Did he unleash the virus to vindicate his thesis?

"I don't know if I was the one proving it," he said after a lengthy pause. "I just showed them the thesis."

Mr. de Guzman holed up at his mother's house for weeks after the police named him as a suspect. The few times he ventured out, he said he was pointed at by people. He has since cut his hair and gained weight, he says, from eating home-cooking and passing the time on a couch with a Sony Playstation.

These days, Mr. de Guzman said he could go out with his friends in relative anonymity. But his return to obscurity has dampened his job prospects. At the height of the affair, Mr. de Guzman said he was bombarded by job offers from computer companies. He ignored them to focus on his legal defense.

Now, the companies have stopped calling. Mr. de Guzman wants people to know he is in the job market. He said he would even consider Microsoft, whose Outlook software was one of the main transmission vehicles for the virus.
"If the offer is good, if they're not pressuring me, I think maybe I might accept," Mr. de Guzman said.

First, though, he has to stay out of trouble. Mr. de Guzman's lawyer, Rolando Quimbo, said that the Internet service provider that was used to launch the virus had petitioned to reinstate the case against him. While that seems unlikely, Mr. Quimbo wants his client to avoid incriminating statements.

In June, prodded by the Love Bug case, the Philippine government passed a law that bans hacking. By then, however, it was too late to prosecute Mr. de Guzman under its provisions. The senator who pushed the bill, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., said it was aimed at future hackers.

"Once the law is implemented, and a couple of people are sent to jail, they may think twice," Mr. Magsaysay said. "But young people being who they are, I'm sure some will still try to break into databases."

For his part, Mr. de Guzman insisted the thrill of hacking was gone. If he cannot find work with a software company, he said he would go into business — perhaps opening a cybercafe. Longer term, he said he would like to write a software program impervious to hackers.

"But if somebody hacked it, I would just laugh," Mr. de Guzman said without a trace of a smile. "I would admire them."