A Kentucky man was convicted of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for hacking into specific accounts on the website sodahead.com and replacing purported racist and homophobic content with less offensive content. Michael Pullen was able to hack into the accounts by exploiting a software vulnerability. The man was sentenced to 5 months in prison and 2 months probation, as well as having to pay $21,000.
Read more here: Man Sentenced to 5 Months Under CFAA for Hacking SodaHead.com Accounts.
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Published by Shawn E. Tuma
Shawn Tuma is an attorney who is internationally recognized in cybersecurity, computer fraud and data privacy law, areas in which he has practiced for nearly two decades. He is a Partner at Spencer Fane, LLP where he regularly serves as outside cybersecurity and privacy counsel to a wide range of companies from small to midsized businesses to Fortune 100 enterprises. You can reach Shawn by telephone at 972.324.0317 or email him at stuma@spencerfane.com.
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Hmm. Not sure how I feel about this – hacking anything presents a security issue, I agree, but that seems like a pretty heavy fine for someone who didn’t harm anything while he was messing with the system. It makes me wonder what his motives were, and why he thought breaking into a secure website was a good idea…even if he was trying to do something according to his morals. I’ll have to go read more on this!
Grace Watson | http://www.horizontel.com/security_monitoring
Thank you for your comment Grace! Five months does seem pretty heavy but the problem is, to many hackers, what they are doing is not causing harm according to their own subjective beliefs and, in many cases, they believe they are doing a greater good. This is the case with the hacktivism activities where, in the mind of the hacktivist, they are doing a greater good by disrupting the evil of corporate America, US government, local law enforcement, etc., but though their subjective values may be being satisfied, the values of those on the other side of the coin are not. Therein lies the danger of trying to evaluate these cases based on the subjective motives or morals of the hackers — not to say we shouldn’t take that into consideration, just that it is a very difficult line to draw and deciding whose values to measure against makes it even more difficult!