Jeremy Hammond: FBI directed my attacks on foreign government sites (Guardian)

[Xox]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/15/jeremy-hammond-fbi-directed-
attacks-foreign-government
( http://tinyurl.com/kaoupov )

Jeremy Hammond: FBI directed my attacks on foreign government sites

Anonymous hacktivist told court FBI informant and fellow hacker Sabu
supplied him with list of countries vulnerable to cyber-attack

The Anonymous hacktivist sentenced on Friday to 10 years in federal
prison for his role in releasing thousands of emails from the private
intelligence firm Stratfor has told a Manhattan court that he was
directed by an FBI informant to break into the official websites of
several governments around the world.

Jeremy Hammond, 28, told a federal court for the southern district of New
York that a fellow hacker who went under the internet pseudonym “Sabu”
had supplied him with lists of websites that were vulnerable to attack,
including those of many foreign countries. The defendant mentioned
specifically Brazil, Iran and Turkey before being stopped by judge
Loretta Preska, who had ruled previously that the names of all the
countries involved should be redacted to retain their secrecy.

Within a couple of hours of the hearing, the three countries had been
identified publicly by Forbes, the Huffington Post and Twitter feeds
serving more than a million followers. “I broke into numerous sites and
handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu – and by extension
his FBI handlers – to control these targets,” Hammond told the court.

The 28-year-old hacker has floated the theory in the past that he was
used as part of an effective private army by the FBI to target vulnerable
foreign government websites, using the informant Sabu – real name Hector
Xavier Monsegur – as a go-between. Sabu, who was a leading figure in the
Anonymous-affiliated hacking group LulzSec, was turned by the FBI into
one of its primary informants on the hacker world after he was arrested
in 2011, about six months before the Stratfor website was breached.

Referring to the hacking of foreign government websites, Hammond said
that in one instance, he and Sabu provided details on how to crack into
the websites of one particular unidentified country to other hackers who
then went on to deface and destroy those websites. “I don’t know how
other information I provided to [Sabu] may have been used, but I think
the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be
investigated,” he told the court

He added: “The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment,
hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took
responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the
government be made to answer for its crimes?”

Hammond’s 10-year federal prison service makes it one of the longest
punishments dished out for criminal hacking offences in US history. It
joins a lengthening line of long jail terms imposed on hackers and
whistleblowers as part of the US authorities' attempt to contain data
security of government agencies and corporations in the digital age.

Preska also imposed a three-year period of probationary supervision once
Hammond is released from jail that included extraordinary measures
designed to prevent him ever hacking again. The terms of the supervision
state that when he is out of prison he must: have no contact with
“electronic civil disobedience websites or organisations”; have all his
internet activity monitored; subject himself to searches of his body,
house, car or any other possessions at any time without warrant; and
never do anything to hide his identity on the internet.

Hammond’s 10-year sentence was the maximum available to the judge after
he pleaded guilty to one count of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
relating to his December 2011 breach of the website of the Austin, Texas-
based private intelligence company Strategic Forecasting, Inc. Delivering
the sentence, Preska dismissed the defendant’s explanation of his
motivation as one of concern for social justice, saying that he had in
fact intended to create “maximum mayhem”. “There is nothing high-minded
and public-spirited about causing mayhem,” the judge said.

She quoted from comments made by Hammond under various internet handles
at the time of the Stratfor hack in which he had talked about his goal of
“destroying the heart, hoping for bankruptcy, collapse”. She criticised
what she called his “unrepentant recidivism – he has an almost unbroken
record of offences that demonstrate an almost total disrespect for the
law.”

Before the sentence came down, Hammond read out an outspoken statement to
court in which he said he had been motivated to join the hacker group
Anonymous because of a desire to “continue the work of exposing and
confronting corruption”. He said he had been “particularly moved by the
heroic actions of Chelsea Manning, who had exposed the atrocities
committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. She took an enormous
personal risk to leak this information – believing that the public had a
right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to
end these abuses.”

In his own case, he said that as a result of the Stratfor hack, “some of
the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now
known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists
around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of
informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal
surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.”

Margaret Kunstler, Hammond’s lead defence lawyer, told the Guardian after
the sentencing that the maximum punishment was “not a great surprise”.
She said that Preska had turned Hammond’s own comments in web chats
against him, “but I think she doesn’t understand the language that’s used
in chat rooms and the internet – for her to have used such language
against him and not understand what his comments meant seemed piggy to
say the least.”

[Xox]

On Sat, 16 Nov 2013 14:18:22 +0000, Xox wrote:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/hacker-for-anonymous-sentenced-
to-10-years-in-prison/
( http://tinyurl.com/n3bo3lf )

November 15, 2013, 4:46 pm
Hacker Receives 10-Year Sentence for ‘Causing Mayhem’
By MARK MAZZETTI

A federal judge in New York on Friday delivered a 10-year prison sentence
to Jeremy Hammond , a prominent member of the hacking group Anonymous who
pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking into the computer servers of
a string of corporations, government agencies and law enforcement
advocacy groups.

Before being sentenced inside a packed courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Mr.
Hammond, 28, described his hacking activities as “acts of civil
disobedience” against both an expanding surveillance state and the
companies that do the government’s bidding. His lawyers said their client
was part of a proud tradition of protest in the United States, dating
back to the American Revolution.

But Federal District Judge Loretta A. Preska was unmoved, telling Mr.
Hammond “there’s nothing high-minded or public-spirited about causing
mayhem.”

“These are not the actions of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, John
Adams or even Daniel Ellsberg,” she said, referring to the former analyst
who leaked the Pentagon Papers to several news organizations. Mr.
Ellsberg
had written a letter to the court praising Mr. Hammond’s hacking campaign.

Judge Preska’s sentence was the exact length of time requested by federal
prosecutors in the case, and she said her decision was influenced in part
by his “unrepentant recidivism.” He was convicted and jailed for similar
activities in 2006.

Mr. Hammond was a prominent member both of Anonymous and LulzSec, a
splinter group that claimed credit for hacks on a range of targets,
including the website of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Hammond’s
most highly publicized hack came in late 2011, when he orchestrated the
computer sabotage of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm based in
Austin, Tex.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Hammond stole at least 200 gigabytes of
information from Stratfor’s computer servers, including the emails and
account information of approximately 860,000 of the company’s clients.
Documents filed by government said that associates of Mr. Hammond used
tens of thousands of credit card numbers taken from Stratfor’s servers to
make at least $700,000 worth of donations to nonprofit groups.

Mr. Hammond and several other hackers were arrested based on information
from another prominent member of Anonymous, Hector Xavier Monsegur, whom
the FBI had turned into a government informant.

It was Mr. Monsegur, known within Anonymous by his pseudonym, Sabu, who
encouraged Mr. Hammond to break into Stratfor’s servers. On Friday, Mr.
Hammond said that Mr. Monsegur had also pushed him to expand his hacking
targets to include numerous foreign government websites, including those
of Iran, Turkey and Brazil.

On Friday, Mr. Hammond described Stratfor as a “deserving target,” an
organization engaged in “intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance
activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.” Both he and
his lawyers framed his actions as noble efforts to bring greater
transparency to a rapidly growing and largely unaccountable private
intelligence industry.

Dressed in two T-shirts and baggy pants, Mr. Hammond at one point stood
at a podium at the front of the courtroom, speaking directly to Judge
Preska. He said he had been inspired by Chelsea Manning, formerly known
as Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier who gave hundreds of thousands of
American diplomatic cables and military records to WikiLeaks.

“If Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of prison fighting
for the truth, could I in good conscience do any less, if I was able?” he
said.

But at the end of the hearing, Judge Preska said that Mr. Hammond had
caused “widespread harm” beyond his intended targets. Among other things,
she said, his 2011 attack on the computer system of the Arizona
Department of Public Safety had disrupted the state’s sex offender
website and Arizona’s Amber Alert System, which broadcasts messages about
abducted children.

There were audible gasps when the judge handed down the 10-year sentence,
and some of those who came to support Mr. Hammond began sobbing.

Mr. Hammond showed little emotion when the sentence was delivered, but as
he was escorted out of the courtroom he turned around and delivered a
message to his supporters.

“Long Live Anonymous!” he said, one fist pumped in the air.

“Hurrah for anarchy!”