MIAMI - A teen-ager was sentenced to six months in jail Thursday after pleading guilty to federal charges of hacking into NASA computers which support the international space station.
The teen, now 16, also admitted he had illegally entered a Pentagon computer system, intercepted 3,300 e-mail transmissions and stolen passwords.
The Justice Department said the young man, whose name was withheld because of his age, was the first juvenile hacker to be incarcerated for computer crimes. He was known on the Internet as ''cOmrade'' and will serve his sentence in a Florida detention center. He was 15 when the crimes occurred.
''Breaking into someone else's property, whether it's a robbery or a computer intrusion, is a serious crime,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said.
Chris Rouland, who monitors computer attacks for Internet Security Systems Inc. in Atlanta, said the case was unusual in that the youngster was caught, not that he managed to break into the computers.
Rouland said the case reflects growing technical sophistication among hackers: ''This is a great bellwether as to the state of security where juveniles can traipse across computer systems with little or no fear.''
In a plea bargain, the young hacker admitted to entering 13 computers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for two days in June 1999 and downloading $1.7 million in NASA proprietary software that supports the space station's environmental systems.
NASA said it cost $41,000 to check and repair the system during the three-week shutdown after the illegal entry was discovered.
In August and October 1999, ''c0mrade'' entered the computer network run by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which monitors the threat from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons.
Had the hacker been an adult, he could have been charged with wiretapping and computer abuse crimes. As part of his sentence, he must write letters apologizing to the secretary of defense and the administrator of NASA.
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On the Net:
Internet Security Systems: http://www.iss.net
ICSA.net, an online security firm: http://www.icsa.net
