Facebook hacker sentenced to eight months

 

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 20 Feb 2012 at 13:58

A British student that hacked into Facebook has been hit with an eight-month prison sentence after prompting an industrial espionage manhunt.

Glenn Mangham, a 26 year old from Yorkshire, admitted hacking into Facebook, but said he was merely trying to highlight the company's lax security.

The court heard the accused had collected a trove of “invaluable” intellectual property after breaking into the social network's systems using the account of a Facebook staffer who was on holiday.

Mangham's claims of ethical hacking were dismissed by prosecutors at Southwark Crown Court, which heard he had embarked on a methodical attack.

"He acted with determination and undoubted ingenuity and it was sophisticated, it was calculating,” prosecutor Sandip Patel told the court, according to a report in The Guardian.

“This represents the most extensive and grave incident of social media hacking to be brought before the British courts."

This is someone who in previous times would have thrown everything aside to seek the source of the Nile

Facebook discovered the breach last May and, concerned about what data might have been downloaded to Mangham's hard drive, contacted the FBI, which eventually led to the raid on Mangham's home in June 2011.

The defence had portrayed Mangham as a digital pioneer, trying to discover previously unknown vulnerabilities.

"He saw this as a challenge - this is someone who in previous times would have thrown everything aside to seek the source of the Nile," said lawyer Tony Ventham, adding that Mangham showed signs of Asperger's syndrome.

The judge agreed Mangham had no intention of making money from the hack or abusing the information, but said the matter was still serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence.

"I acknowledge also that you never intended to pass any information you got through these criminal offences to anyone else and you never did so, and I acknowledge that you never intended to make any financial gain for yourself from these offences,” Judge McCreath said, according to The Guardian.

"But this was not just a bit of harmless experimentation. You accessed the very heart of the system of an international business of massive size, so this was not just fiddling about in the business records of some tiny business of no great importance."