[ISN] Pleasant Hill man, 21, takes credit as hacker

[InfoSec News]

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/crime_courts/11118974.htm

By Nathaniel Hoffman
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
March 12, 2005

A self-taught computer hacker from Pleasant Hill took credit Friday 
for several high-level cyber break-ins.

Robert Lyttle, 21, pleaded guilty in federal court in Oakland to five 
counts of hacking and defacing government computers.

Lyttle admitted in a plea agreement with the government to hacking 
into NASA, Department of Defense and Department of Energy computers in 
April 2002, costing the government agencies more than $70,000 to shore 
up their security systems.

Within days of the attacks, according to a memo provided by Lyttle's 
attorney, government computer operators began reinforcing their 
networks.

"As a result of my actions, numerous Department of Defense and NASA 
employees spent time applying proper security measures to the DLIS, 
OHA, and NASA ARC computer systems and otherwise addressing the 
intrusions," Lyttle admitted in his plea agreement.

That was the intention of the self-styled "hacktivist" all along.

Lyttle was one member of the Deceptive Duo, a pair of hackers who 
claimed in a TechTV interview in 2002 to have broken into numerous 
government, airline and banking networks as part of an effort to stave 
off cyberterrorist attacks against the United States.

Lyttle and his partner, Benjamin Stark, called their hacks Operation 
Inform and Operation Foreign Threat.

They broke into the government computers, captured confidential 
information, including information on members of NASA's Astrobiology 
Institute and then posted that information on publicly accessible 
computers within the agencies.

Stark pleaded guilty late last year to hacking and fraud charges and 
has been ordered to repay some of the cost incurred by the federal 
agencies.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney prosecuted Lyttle in 2000, 
when he was still a juvenile, for tampering with computer systems, 
according to Lyttle's plea agreement. He was still on court probation 
when the Dynamic Duo launched its attacks.

The U.S. Attorney's Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit in 
San Jose prosecuted Lyttle in the latest case. Christopher Sonderby, 
chief of the hacking unit, said most of the computer intrusion crimes 
the unit deals with are former employees hacking into company 
networks, not government hacks.

"It's obviously serious misconduct that he pled guilty to," Sonderby 
said.

Lyttle will be sentenced in June and could face more than 26 years in 
prison and more than $1 million in fines.