Jonathan James

Jonathan James, (a.k.a. "c0mrade"), a South Florida native was best known for his leading role in a conspiracy to obtain secrets on the U.S. government. Although the case was sealed for national security purposes, he did speak to the media about the charges as part of his plea agreement. Born December 12, 1983, James was 15 years old at the time of the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. James is notable for being the first juvenile offender prosecuted under federal law for computer hacking.

NASA

It was revealed that he had obtained access to the International Space Station source code which controlled critical life sustaining elements such as oxygen filtering. He had not been able to get the source code to compile because it was missing critical external libraries which it relied on.

U.S. Department of Defense

It was also revealed around the time he spoke with the media that he had intercepted communications between U.S. Department of Defense officials at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency who were discussing nuclear strategy. Additionally, according to the indictment, he had also obtained usernames and passwords of Defense Department officials by installing a piece of software called a sniffer, which also intercepted electronic messages which later earned him a charge for setting up an illegal wiretap.

Tactics

Although the specific details aren't clear, it has been said that he used the popular nmap port scan to scan hosts for, among other things, then-largely unknown flaws in several of Sun Microsystem's remote procedure call services in order to gain unauthorized access to the computer systems. Once on a system, he would search for information on it, and try to branch out - he would usually set up a sniffer, to get further access to their networks. This led to his being charged with setting up an illegal wiretap - a sniffer he put on ns3.dtra.mil picked up over 3300 emails in addition to the passwords it was designed for.

Early morning raid

James' house was raided around six o'clock on the morning of January 26, 2000 by armed agents from the Department of Defense, NASA, and local police. James was formally indicted 6 months later where he entered a plea agreement with the U.S. attorney. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison and probation until the age of eighteen, however, the judge in the case later reversed her decision and allowed for James to serve 6 months of house arrest and probation until the age of twenty one. Later it was uncovered that James had violated probation and was then subsequently taken into custody by the United States Marshals Service and flown to an Alabama federal correctional facility where he served out 6 months.

Errata

James had been wrongly accused of defacing the BellSouth.com website in 1999 due to the fact that his name was printed on the website by the vandal. However, according to statements made he had access to a computer on the BellSouth network. It should be noted that it was once said that he installed a trojan login prompt to steal user names and passwords, however upon verification this was incorrect.