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M I A M I, Sept. 22 -- A 15-year-old computer hacker caused a 21-dayshutdown of NASA computers that support the international spacestation, and invaded a Pentagon weapons computer system to intercept3,300 e-mails, steal passwords and cruise around like an employee.
The boy, known on the Internet as “c0mrade,” pleaded guilty today tojuvenile delinquency in a sealed federal case.
Six Months in Jail
He became the first young hacker to be incarcerated for computer crimes, theJustice Department in Washington said in a summary.
He will servesix months in a state detention facility.
“Breaking into someone else’s property, whether it’s a robberyor a computer intrusion, is a serious crime,” said AttorneyGeneral Janet Reno. The prosecution “shows that we take computerintrusion seriously and are working with our law enforcementagencies to aggressively fight this problem.”
Chris Rouland, who monitors computer attacks for InternetSecurity Systems Inc. in Atlanta, said the unusual part of the casewas that the boy was caught, not that he got where he did.
