"Bumbling" hacker speaks out at Infosec

Gary McKinnon, the "bumbling nerd" who is due to be extradited to the US where he should face criminal charges over his illegal access to secret government computer networks, has appeared on a hacker's panel at the Infosec show in London. McKinnon lost his penultimate appeal at the UK's High Court at the beginning of April and could face some 70 years in a US jail as well as a significant fine over his hacking exploits of six years ago. His only open avenue left is with the Court of Appeal, which will decide whether to allow his extradition case to go before the House of Lords for a final hearing before the extradition finally goes through.

The Scot, who admitted breaking into military and NASA networks on many occasions between 2001 and 2002, spoke about the extradition process in what some American officials have called "the biggest military hack ever". At the Infosec show Mr McKinnon, who has always claimed that he was never out to cause any harm and had been merely looking for evidence of an official US government cover-up regarding UFOs, spoke of his belief that the US authorities have hiked the alleged damages caused by his hacking. According to McKinnon, the estimated $700,000 of damage is too large a sum, particularly as the cost of each machine he broke into has been set at $5,000, much higher than the actual market value of computers at the moment. There have been suggestions that this figure has been provided by the American side to meet standards which dictate that a jail sentence of a year or more has to be faced in order to ask for extradition.

Interestingly, attendees at the Infosec show have given their backing to Mr McKinnon via a survey, according to which nearly 75% of respondents think that evidence against him should be first heard at a British court and he should not be extradited. However, an earlier survey indicated that the IT security community was divided over the fate of the hacker, with 48% saying that he should be sent to jail, 42% suggesting community service and 10% believing a fine should be the punishment handed our