UK national Gary McKinnon, whose hacking exploits we've covered before on BoingBoing, told prosecutors he broke into US government computer systems because he wanted to find out whether aliens and UFOs exist.
During his two-year quest, McKinnon broke into computers at the Pentagon, NASA and the Johnson Space Center as well as systems used by the U.S. army, navy and air force. U.S. officials say he caused $700,000 worth of damage and even crippled vital defense systems shortly after the September 11 attacks.
Link (Thanks, Johnny)
Reader comment: James says,
I'm a system administrator in the Navy, and also happened to have been stationed at a command in Naval Weapons Station, Earle, one of the sites compromised. Earle is a small base in New Jersey that consists mainly of a three mile pier with a few ammo ships. Why he thought there would be information pertaining to UFOs on unclassified computers, on a network that supported maybe 25 people, is beyond me.
Reader comment: Rob says,
This podcast contains an interview of MacKinnon that is pretty hilarious. "yeah, i was smoking a lot of cannabis then…"
