By John Leyden for The Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Matthew Byrne, 38, from Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, was
given a suspended sentence of eight months imprisonment, suspended
for two years, at a sentencing hearing at London's Southwark Crown
Court on Tuesday. He was also sentenced to two years supervision
order after pleading guilty to computer hacking offences
(unauthorised modification of a computer contrary to section three
of the Computer Misuse Act 1990) at an earlier hearing in
September.
Byrne was charged in May following a year-long investigation by
officers at the Computer Crime Unit at Scotland Yard over an August
2004 attack on loveand friends.com. He used brute force methods to
find easily guessable passwords in order to gain illicit access to
four profiles on loveandfriends' database.
These profiles were subsequently defaced. Byrne then made
demands for payment in exchange for holding off on threats to
delete the firm's database. Andy MacCabe, managing director of
loveandfriends, said at the time that the attacker only had member
level access to four profiles with weak passwords. The hacker did
not at any time gain access to the loveandfriends financial
database or web servers despite threats to the contrary.
Byrne was charged with extortion over these demands but these
charges were subsequentally dropped. After tracing Byrne to his
then home in Sheffield, Met Police officers recovered evidence that
he was responsible for writing the Mirsa-A and Mirsa-B mass mailing
worms, which posed as messages from campaign group Fathers 4
Justice. The campaign group condemned the attack.
In sentencing Byrne, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin commended the
investigative work of DC Billington and DC Sheikh. Byrne's offences
were on the cusp of meriting a custodial sentence, Judge Rivlin
said.
© The Register
2006
