Teen hacker avoids jail sentence
Monday, 2 February 2004 20:58 EST
A UK teenager who hacked into a US Government laboratory's computer network has been ordered to serve 200 hours community service. Joseph McElroy used the lab's computers for films and music taken from the net. Southwark Crown Court waived a demand for £21,000 in damages as it ruled that McElroy could not pay the fine. The June 2002 intrusion by the Exeter University student sparked a full-scale alert at the Chicago laboratory, which researches high-energy particles.
Fearing a terrorist attack, the computer was closed down for three days and the US Department of Energy, which oversees the safety of the country's nuclear weapons, sounded a full-scale alert.
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