Adrian Lamos Hacking Activity - Essay Example

The most notable element of Lamo’s hacking activity was that he could access a database of 3000 contributors. Similarly, he could acquire the social security numbers of many persons at reputed ranks. Lamo misused Times’ LexisNexis account with the intent to conduct some research on various high-profile subjects. In the words of Poulsen (2002), Lamo found ‘seven misconfigured proxy servers’ that acted as the connecting link between the public internet and Times’ private intranet. As a result of his discovery; any person, who properly configured his Web browser could have accessed into Times’ private intranet.

Adrian Lamo was a journalism student who was seeking a job. According to the report of Ewalt and Hulme (2004), Lamo thought that hacking high-security networks would give him fame so that he could get a reputed job. Therefore, it is obvious that Lamo did not ever think of making money out of the act. In most of his hacking cases, he has informed the companies regarding their flows in the database. It is reported that Lamo informed The New York Times about the weaker areas of its database and it indicates that his act did not intend to deceive Times.

The hacking activity of Lamo at The New York Times indicates that he was a grey hat hacker. Grey hat hackers apply their skills to prove their eligibility and thereby achieve public stature (Grey Hat Hackers). We have seen that Lamo never used Times’ data for achieving money. He was just trying to prove himself. Anyhow, on the course of pleading guilty, Lamo agreed that his activities caused losses to New York Times in the range of $30,000 to $70,000. After the course of legal proceedings, the court ordered Lamo to reimburse New York Times $65,000. In addition to this restitution money, as Marvin (2007) reports, Lamo was punished with six months of confinement at their parents’ home followed by two years probation.

In my opinion, the punishment pars with the intensity of Lamo’s crime. Although the ordered restitution money would not compensate Times' reputation loss, it is necessary to consider that Lamo was only 21 years old when he hacked into Time’s internal computer network. At this age, every individual tends to attract public concentration, and the same led Lamo to home imprisonment. This crime could have been successfully deterred if he had got the opportunity to employ his skills in other potential areas.
The incident reminds us of the significance of initiating proper promotional strategies to identify students with exceptional skills. Government must make provisions for the rehabilitation of computer hackers so that their skills would be utilized for potential or productive purposes. Read More