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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Adrian Lamo, ‘Homeless Hacker’ Who Turned in Chelsea Manning, Dead at 37

Summary: Adrian Lamo, the hacker known for breaking into The New York Times network and for reporting Chelsea Manning's classified document leak to the FBI, was found dead in a Wichita apartment on March 14, 2018, at age 37. Lamo had pleaded guilty in 2004 to one felony count of computer crimes against the Times, LexisNexis and Microsoft, receiving six months' detention, two years' probation and $65,000 in restitution, and in 2010 he reported Manning, who was later convicted of leaking more than 700,000 government records and sentenced to 35 years before President Obama commuted her sentence in January 2017.

Why it matters: Lamo's method - find an open web proxy, browse a major newsroom's intranet, and walk out with a source list containing the contact details of Colin Powell and Yasser Arafat - required no exploit, only a browser and a known address and port. The FBI's response to the reporter who covered him was a letter warning that notes could be subpoenaed and a request to preserve correspondence, a reminder that the aftermath of an intrusion reaches the people who wrote about it.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
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