The conviction was based on the amount of damage he could have done. That includes every credit card that is ever used at all of the lowes--forever. 2.5 million is low ball. I would be very pissed off if these guys had just explored the network with no intension to do anything 'evil' and recieved 9 years. But these guys were trying to get millions of credit card numbers. They were _trying_ to do damage. For that, I have no sympathy. I got into an inational network via wireless, but I just did a few port scans to get some basic knowledge of the network and systems in place--then I drove off. Could I have done a lot of damage? Sure, but that crosses the line from hobby-hacker to criminal.

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