, SecurityFocus 2003-08-07
Bret McDanel already served his 16 months in federal prison for violating the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Now he wants to clear his record.
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Appeal in bug disclosure case
, SecurityFocus 2003-08-07 Bret McDanel already served his 16 months in federal prison for violating the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Now he wants to clear his record.
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The conviction is based on the content of McDanel's messages. Prosecutor Matz argued that McDanel violated the law by sending emails stating that, "Tornados's security is broken" rather than, "have a nice day." (Matz, Tr. 6/21/02, p. 11-12; ER 25, p. 349) According to Matz, the content of McDanel's email alone caused impairment ...
It then has more quotes from the prosecutor on how the first amendment doesnt apply to anything the government doesnt think it should for whatever reason.
Putting different things together from different exhibits that were filed with the appeal, the server was an Ultra Enterprise 4500 with 8 cpus and at least a gig of ram. The program that sent the emails sent 10 every 1.5 seconds (or 6.67/sec). That seems low, not vengeful as the previous poster indicated. My desktop pc with 1 cpu (pIII 500), 256M ram is able to handle over 300/sec for local delivery (I dont know its limit is, I just know that I got 300/sec for a sustained period a while back).
I dont think this is a case of revenge, it just doesnt add up, and even the prosecutor seemed to think that the crime was speaking.
[1] http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/AMENDED OPENING%20BRIEF%207-2%20.pdf
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