21-Year-Old Hacks His Way to a Porsche and Gold Bullion

Published on 06 July 2010 by Stan Shyshkin in Security News

p 300x183 21 Year Old Hacks His Way to a Porsche and Gold Bullion 21-year-old computer hacker, Alistair Peckover, has been sentenced to 20-months in prison for a complex hacking scheme, which brought him thousands of dollars and fancy toys like a Porsche.He used his hacking skills to break into unsuspecting users e-mail accounts, and install filters that would automatically forward any e-mails with specific keywords to his own e-mail account. Once Peckover received the original e-mail, he would respond to the recipient posing as the sender of that e-mail. For example, if Ebay sent someone an e-mail that contained a certain key word, Peckover would receive the e-mail (unbeknownst to the recipient) and then could respond to the recipient posing as Ebay claiming to need payment or information. gold 300x231 21 Year Old Hacks His Way to a Porsche and Gold Bullion

He used this scheme to get user’s credit card and financial information for profit. Police say his victims were located all over the world, and the money he took from them ranged from rent payments, which were supposed to be deposited into the landlord’s bank account, to money people were putting away to buy a new car.

When he was finally arrested, the police seized his belongings, which included a Porsche, £40,000 GBP ($60,708 USD) in cash stuffed in two containers, a Breitling and Rolex watch, six computers, a Nintendo Wii, a Pioneer car stereo and gold bullion. They also found passports in three different names.

The police are hoping that the 20-months in jail will change the way Peckover thinks about stealing, and will keep him from going back to cyber crime. They are hoping that he will turn to the good side and use his computer skills to help people instead of harming them.

(Via Daily Mail)