Jailed Facebook hack Brit targeted Justin Bieber's girlfriend A British man jailed for a year after hacking into a private Facebook account targeted Justin Bieber's actress-turned-singer girlfriend, it has emerged. Gareth Crosskey, 21, of Lancing in West Sussex, was sentenced to 12 months behind bars by London's Southwark Crown Court last week. Crosskey had pleaded guilty to two …
Ahhh yes, it was obvious from the initial report that he must have targeted someone worthy of response if the FBI got involved.
Using social engineering to trick Facebook is fair enough, but posting YouTube videos, boasting on hacker forums, approaching the paparazzi and attempting blackmail are pretty damn low things to do.
Jail time for you, you burger flipper
Fook me! That's a lot of "friends" she must be the loveliest lady in the whole wide world.
Joking aside I have never heard of her - I take it she's a new version of Paris or something? No idea what a Bieber is either which is probably lucky. Sounds rather nasty like it causes a rash or something!
This hacker bloke sounds like a right twat too I would like to add - seriously dude, you aint got the clout to get away with hacking, who do you think you are Murdoch or something!
And there in lies the rub - 6 million friends is a hell of a lot of advertising clout on FB. The potential damage this kid could have done to the advertisers would probably be trumped up to around $6 billion easily. So maybe it's not even the fact that Bieber's beau was affected that got him the year long stetch, but rather all those poor businesses that are paying to use Ms Gomez as a posterchild.
If you have a teenage daughter, she will explain to you that Justin Beiber is The Most Desirable Man In The Whole Wide World. Certainly, anywhere he goes, there are thousands of young girls trying to get a glimpse of him. Selene Gomez, as his girlfriend, is The Luckiest Woman In The Whole Wide World to be picked out of the millions of girls he could choose from. She's far too young for me, but certainly not ugly.
"The breach was reported to the FBI who turned over the investigation to Scotland Yard's Police Central e-Crime Unit after tracing the hack to the UK."
So here we have a Brit who hacks into a US computer system from the UK. Sound familiar?
But in this case, he's tried in the UK. Why didn't the FBI activate extradition?
PS: I can understand why 'OK' and 'Hollywood Life' magazines wouldn't cough up for these "personal emails" - not even a lovestruck teenager would consider typing any intimate message that her step-father could get access to!
Oh dear, the McKinnon strawman has reared its head.
Here's why no one wants to extradite this little goblin and they want to extradite McKinnon: This guy hacked one social networking account belonging to a private citizen (although admittedly possibly caused financial repercussions with his Justin Bieber Sucks comment). He was also an imbecile. On the other hand, McKinnon owned multiple servers belonging to the United States military and government.
Note that I have made no comment on McKinnon and actually, I do hope he can serve his sentence somewhere better than here or the States, neither of which have prison conditions which I would consider humane.
"Hacking" needs to stop being a catch-all term for any kind of unauthorized access to anything related to a computer. I'd like to add that while this guy is a filthy scrub gimp with absolutely no talent nor a sense of swagger, his crime does not merit a year in prison. When you give computer criminals disproportionate sentences in a prison system designed for punishment as opposed to rehabilitation, you just create Iceman/Max Butler.
Well ,,,, I dont know.
It's one thing to carry out a bit of social engineering just for the lulz so that you can get into your mate's account and post a photo of your bum (or whatever it is that young men do these days), and another to get into the account of someone you dont know, post an offensive message, and threaten to make all their private emails public.
One is plain silly and the other falls into the category of 'cyber-buillying', regardless of whether your victim's associated with a Celeb or not.
I somewhat agree. I mean I have no illusion that this case would have been dealt with as swiftly and harshly if the target were a random schmuck like me, but it wasn't innocent "to see if I can" hacking, or even a simple "for the lulz" kind of prank. It sounds like there may have even been a financial motivation.
Still, a year seems excessive. But I think most sentences are really.
From what this guy did, has had happened, and was stated he was planning to do, it seems that he has gone from burger-flipping to doing time, and afterwards, even burger-flipping may no longer be an option.... As for a degree course on something to do with programming computer games, I guess it's bye bye to that. He couldn't even get the ex post facto excuse convincing, in my opinion.
Quote: The takeover of the account was carried out after Crosskey successfully posed as her step-father, tricking Facebook into granting him illicit access to Gomez's account in the process.
Clearly, there was no hacking involved!
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