Disney Slack attack wasn't Russian protesters, just a Cali dude with malware When someone stole more than a terabyte of data from Disney last year, it was believed to be the work of Russian hacktivists protesting for artist rights. We now know it was actually a 25-year-old California resident. Ryan Mitchell Kramer has agreed to plead guilty to one count of accessing a computer and obtaining information …
"Ryan Mitchell Kramer has agreed to plead guilty to one count of accessing a computer and obtaining information, and one count of threatening to damage a protected computer, the US Department of Justice said Thursday."
Just out of idle curiosity, what is a 'protected computer'?
It does strike me that if said computer is 'protected' then any threats are meaningless and can simply be ignored, or the threats are credible, in which case the computer isn't really protected at all?
Enquiring minds and all that......
Definition from 18 USC § 1030(e)(2)
the term “protected computer” means a computer— (A) exclusively for the use of a financial institution or the United States Government, or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, used by or for a financial institution or the United States Government and the conduct constituting the offense affects that use by or for the financial institution or the Government; (B) which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States; or (C) that— (i) is part of a voting system; and (ii) (I) is used for the management, support, or administration of a Federal election; or (II) has moved in or otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce;
As far as I can tell, it means any computer that is used by any business or government that operates across state lines, plus a couple more specific categories that are already included in that one. US law doesn't allow federal governments to deal with things like that that happen exclusively inside one state, so it can be simplified even further to "a computer the federal government is allowed to charge you with a crime about". None of this seems to be related to any real or notional protection, so there doesn't seem to be any such concept in the law as an "unprotected computer".
We allow all sorts in California so its quite likely that our 'acker could have had a Russian or Chinese name. (That would have made them a 'spy'.)
(Can't imagine why anyone would have bothered unless they were working indirectly for MSFT on a project to replace Slack with Teams.)
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