When asked why he did it, Mangham says: "It was to identify vulnerabilities in the system so I could compile a report that I could then bundle over to Facebook and show them what was wrong with their system."
Despite admitting that Mangham had not done the crime for financial gain, the judge still gave the harsh sentence whilst declaring: "You accessed the very heart of the system of an international business of massive size, so this was not just fiddling about in the business records of some tiny business of no great importance."
At the time, authorities believed that Facebook was the next company in a long line of industrial espionage. Companies like Microsoft and Google have been hit over the years, as other companies or even governments try to access secrets.
Prosecutors accused Mangham of stealing "invaluable" intellectual property including restricted internal data.
The student claims he did a similar attack on Yahoo and taught them how to improve their security a few years ago.
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 18 Feb 2012 21:46
