Alleged Pentagon hacker out on bail

updated 7:20 p.m. ET June 8, 2005

LONDON - A Briton wanted in the United States for what U.S. authorities call the biggest successful hacking effort against American military computer networks was freed on bail Wednesday after a court appearance.

The court heard allegations that Gary McKinnon, 39, illegally accessed 97 U.S. government computers between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $700,000 in damages. U.S. officials said two years ago that no classified material was obtained.

Lawyers for McKinnon, who was first arrested in the case nearly three years ago and then released, said he would fight extradition. It was not immediately clear why U.S. officials took so long to seek extradition, but is exceedingly rare to ask foreign governments to hand over defendants in computer-crime cases.

In previous major cyber crimes, such as the release of the “Love Bug” virus in May 2000 by a Filipino computer student and attacks in February 2000 by a Canadian youth against major American e-commerce Web sites, U.S. authorities have waived interest in extraditing hacker suspects.

McKinnon’s lawyer, Karen Todner, confirmed a published report that McKinnon was motivated by a desire to expose the ease with which a civilian could breach government computer systems and by a strong conviction that the U.S. government was concealing evidence of UFOs.

Janet Boston, acting for the U.S. government, told Bow Street Magistrates’ Court that McKinnon installed unauthorized software on computers used by NASA, the Defense Department, the Army, Navy and Air Force that permitted him to “completely control the computers.”

“On one instance, the U.S. Army’s military district of Washington network became inoperable,” she said.

U.S. prosecutors said McKinnon hacked into military computers nationwide running Microsoft Windows software that were left vulnerable to a design flaw for which Microsoft had issued repairs three years earlier.

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