MySpace hackers let off the hook and avoid prison

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 28 February 2007 11:30

Your IT - Home IT

The two young hackers that tried to extort a $150,000 ‘consulting fee’ from MySpace have pleaded ‘no contest’ and have received three-year probationary terms instead of up to four years in prison.

Shaun Harrison, 19, and Saverio Mondelli, 20, of Suffolk County, N.Y. are two young men who thought a life of crime was the way to riches in the MySpace, Web 2.0 wave of the Internet. How wrong they were, having been duly caught and taken through a court process that has seen them very lucky indeed not to be sent to jail.

When MySpace discovered the software, they sent ‘cease and desist’ letters to the pair, who haughtily sent a response back that ‘we will neither cease nor desist’. MySpace then played the foolish pair, telling them they would pay them the $150,000 consulting fee.

So, like bees to honey, the pair with dollar signs in their eyes agreed to meet MySpace officials to collect their $150,000 payment. You can imagine their surprise when they met with Secret Service officers who arrested them instead.

Harrison and Mondelli had developed ‘tracking software’, allowing anyone who purchased their US $29.95 software to track the email and IP addresses of MySpace users, opening them up to spam, hack attacks and unwanted attention. The software also allowed you to determine how many people had visited their MySpace page, a clear violation of MySpace’s now very strict rules.

The software had already accumulated an amazing 85,000 users, but authorities currently have no way of knowing how many email addresses and other information has already been collected by the software’s buyers, in a worrying development.

This comes after many MySpace scandals concerning pedophiles and stalkers contacting young people on MySpace, with both tragedies and police captures making the news in recent months, prompting MySpace to introduce ‘friends only’ features for accessing MySpace profiles in an attempt to increase the privacy and anonymity of the site in light of plenty of unwanted media and regulatory attention.

The pair now have to pay $13,500 to MySpace in restitution, perform 160 hours of community service, never use MySpace in any form again and will have to submit to computer searches whenever demanded, with any form of violation likely to see them sent straight to prison.

Worryingly for other creators of similar software which MySpace is fighting a battle to continually shut down, the result of this case shows how serious MySpace is in fighting this online threat. Hackers are learning that MySpace is not their space, it’s our space, and everything is being done to keep it as safe a space as possible.