E-mail Hacker Posing as Student Penalized

Daniel Woo a 23-year-old Bulgarian national residing in South London (UK) has been found guilty of infiltrating numerous students' e-mail accounts with the result he has to pay 21,000 pounds to cover compensation and costs. Woo, following his acknowledgement that he carried out hacking operations that meant violating the Computer Misuse Act, now faces a 36-week suspended incarceration.

Meanwhile, as per the particulars in connection with the case, Woo was taken into custody on November 1, 2006 when he was inside the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London where authorities caught him attempting at loading malware onto a campus PC. The IT staff, which was examining problems within the PC network, spotted Woo in the malicious act.

Accordingly, the university called cops from the Police Central e-Crime Unit of the Metropolitan Police Service to investigate as well as fast confirm that Woo posed as a pupil of the college. Additional probe disclosed that Woo, by misappropriating 'Cain and Abel' a password-cracking program, had cracked passwords of students' e-mails after hijacking PC data.

Using this process, Woo had managed to gain admission into numerous private e-mails having financial as well as personal identifying details. Thereafter, investigations confirmed of fraud on many hacked payment accounts.

Consequently, cops from the Holborn Police Station (London, UK) arrested Woo who, however, denied that he had gone to the college's computer room.

For elaborate enquiries, Woo's PCs, discs, compact discs, along with cell-phones were put to thorough forensic investigations, while eyewitness accounts and CCTV footage were also used. As a result, officers found that Woo was associated with more crimes similar to the current one at West Midlands' (UK) University of Coventry as well as confirmed that in another instance he had seized a student's ID card from Northampton's (UK) University of Northampton.

Eventually, on May 28, 2009, Woo was legally accused following which, on August 20, 2010, he admitted to his crimes.

The Court has ordered that Woo, for a full year, must stay away from all universities, colleges and other higher educational places unless he has the police's permission.

Related article: E-Crime Reporting Format To Be Launched in July

» SPAMfighter News - 12/8/2010