Man Convicted for Hacking NCHS Computer Network

Jon Paul Oson, 38, was convicted of charges of computer hacking, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. Court had charged Oson on two counts of committing purposeful harm to protected PCs for which he was proved guilty.

While on trial, evidences established that Oson removed patient data belonging to the NCHS (North County Health Services) clinic. The data was saved on the computer systems at Oson's ex-employer, the CCC (Council of Community Health Clinics) in San Diego. While the deleting caused financial losses at NCHS, CCC and other member clinics, it also caused trouble to the patients at NCHS.

According to the documents of the court, Mr. Oson had been working as manager of technical services and at the post of network engineer at the Council of Community Health Clinics during the period from May 2004 to October 2005. There he received a negative performance assessment after which he resigned from the organization. The negative report could be the reason why he attacked the Council's computer network.

The jury proved that Mr. Oson had made an unauthorized access to the CCC network on December 23, 2005. He had disabled the automatic feature that would create backups of patient database at the NCHS. The panel of judges had also come to know that Oson had hacked the CCC system network again on December 29, 2005 and systematically removed software and data on a number of CCC servers that included NCHS' patient data. Apart from the attacks on NCHS servers at CCC, Oson had attempted to remove software and data on many other servers for CCC that CCC used along with other clinics.

Oson is scheduled for sentencing on November 14, 2007. The arrest came about after an investigation under the FBI's special unit, the Cybercrime Squad of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's San Diego Division. The sentence could imprison Oson for up to ten years and fine him a sum of $250,000 as a result of each of the two crimes of 'Intentionally Damaging a Protected Computer'.

Oson would appear for sentencing before United States District Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan.

Related article: Man Sues and Wins against ISP for Spamming Mail

» SPAMfighter News - 9/14/2007