Intel 'hacker' sentence expunged

A former Intel contractor has seen his conviction for hacking into the company's systems expunged, after a battle lasting more than a decade.

Randall Schwartz had his arrest and conviction for bypassing Intel security systems "set aside" at the beginning of February, legally giving him a clean slate.

Schwartz was arrested in 1993 after using a program called "Crack" to find out the passwords of various former colleagues in the Intel Supercomputer Systems Division (SSD). Schwartz had left SSD under a cloud, and told the court he decided to crack the Intel passwords to show that SSD's security had gone downhill since he had left, and to reestablish respect he said he had lost when he left SSD.

In late 1995, Schwartz was convicted of three counts of computer crime and ordered to pay Intel $68,000 restitution. His sentence also included five years of probation, 480 hours of community service and 90 days of deferred (cancelable) jail time. His legal bill exceeded $170,000 by the end of 1995.

Schwartz has argued that his conviction was unfair, as he had not intended to cause any malicious damage. After an appeal, the restitution was dropped in 1999.

In October 2006, Schwartz appealed for clemency from a Democratic governor who "had already granted a few pardons," Schwartz explained on the Yahoo Tech Groups site. At the beginning of February 2007, an Oregon court ordered an expungement of his conviction.

Schwartz said that it will take a while for him to absorb the result.

"Even a few weeks later, I'm still in a bit of shock that I've reached this point in this over-13-year journey," Schwartz said. "It probably won't fully sink in until the first time I travel freely into Canada, or fill out a contractor form that asks the question about criminal history, or apply for a Small Business Administration program that was formerly unavailable to me."

Tom Espiner reported from London for ZDNet UK.

[therealbean]

Misspelled name

His first name is Randal (with one L).

[scubajp]

Why does it matter?

Shouldn't matter, the hacker did bad stuff regardless of the reason. Oughta pay the price. Like a graffiti artist who has a great artistic talent, still is breaking the law. Do we like to look at our sound walls going to trash? Their excuse is that it is art, we meant no harm. Like the Intel hacker, I meant no harm! Go to Jail.

[DarrenBaker]

Nice to see hacking is now legal.

It's too bad that every person charged with a felony can't find a soft governor in order to get their records expunged, and freely travel to Canada. As far as I can tell, the man did an illegal thing, was prosecuted justly (though the sentence was probably a bit harsh) and now gets to walk free. Life is wonderful! The evil corporation has succumbed to the little man! What a joke...

[wone123]

that is worth $170,000?!

a lot of decisions that come out of courts are worthless...

its pretty sad that he can find a job now!

employers need to wake up

[michaelo1966]

Real hackers

I support very still penalties for real hackers: people who write and release viruses, spyware, steal private data, and the like...

Randall isn't one of these though. My memory is that he got into a lunchroom fight w/ some senior Intel guy about how easy it'd be to steal passwords. He was attempting to convince them to require stronger passwords.

In a fit he ran some type of common dictionary attach that hashed common words, compared to a password file, and when they matched showed the plain-text password. He gave them the list -- without logging in as anybody or giving it away (or threatening to do so) -- with a strong "told ya' so" 'tude.

Rather than admit to Intel senior managers that they'd configured their password policy poorly they called Randall some sort of unstable hacker and prosecuted him.

This was basically a case of office politics turned into trumped-up charges. There are plenty of "real" (and real-bad) computer criminals. Wasting time processing and prosecuting Randall was time that could and should have been better spent on them.

[CyberJedi25]

This article scared me

I really thought that this was Randal L. Schwartz (the co-author of Learning Perl) that got arrested. Phew! Thank God it's not. The spelling of the names is obviously different. Phew!

[wbenton]

Why not?

If they just slap the wrist of 18-year olds caught red handed for trying to bribe hundreds of thousands of dollars in an FBI sting operation after stealing passwords and threatening to release the info if the money was not paid...

I see why not let him go free. Only two things remaining. Why did his lawyer fees run up to $170,000 and who's going to refund that?

Averaged out, that comes up to approx $12,000/year for the past 14 years.

What ever happened to the right to a speedy trial?

FWIW