Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
A BRITISH STUDENT who stole sensitive information from Facebook’s internal network was sentenced to eight months in prison today in what prosecutors described as the most serious case of social media hacking ever brought before the English courts.
Prosecutor Sandip Patel said that Glenn Mangham, 26, had hacked into the social networking giant’s computers from his bedroom in the northern England city of York and stole what was described as “invaluable” intellectual property.
“He acted with determination, undoubted ingenuity and it was sophisticated, it was calculating,” Patel told London’s Southwark Crown Court ahead of sentencing Friday. He added later: “This represents the most extensive and grave incident of social media hacking to be brought before the British courts.”
London Chief Prosecutor Alison Saunders echoed Patel’s description, saying in a statement that Mangham’s actions were “extensive and flagrant.” It was not immediately clear exactly what he stole, although Saunders said that no personal user data had been compromised.
Breach
Scotland Yard said in a statement that the breach had occurred “over a short period of time” in April of last year. The court was told that Mangham had obtained the information after hacking into the account of a Facebook employee while the staff member was on vacation.
The police statement said that Facebook Inc discovered the breach in May and alerted the FBI, who traced the source of the attack back to Britain. Scotland Yard’s e-crimes unit raided Mangham’s home on 2 June.
The software development student pleaded guilty on 13 December. His lawyer, Tony Ventham, described Mangham as an “ethical hacker” who saw the stunt as a challenge — and stressed that his client had never tried to sell the stolen data or pass it on to anyone else.
“This is someone who in previous times would have thrown everything aside to seek the source of the Nile,” Ventham said. “He was in his own world, his own bedroom, his own mind, his own project and certainly his intention throughout was to contact Facebook in due course when he had rectified their problems.”
But while Judge Alistair McCreath accepted that Mangham had not tried to profit from his crime, he said that the defendant’s actions still had “very serious potential consequences” which could have been “utterly disastrous” for Facebook.
“This was not just a bit of harmless experimentation,” McCreath told Mangham. “You accessed the very heart of the system of an international business of massive size, so this was not just fiddling about in the business records of some tiny business of no great importance.”
Facebook said in a statement that it applauded police and prosecutors’ efforts in the case, adding: “We take any attempt to gain unauthorised access to our network very seriously.”
The company, which boasts some 845 million users worldwide, recently filed papers for its initial public offering at the beginning of this month, putting it on track to price its stock in May or June. Facebook is expected to be valued at $75 billion to $100 billion.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The biggest trouble with this working paper is that it’s a classic case of nuanced academia meets tabloid headlines.
In this case, tabloid Irish Times coverage
Again… What short term…
My partner works… And makes just to much many to avail of family income supplement school allowances etc…. I need 33k to break even on childcare commute clothing cost when going to work.
We are taxed up to the hilt….
One of us at home… The other making a bit less would give us a higher expendable income and more time with our kids.
Thing is psychological we need work. So now for 100 a month extra we hardly see our kids
This report played right into the Krugman’s fallacy. People who work pay taxes, buy stuff (like child care) and generally support the employment of others. If more people go on the dole that has a strong negative feedback effect on the economy and their neighbors. Which is why, of course, austerity fails in a depression and stimulus works.
Clearly there is nothing wrong with the paper which can be read on the Irish Times, instead what we have is political interference, the powers that be in the ESRI blocking Tol’s research and that suggests the ESRI are not an independent institution. Actually what conclusions can be drawn from this research is how hard it is for low earners to survive in this country, with 7000 to 9000 costs just clocked up yearly form actually going to work. It also makes a laugh of the governments jobsbridge scheme, which is actually costing those with least income in our society to take up these shtty dead-end “internships” because the government has done nothing about job creation.
There is an important point here about the ubiquity of ecomonic commentators in Ireland at the current time. People seem to forget (and some economists don’t seem to realise) that life and society is much more complex than that which can be measured in pure economic terms. This is the same logic that looks at the value of culture only in terms of what it can pull in in hard tourist dollars.
I felt some sympathy (but not too much!) for Moore McDowell on a recent Frontline debate when he was asked to comment on the economics of Arts funding in Ireland. His opinion was undermined before he opened his mouth by PK’s reference to Oscar Wilde’s aphorism about knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing and Michael Colgan was able to seize on this in his criticism of the narrow focus of economics.
The ESRI, as its name suggests, has a remit beyond pure economics but it appears that this working paper leaned too heavily on that particular field of analysis.
Does anyone know the purpose of the ERSI?
And assuming it delivers on that purpose is it more important to our society than many of the services that have been slashed?
Just askin’
Thanks Brendan – I asked for that, so let me put the question a different way….
How would Irish society be worse off if the ERSI didn’t exist?
No problem Paul :)
Well for a start we wouldn’t have any of the following publications: http://www.esri.ie/publications/latest_publications/
ERSI reports are used to develop policy in relation to a wide range of areas. If there was no ERSI, there wouldn’t be the research, so there wouldn’t be any information to work off. So instead of the government of the day making crazed decisions based on the best possible evidence, they’d be making crazed decisions on no evidence at all.
At 12.8 million in 2010 that information comes relatively cheaply, particularly if you consider that in the same year we spent €1.354 Billion on Defence.
Nat,
Just to clear something up – the word ‘unprecedented’ was used by the ESRI themselves in their statement last night, which is why we in The Irish Times used it. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0612/breaking49.html
In the light of this, perhaps you might want to rephrase your introductory comments?
Regards,
Kilian
I’d pay a few pennies to see the opening comment changed to “we checked to see if it was in fact ‘unprecedented’, which the Irish Times didn’t do.”
Kilian,
Fair enough. I’ve changed the original post to reflect this.
http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2012/06/costs-of-working-in-ireland.html
Regards,
Nat
where is my comment
you are now censoring comments
None of your comments have been deleted from this piece Seamus. Was it on one of the other articles about Richard Tol, perhaps?
Well, back for a second small bite, after reading the paper, these and other posts and comments, it is clear that the paper is assigning costs for short term unemployment in a booming economy, while the inference, which the authors have not denied is for long term unemployment, e.g. people who stop working in order to take advantage of the short term differential.
According to Tol himself the “takeaway” food figure is overall spend on convenience food, NOT just lunch money. I suspect the clothing figure of 25 a week is also overall spend and not just for work. Correcting that would make a big difference to the results.
Well Christine another comment has not gone up.???.
There’s no record in the system of you leaving any other comments on this piece (besides the three that have already appeared here) so I’m going to pass this on to our tech team and see what the issue is. None of your comments have been removed by anyone here, just for the record. In the meantime, it could be worth clearing your cache and trying to post again.
Honestly, Christine this has never happened before, two comments in relation to the above article were not posted.
Have you tried turning it off an on again, Seamus?:)
have your say