A 21 year old male from West Sussex, United Kingdom was jailed on the 16th May after hacking in to a private Facebook account. Gareth Crosskey was sentenced after an investigation by the Met Police Central e-Crime Unit.
The Police Central e-Crime Unit is a national unit created to respond to serious incidents of cyber crime in the UK and forms part of the government’s response to cyber threats, under the National Cyber Security Program.
Crosskey was charged and pleaded guilty under Section 1 and Section 3 of the Computers Misuse Act 1990. The charges laid were the following:
Section 1 Computer Misuse Act 1990 caused computer to perform function to secure unauthorised access to a program/data. Between 07/01/2011 and 14/07/2011 within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court caused a computer to perform a function with intent to secure unauthorised access to a program or data relating to a client held in a computer belonging to Facebook.
Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 unauthorised acts with intent to impair operation of or prevent/hinder access to a computer. Between 07/01/2011 and 14/07/2011 within the jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court did an unauthorised act at a time when you knew that it was unauthorised either intending by doing the act or being reckless as to whether the act would enable the operation of a computer to be impaired, access to a program or data held in a computer to be prevented or hindered, or the operation of a program or the reliability of data held in a computer to be impaired.
The Met Police Central e-Crime Unit hopes this serves as a warning to other potential hackers that think breaking in to another person’s online accounts is nothing but harmless fun.
The last time the courts wanted to serve a warning to the general public was in the London riots from 2011. The average sentencing for crimes committed during the riots were between 25%-40% higher than similar sentencing patterns for crimes committed outside of the riots. With that in mind, exactly what was the average sentence for these criminals that put in danger life, limp and property, and how did it compare to the 12 months that Crosskey was sentenced to, even when pleading guilty up front? The average prison sentence handed out by the magistrates to rioters of London 2011, the worse riots in a generation, five months!
The lesson learnt, you can steal, burn down businesses, and physically hurt people, but don’t break in to their facebook account!