Posted at 5:17 p.m., Thursday, November 10, 2005
Community service for convicted hacker
Advertiser Staff
HILO, Hawai'i — A 20-year-old Big Island man accused of hacking into the e-mail accounts of lawyers, county workers and even some Big Island council members was sentenced today to a suspended six-month jail term and 500 hours of community service.Caylan Nicoll pleaded guilty to second-degree unauthorized computer access for snooping through e-mail messages between April 10, 2002, and Feb. 28, 2003. He apparently made no attempt to gain financially from the hacking, said Deputy Prosecutor Rick Damerville.
Nicoll was able to look at the e-mails after gaining access to e-mail passwords held by an Internet service provider, Damerville said. The unauthorized activity was exposed when a county technician noticed someone had been accessing e-mail accounts from a location outside of county facilities, which was unusual for those accounts.
An investigation led to a computer at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, and from there to Nicoll, Damerville said.
Clayton Yugawa, director of data systems for the county, said the county changed Internet service providers after the incident and established a policy requiring that passwords be changed on a regular basis. He said Nicoll did not hack into any sensitive internal data.
