Jury convicts US man in iPad data breach case

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a man ofillegally gaining access to AT&T's servers and stealing more than 120,000email addresses of iPad users including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg andfilm mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Andrew Auernheimer, of New York, was convicted of identitytheft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. Each countcarries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Prosecutors said the former Fayetteville, Arkansas, residentwas part of an online group that tricked AT&T's website into divulgingemail addresses, including those of Bloomberg, Weinstein, then-White Housechief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who is now mayor of Chicago, and othercelebrities.

The group then shared the addresses with the website Gawker,which published them in redacted form accompanying a news article about thebreach, prosecutors said.

A second man arrested with Auernheimer early last year,Daniel Spitler, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty that June.

At the time of the arrests, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman saidthere was no evidence the men used the swiped information for criminalpurposes. But authorities cautioned that it could have wound up in the hands ofspammers and scam artists.

According to court papers, the men used a computer scriptthey called the iPad3G Account Slurper to fool AT&T's servers into thinkingthey were communicating with an iPad. The theft of the email addresses occurredin June 2010.

Prosecutors said at the time of Auernheimer's arrest that hehad bragged about the operation in a blog posting and in an interview with CNETpublished online after the Gawker article. Court papers also quoted himdeclaring in a New York Times article: "I hack, I ruin, I make piles ofmoney. I make people afraid for their lives."

Auernheimer, after he was charged and released on bail, haddeclined to comment.

iPad maker Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, California,referred questions to AT&T, which acknowledged a security weak spot on awebsite that exposed the email addresses. AT&T said the vulnerabilityaffected only iPad users who signed up for its 3G wireless Internet service andsaid it had fixed the problem.

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