McKinnon Exploits Known Media Vulnerabilities

Via Guardian UK -

A lot of security issues in network and computer security can filed under the category of "PEBKAC" - problem exists between the keyboard and chair. Kevin Mitnick compromised more systems by knowing the foibles of human nature than the intricacies of the networks that he was breaking into. (Though Mitnick was good on the intricacies too.) Likewise, Gary McKinnon is exploiting some known vulnerabilities - but in this instance, in media coverage.

The main vulnerability he's exploited is that most journalists are generalists and don't know enough to challenge him on the claims that he has made, whether they are about his exploits or the US justice system. His statements about the case have gone largely unchallenged, no matter how outlandish.

First off, it is oft-repeated that he broke into 'top-secret' systems. No, he broke into unclassified systems, which doesn't mean that they are unimportant to the daily operations of the US military and Nasa, but it's wrong to say that they were top-secret. Classified - 'top-secret' - networks are almost isolated in both virtual and many times physical ways from the public internet.

[...]

For the most part, McKinnon broke into administrative systems, possibly through some publicly accessible webservers. Embarrassing? Yes. World's biggest military hack? Not by a long shot. Would the Army and Navy have 'top-secret' documents about aliens mixed in with the spreadsheets about duty rosters? Probably not. Maybe McKinnon stumbled on some Army administrative officer's pitch script for X-Files.

That's the technical side of the story, but McKinnon and his legal team's public statements about the US legal system make for even more entertaining reading. Any US TV crime drama junkie would know that most of them are about as plausible as his alien information claims. For instance, Gary McKinnon told the BBC:

"I'm extremely sorry I did it, but I think the reaction is completely overstated. I should face a penalty in Britain and I'd gladly do my time here," he said.
"To go from, you know, perhaps a year or two in a British jail to 60 years in an American prison is ridiculous."

The 60 to 70-year figure is oft-repeated in the British Press, but no few journalists has challenged that figure. (I've been challenged in e-mails from some journalists covering the story.) American sentencing guidelines have a wide range, and it's extremely rare for criminals to be given the maximum sentence, especially in a white collar crime like this. Some basic reporting would have found this out, or you can just read a recent Associated Press report:

A 60-year sentence is "extraordinarily unlikely," according to Scott Christie, who was the lead prosecutor in the case in New Jersey before going into private practice. ..."His general exposure would be in the range of between three and five years," he said.

McKinnon has played on legitimate concerns about human rights abuses in Guantanamo, an aversion to execution and upset about inequalities in extradition between the US and the UK to raise his case to the level of a human rights travesty. McKinnon's lawyers have said that the US wanted to see him 'fry'. That surely has to be metaphorical because none of the offences he has been indicted on are capital offences. As implausible as 70 years in jail is, suddenly going from jail time to the 'chair' can't happen. It makes a good soundbite, which is probably why he keeps repeating it, but it's not germane to the case or whether his human rights are threatened because of the potential threat of execution.

Also, according to his own legal team, he was offered a plea bargain of six months. He said yesterday on the BBC's 5Live that he didn't accept it because they wouldn't put it in writing. Something is wrong here. Either they offered him a plea bargain, which would have to be in writing, or they didn't. Maybe, as Kevin 'Dark Dante' Poulsen says, plea bargaining is a foreign concept in British justice so poorly understood, but again, we've all seen the crime dramas: Prosecutor sits down the defence team and offers a reduced sentence for a guilty plea. (And the idea already exists in British justice: in general, you get a one-third reduction on the standard sentence if you plead guilty.) McKinnon has already said that he's guilty. He's been offered six months not 60 years, and again, as Kevin says, this is minimum security time, where the biggest thing he has to fear is dodgy stock advice from a convicted insider trader, not becoming some bubba's love slave in some scary 'super-max' prison.

I'm not going to speculate what Gary McKinnon's motives are in playing the case this way, but he's turned large swathes of the British media into his own PR wing. Journalists seem content to avoid letting the facts stand in the way of this good story. Sure, I can understand that some people hold him up as yet another example of the inequalities in the 'special relationship' between the US and the UK. But Gary McKinnon is an imperfect poster boy for that cause.