Peace be upon you, I saw a few days ago a post of one of the members of a Facebook group talking about the 10 most dangerous hackers in the world, and despite many errors and inaccurate information about the names mentioned in the post, what struck me most and surprised me at the same time was the absence of the name of the man who carried out the biggest hack Military database in history, which created a state of emergency for the intelligence and the US army for a period of two years between 2001 and 2002.
The British Gary McKinnon known as Solo Which the hacker community consider him as the most dangerous hacker throughout history.
In this blog, we will take a comprehensive look at the career of this man, whom many consider a legend in the world of hacking.
Gary McKinnon AKA 'SOLO' The Most Dangerous Hacker in History
MacKinnon was born on February 10, 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, and worked as a Director of Security Systems (Systems Administrator)
But he soon showed his fondness for the field of hacking, which became an obsession for him to the point that he did not go out of his room and cut off from the outside world, which led to the loss of his job and the emigration of his girlfriend after a relationship that lasted 14 years.
All these factors did not stop McCainon and what increased the refinement of his talent His anti-social character and introverted personality, especially his great love for space and conspiracy theories since his childhood.
If the idea of hacking NASA was considered a fantasy and a pink dream for all hackers, for Barry MacKinnon it was a lived reality and a piece of cake to the extent that he was arriving and wandering as he wanted in the systems of the US Space Agency and his goal was to search for any indications of the existence of civilizations Space because he was sure that NASA had discovered something and did not want to disclose it, so he used to penetrate the computers of its systems at night to avoid detection, and he was uploading confidential images that were taken from the International Space Station using the latest telescopes and imaging devices that were available at NASA at the time and The size of a single image ranged between 200-300 megabytes and took several hours to download.
It consisted of pictures of the planet Earth and its proximity to strange models swimming in space, which increased MacKinnon's curiosity to search for more and thought that America was in secret contact with alien civilizations and kept secret The matter is for unknown reasons.
Moreover, he found several volumes and files bearing suspicious labels, and he also discovered that all the space images captured by NASA go through an endless series of adjustments before they are placed in the reach of the general public and several suspicious activities. Another related to the US Army, and every answer he got would lead to 10 new questions being asked.
The British hacker did not stop there, and to find answers to his questions, he penetrated all the sites and databases of the American security, military and government organizations despite being the most immune sites in the world and the most guarded, which hackers are unable to However, MacKinnon was an exception to this rule, and what was surprising was the ease with which he infiltrated these systems and often left provocative messages such as "your protection system is worn out" and "you are pathetic" and so on.
And in just 13 months he managed to penetrate 97 A computer for several intelligence and military organizations, the most important of which are:
- The Pentagon
- NASA
- Air Forces
- Navy Forces
- National Security Agency (NSA)
MacKinnon inflicted losses on the US government in automatic equipment estimated at 800 thousand dollars and deleted central files from the operating systems of the US army in Washington County, so that it was able to disable a network of 2000 computers for 24 hours, causing the largest failure in the history of US central systems.
Not only that, after the events of September 11, 2001, he deleted the lists of weapons and ammunition for a US Navy base in New Jersey, disrupting a network of 300 computers, leading to a complete paralysis in the process of supplying the US fleet that was stuck in the Atlantic without ammunition.
He was also accused of stealing data and passwords and copying them into his personal computer in London, which was subsequently detained by British forces.
All these practices inflicted enormous damage on the American government, which made it issue an international arrest warrant against Mackinnon and officially requested the British government to hand over the man who caused her headaches, and the supreme legal bodies in America sentenced him in absentia to 70 years imprisonment in the most dangerous prison in the world (Guantanamo) However, the procedures of this operation were disrupted by several considerations, foremost of which is the deteriorating health situation of McCainon and the decision that Britain called arbitrary against the man to try to imprison him in Guantanamo because of cyber crimes, which were considered by America to be extremely dangerous and a threat to US national security, and thus this man caused political tensions Between the two countries.
MacKinnon remained without trial for three years from the detention of his device in 2002 until 2005 when the British government issued a decision to keep MacKinnon in England on the condition that he live under house arrest and that all his electronic activities are guarded.
In 2009 America tried again to obtain the man to hold him accountable because, according to American officials, McCainon's problem is not that he was able to penetrate all systems, but rather the type of data and information that he may have accessed and that may pose a threat to the security of defense agencies and the US government.
And he has The question was asked several times to the man about whether he had sensitive information, and each time he avoided an answer and only said, "I am here and I will not disappear."
In 2012 the US government attempted to arrest the man again, but this time a final official statement was issued by the British Home Affairs Department, Theresa May. (Theresa May) And which formally ended the case after submitting documents that attest to Mackinnon's deteriorating mental health, his autism and severe depression due to the lifestyle and house arrest that he fled.
He talks about the subject in detail in this link Http://www.davidkushner.com/article/the-autistic-hacker/
Final note:
It is mentioned that for the irony of fates, the Makinon pirates were mistakenly detected by a NASA worker, returning to the agency's offices and entering his office, he noticed that his computer works automatically and the mouse arrow moves and opens the folders and Photos and other data that it was copying, he immediately reported which led the protection teams to locate the hacked a few hours later and therefore locate Makinon who was using his personal computer in his London apartment and so was done.
Inform the British authorities who intervened immediately and arrested the man and detained all his property.
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