Pity he went down
Internet search
engine Mahalo is sorry to see a hacker, who was a cherished member of its team,
get sent to prison for four years.
Mahalo boss Jason Calacanis said he hired
John Schiefer without being aware of his cyber crimes, and regretted seeing him sentenced to four years porridge.
Schiefer used "botnets," to steal people's
identities and snoop on electronic communications. The 27 year-old pleaded
guilty in US federal court to breaking into computers to commit fraud and steal
information sent during online financial transactions.
Schiefer duped a Dutch
Internet advertising company into paying more than $19,000 install its software
on people's computers, supposedly with their consent.
Instead, Schiefer and
accomplices secretly slipped the Dutch firm's software onto approximately
150,000 "zombie" computers. Calacanis said that he wished that judge had
given John a sentence from home, "where we could have supervised him."
Almost
all talented developers push the envelope when they're young. Anyone in
technology knows this dark, dirty little secret, he added.
When he comes
out, he wants to give him a job.