] In a rare wireless hacking prosecution, federal officials
] this week accused two Michigan men of repeatedly cracking
] the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores' nationwide
] network from a 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix parked outside a
] suburban Detroit store.

This was covered earlier. However, this article by Kevin Poulsen (who is quite familiar with computer crime) has much more detail about the timeline of events. This is a hacker positive article, but it also fully acknowledges that these guys went way over the line. This wasn't some case of wardriving, or even just network probes, and it went way beyond anything that could be even be considered "harmless machine intrusions". No vague grey ethical line to stand on here.. These guys got caught installing a sniffer to monitor credit card transactions across Lowes' entire company network. There is not that much detail about how Lowes caught them, but it sounds like they broke so much stuff on the network screwing around that Lowes was alerted to their presence.

] Timmins and Botbyl, known online as "noweb4u" and "itszer0"
] respectively, are also part of the Michigan 2600 scene -- an
] informal collection of technology geeks that meet, blog, eat
] pizza and attend hacker conventions together, but generally
] balk at penetrating systems or otherwise committing felonies.

I was actively involved in "the 2600 scene" in the southeast several years ago. This would not have been condoned behavior. I'm sure for the bulk of the people in the mi scene it isn't there either. But this also doesn't really surprise me..

This is of interest.. The following was snagged from a 2600 mailing list in the southeast, which will remain unattributed in order to maintain a certain level of pointlessly transparent hacker mystique:

] hmmmmmm.....michigan....
] Article mentions immaturity....
] doing some rough math here.....
] idiots at phreaknic that were cutting the lan wires a couple
] of yrs ago were from michigan...
] One wonders what's in the water up there !??
]
] On a positive note, the article was fair....

Hmm.. My curious side wonders if there is a connection between the wire cutting that year and the mentality that picks the nym 'noweb4u'.. Anyone familiar with the scene up there care to shed some light on this? :)

So anyway.. We seem to have a good track record with rehabilitating criminal hackers by turning them into journalists and other such things. [smirk] Their bail was only set at $10k, which isn't actually that bad.. They can still use computers for work and school. So in a way, this is a step forward from the draconian handling of these things in the past. At least on face, the handling of this seems reasonable thus far. The initial vibes of mass hysteria and stupidity that I'd normally expect doesn't seem to be present.. Due Process even..

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