Welsh hacker faces jail sentence

A hacker who was tracked down to his home in a tiny village in Wales has admitted to hacking into websites between February and March last year for his own gain and may now face a jail sentence.

In a pre-trial hearing in court yesterday, 19-year-old computer science student Raphael Gray admitted hacking into the websites of companies such as nettrading, salesgate, feelgoodfalls, mostorefront, albionsmo and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists.

He also admitted to stealing credit card information from the exploited sites, using the details for his own gain and offering to supply them to other criminals.

Gray came unstuck by using his home computer to break into the sites. He was traced back to Pembrokeshire by the FBI, where agents raided his home expecting to find the mastermind of a multimillion pound fraud operation. His computer equipment was seized and he was taken into custody where he was questioned for 14 hours.

But Gray insisted that he was merely demonstrating insecurities in so-called 'secure' sites.

"I wanted to prove how [vulnerable] those sites are. I've told them before that I've been able to gain access, but they ignored me. That's why I posted the information on the internet. I had no choice. I wanted to prove a point. I was showing them there were holes in their security," he said.

Presiding over the hearing in Swansea, Judge Gareth Davies accepted that Gray had not taken the information other than for his own use. But he added that Gray's guilty pleas before the trial began had "deprived me of one of the more interesting cases", as proceedings were not officially due to start until 2 April.

Gray was released on unconditional bail and the case was adjourned for the processing of reports.