The Bush administration is redefining computer hacking to include using peer-to-peer file sharing services to download publicly available files.
The Justice Department claimed that Thursday in a case against a 35-year-old Seattle man, Gregory Kopiloff. If the
indictment (.pdf) stands, hacking and a five-year sentence that it carries no longer means actually breaking into a computer by bypassing passwords or unlawfully gaining access through some other illicit method.
Mr. Kopiloff is accused of accessing personal information, such as tax returns and bank information and unlawfully securing credit under the names of his victims to make as much as $78,000 in unlawful purchases. The information was publicly available -- inadvertently -- on the Limewire peer-to-peer service.
Often, unsophisticated users of Limewire and other file-sharing services inadvertently allow others to access private documents not meant to be viewed publicly. Kopiloff is accused of exploiting that lack of sophistication, and easily finding sensitive information by merely typing in key words such as "tax return."
Federal prosecutors told a news conference Thursday that Kopiloff was the nation's first defendant accused of illegally "hacking" a file-sharing service to profit on the backs of others.
He is also accused of identity theft and mail fraud.
Taking the Justice Department's position to its logical conclusion, peer-to-peer users who stumble on sensitive government secrets might also be guilty of hacking. Those documents are out there on peer-to-peer networks, and merely possessing them can be a crime.
On July 24, a research firm told the House Oversight Committee that it had located some 200 classified documents on file-sharing networks, one involving troop movements in Iraq.
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