A student who hacked into
Facebook in "the most extensive and grave" case of social media hacking ever to
come before a British court has been sentenced to eight months in prison.
Glenn Mangham, 26, admitted to infiltrating the website from his bedroom in his
parents' house last year, sparking fears by US authorities that Facebook was the
target of industrial espionage.
Prosecutors said that he stole "invaluable" intellectual property after hacking
into the account of a Facebook employee who was on holiday, and through it
obtained restricted internal data.
Mangham, a software development student from Cornlands Road, York, claimed that
he had previously shown the search engine Yahoo how it could improve its
security and said he wanted to do the same for Facebook.
But this was rejected by the prosecutor, Sandip Patel, who told Southwark crown
court in London: "He acted with determination and undoubted ingenuity and it was
sophisticated, it was calculating. This represents the most extensive and grave
incident of social media hacking to be brought before the British courts."
He said that Mangham had ultimately stolen "invaluable" intellectual property,
which he downloaded on to an external hard drive during the period of hacking in
April to May last year.
Facebook discovered the breach in May and alerted the FBI, while Scotland Yard's
e-crimes unit raided Mangham's home on 2 June 2011 following what Patel
described as a "concerted, time-consuming and costly investigation".
Explaining his actions, Mangham told the court: "It was to identify
vulnerabilities in the system so I could compile a report that I could then
bundle over to Facebook and show them what was wrong with their system."
Tony Ventham, defending, said Mangham was an "ethical hacker" who described
himself as a security consultant and told the court: "He saw this as a
challenge. This is someone who in previous times would have thrown everything
aside to seek the source of the Nile."
He added: "It was common currency within the community of computer nerds or
geeks, if I may refer to him as that, where there was this interesting
relationship between companies and people who ethically point out
vulnerabilities."
The court was also told that Mangham was of good character but showed strong
indications of Asperger's syndrome, and may have been trying to prove himself to
his father, who works in the computer industry.
Judge McCreath told him that he was bearing in mind the fact that Mangham had
never been in trouble before, as well as his youth, and his "psychological and
personal make-up".
"I acknowledge also that you never intended to pass any information you got
through these criminal offences to anyone else and you never did so, and I
acknowledge that you never intended to make any financial gain for yourself from
these offences.
"But this was not just a bit of harmless experimentation. You accessed the very
heart of the system of an international business of massive size, so this was
not just fiddling about in the business records of some tiny business of no
great importance."
He described Mangham's actions as "persistent conduct, sophisticated conduct and
conduct that had at least the risk of putting in danger the reputation of an
innocent employee of Facebook".
Mangham's claim that he had always intended to alert the website to what he had
done was a retrospective justification, rather than his motivation, he added.
The student was also given a serious crime prevention order restricting his
access to the internet and confiscating his computer equipment.
Alison Saunders, chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said: "This was the most
extensive and flagrant incidence of social media hacking to be brought before
British courts."
Facebook said in a statement that it applauded police and prosecutors' efforts
in the case, adding: "We take any attempt to gain unauthorized access to our
network very seriously."